Open access - the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research can transform scholarship and its impact. More than 30 compelling stories have been collected from across Europe and further afield to show this transformation in action.
The stories are from over 11 countries and are told by a wide variety of stakeholders from individual researchers and journal editors to publishers and companies and cover a multitude of disciplines. Some of the initiatives have a rich history while others are more recent. All demonstrate the benefits of open access, sometimes in quite unexpected ways. This range of stories was commissioned by Knowledge Exchange and collected by Michelle Pauli.
New Stories
After the launch in October 2011 with a first collection of stories, a further batch of stories has been added. They include a young Italian open access cancer journal that has expanded into other forms of media to change the way that cancer research is accessed globally; a Norwegian Polar journal that has successfully moved from a subscription model to open access for competitive advantage; and two longstanding German 'families' of journals Living Reviews and GIGA.
Open for re-use
The stories can be found at www.oastories.org and are open for comments and ready to share. They are not only free for all to read and refer to, but they are also licensed under a creative commons licence. To allow for easier re-use the stories are available for download and use in other publications and websites.
The texts are made available under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence.
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