Open Access and the new Era of Information Flow

AuthorStan, D. - Chis, C.M.
PositionUniversity of Pitesti, Library - University of Oradea, Library
Pages315-322
Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov
Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 6 (55) No. 2 - 2013
OPEN ACCESS AND THE NEW ERA
OF INFORMATION FLOW
D. STAN1 C.M. CHIŞ2
Abstract: In the new information era, a new phenomenon grows more
and more: Open Access. The paper presents various advantages of the new
way of online access to literature, from researches, studies, articles, to books
and entire journal collections, through institutional repositories, DOAJ etc.
Local projects for open access are presented in Romania. Regarding this
concept, the paper also presents comparative situations in Romania, as
well as other countries. Positive correlations between open access and
citations are enlisted. Some advantages are also briefly presented for
libraries.
Key words: open access, scientific information, information literacy,
institutional repositories, electronic journals.
1 University of Piteşti, Library.
2 University of Oradea, Library.
1. Introduction
The massive increase of information of
the last decade has completely changed the
traditional method of sharing, accessing
and using scientific data. The new
information technologies allowed the
migration of scientific publications from
printed to electronic version.[1]
For more than three hundred years, the
journal has been one of the most important
information providers. With the new
information technologies emerging, they
shifted to the recent open access
movement.
The basis of this movement in
distributing information to the community
of scholars and researchers is that people
who need scientific information to be able
to access it free of charge. This implies
that open access for literature allows
reading, copying, distributing, printing,
searching within full text or accessing links
from the article, without any other barrier
but that the authors of the scientific
material should keep control of the
integrity of their work, and they are
entitled to be properly cited.[2]
Those who disagree with open access
state that scientific journals represent
important guardians. The relevance of the
published work, the accuracy and quality
of information are provided by the process
of peer review. This activity costs money,
therefore open access threatens the
traditional way of funding scientific
publications.
Those who agree with this phenomenon
plead that the revolution of information
that has been ignited by the emergence of
the Internet has spread to scientific
publishing, and literature should not be
hidden in high cost journals but should be
accessible to everyone at no cost.[3]

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