FAQS: Open Access Policy


1. How does open access benefits the researchers?

For researchers, open access brings increased visibility, usage and impact for their work. A number of studies have now been carried out on the effect of open access on citations to articles, showing the increased citation impact that open access can bring. Open access repositories also provide an excellent means for researchers to boost their online presence and raise their profile.

2. Is open access compatible with copyright?

Completely. The short answer is that copyright law gives the copyright holder the right to make access open or restricted, and we seek to put copyright in the hands of authors or institutions that will consent to make access open. The long answer depends on whether we are talking about open access journals or open access repositories.

3. Is open access compatible with peer review?

Completely. We seek open access for peer-reviewed literature. The only exception is for preprints, which are put online prior to peer review but which are intended for peer-reviewed journals at a later stage in their evolution. Peer review is medium-independent, as necessary for online journals as for print journals, and no more difficult. Self-publishing to the internet, which bypasses peer review, is not the kind of open access that we seek or endorse.

4. Is open access compatible with print?

Completely. Open access is online access, but it does not exclude print access to the same works. Open access is free of charge to readers, but it does not exclude priced access to print versions of the same works. (Because print editions are expensive to produce, they tend to be priced rather than free.) Open access does not exclude printouts by users or print archives for security and long-term preservation. For some publishers, print will exclude open access, but the reverse need never occur.

5. Isn’t author self-archiving good enough?

Author self-archiving is becoming an important part of the scholarly communication process. The Library supports repository, including DSpace@Bilkent which authors can post their accepted manuscripts. Most author self-archiving initiatives, however, do not post the version of the research as formally published. The University appreciates and values the contributions that publishers add to the scholarly communication system.

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