Second Release of HowOpenIsIt? Guide Now Available

The second release of the pocket-size “HowOpenIsIt?®” Open Access Spectrum (OAS) guide is now available for download and use. This resource is designed to help authors, research funders, government agencies and institutions to determine scholarly journals’ degree of openness based on a standard definition of Open Access.

To standardize the core components of Open Access and present them in an easily understandable, comprehensive resource, PLOS, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) created and released the first “HowOpenIsIt?” Open Access Spectrum guide in 2012. PLOS, SPARC and Copernicus Publications, in consultation with OASPA, Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access (SHERPA) and Infrastructures for Open Access (IS4OA), conducted a practical use pilot to map the Open Access Spectrum to 100 journals’ policies, the results of which informed the second release of the guide.

The “HowOpenIsIt?®” Open Access Spectrum (OAS) guide is available in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Chinese as well as English. Further information can be found in the FAQs which are also available to download.