Open Access: What is Open Access (OA)?
What is Open Access?
Open Access (OA) is one part of Open Research. OA means that electronic scholarly research outputs are made freely available on the web to all, with no or limited license restrictions. In doing so you maximise the impact of your work as the potential readership is far greater than that for publications where the full-text is restricted to subscribers only.
Open access publications go through the same peer review process as non-open access publications. Open access does not interfere with a decision to exploit results commercially, e.g. through patenting.
Go to our How to Publish Open Access page to find out the practical steps needed to publish.
What is Open Research or Open Science?
Open Research, also known as Open Science or Open Scholarship, is a concept that encompasses open access.
"Open Science is the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods. In a nutshell, Open Science is transparent and accessible knowledge that is shared and developed through collaborative networks" (Vicente-Sáez & Martínez-Fuentes 2018, cited in The Open Science Training Handbook, 2018).
Open Research aims to break down barriers to knowledge and scientific discovery by making all part of the research process open to all. Some benefits of open research include reaching policy makers and practitioners, sharing publicly funded research with the public, increasing impact, promoting rigour and reproducibility, and allowing global equity in access to knowledge.
Read more about Open Research here.
What is Open Access? Video
Samenwerkingsverband Hogeschoolbibliotheken (SHB) - CC BY SA
Open Access Policies
-
Open Access Publishing Guidelines for AuthorsPublish OA Ireland have created these guidelines to help authors new to OA understand the basic terminology and OA publishing options.
-
NORF National Action Plan 2022-2030Building on the National Framework above, this action plan is a roadmap for the implementation of open research across Ireland. It details national goals and actions required to assist the research system achieve an open research environment.
-
NORF (National Open Research Forum, Ireland) National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research EnvironmentThe NORF National Framework combines the activities of working groups over the past two years and articulates a coordinated Irish agenda for an open research environment (launched July 2019)
Scholarly Communications Librarian
Open Research
Benefits of Open Access
Library Training
The Library's Research Essentials @ UCD Library programme offers an extensive range of training sessions and workshops (open to all staff and students) on a range of practical topics to help support your research including: publishing and impact, open access, research data management, geospatial data, data visualisation, and systematic reviews.
Full details and booking can be found on the UCD Library Training Calendar or by clicking on the image above.
Related Guides
- Research Repository UCD
-
Scholarly Communications
by Jenny Collery Last Updated Jul 16, 2025 1658 views this year
Creative Commons license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License