The term “open access” refers to resources (often scholarly journal articles) that are freely and publicly accessible to anyone worldwide. Depending the particular terms of use of a given open access journal, the journal may also allow people to copy, modify, or distribute the content of the articles under one of the Creative Commons licenses.

Research (from University of California at Berkeley, University of Toronto, Research Libraries UK, and others) has demonstrated that publishing in open access journals brings increased visibility, usage, and impact to the work of academics, researchers, and students. Open access publishing is compatible with copyright law and with scholarly traditions of peer review, and indexing of articles and citations as indicators of impact and prestige. For example, if an individual uses ideas or words from an open access article, he or she must include the article as a source. Likewise, if using excerpts or direct quotes from an open access article, he or she must designate them with quotation marks and attribution to the original author. There is even an Open Access Search Project in order to detect plagiarism.