Open Access

A scientific publication is openly accessible when both the scholarly community and the public have universal and free access to it on the Internet.

There are now thousands of scholarly journals which are published online and which do not charge subscription or licence fees. Articles in such journals are OA publications. Publications stored in open digital archives (institutional repositories, e-prints archives) are also openly accessible.

Open access discussions often encompass science and research results as well as research publications. In the past few years, open access discussion has increasingly been extended to include research materials.

Open access also refers to an ideology or movement.