Join UBC Vancouver Library, UBC Okanagan Library, the Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology (Vancouver), and the Centre for Teaching and Learning (Okanagan) from October 19-October 24 for Open Access Week, where a variety of speakers and events will explore the many facets of open access. Take a look at the full list of events and register  here.

Open Access refers to an alternative academic publishing model in which research outputs (including peer-reviewed academic journal articles, theses, book chapters, and monographs) are made freely available to the general public for viewing, and often for reuse. This is unlike the traditional scholarly publishing model under which publishers require institutions or individuals to pay for access to these materials.

Looking for Open Access Materials through the UBC Library homepage?

The Library’s general search tool Summon currently indexes more than 200 million open access items, including articles, books, thesis, technical reports, images, and more. These items are made accessible in a variety of ways, including as full text resources (e.g. pdf, image, etc.) or through the descriptive metadata allowing you to find the full resource in open access repositories.

On the Library homepage, search using Summon (General), and limit your results to openly accessible content using the “Refine Your Search” filter for “Open Access.” When you see OpenVersion in a result, that is a link to download a version of the article from Unpaywall, a database of almost 26 million free scholarly articles.  Note that this open access version may not be the same as the final published version.  Read more about Unpaywall here.

UBC Library also provides a list of Open Access journals/indexes that you can access through our catalogue.

Want to Learn More About Publishing Open Access?

If you are interested in moving your work to Open Access, the Scholarly Communications Office at UBC Library has recently launched the UBC Open Access Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences Research which is designed to help offset some of the costs associated with this publishing model. If you have any questions about Open Access, or the fund, get in touch with the Scholarly Communications Office at UBC Library who are there to provide support for all your publishing questions.