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What is Open Access? Briefly, the open access movement is about utilizing the Internet revolution to open the research literature of the world to any user wishing to access it, for free. All that is needed is access to the Internet, and enough bandwidth to download the document.
The benefits of this approach are that:
- Publicly funded research is made publicly available
- Researchers will be able to access and use all the literature, rather than just what what appears in the journals that their institution can afford (this applies with immense force to industrial companies of course). This means that usage and citations will be based on what research is best and most pertinent, not just what is affordable.
- Researchers will gain an increase in citations to high quality work, wherever it is published (a piece of research hidden in either an obscure or an expensive journal is not likely to be cited today). Research shows a 50% to 250% increase in citations when documents are made freely accessible online.
- Researchers become more interested in the fate of their publications, and pay more attention to dissemination.
- Authoring institutions gain benefits from (3) and (4).
- All research institutions gain benefits from (2).
The technical point of reference for the open access movement is interoperability: The Open Archives Initiative site will take you to developed standards for OAI, protocols for harvesting repositories, model policies, software, tools, news and much more.
You are thinking “But what about copyright? What will the journals say or do? Is this legal? How much work will this generate for me?” Rest assured that all these questions have been asked many, many times before and their answers have all been categorized. Anyone who comes up with a new question deserves a prize (alas we have none to award other than the green-and-gold star for an outstanding contribution). The facts are that the Internet is a disruptive technology, and it has a major impact on scholarly publishing, which is just unfolding. To peruse a comprehensive FAQ, see http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/.
Or browse through this wiki. The most important page you can read is Deposit Policy.