“HowOpenIsIt?®” Open Access Spectrum (OAS)
The “HowOpenIsIt?®” Open Access Spectrum (OAS) guide standardizes Open Access terminology in an easily understandable, comprehensive resource created by PLOS, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). The guide defines core components of Open Access derived from the articulation of basic tenets in the 2002 Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).
“HowOpenIsIt?®” OAS moves the conversation from “Is It Open Access?” to “HowOpenIsIt?®” and illustrates a nuanced continuum of more versus less open to enable users to compare and contrast publications and policies across a grid of clearly defined components related to readership, reuse, copyright, author and automatic posting, and machine readability.
The guide has been vetted and refined in a practical use pilot of 100 journals by 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).
Through the work of volunteer translators, the guide is available in Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese and French for use around the world by authors, libraries, research funders, government agencies, institutions and other interested parties.
The goals of the guide are to:
- Move the conversation from “Is It Open Access?” to “HowOpenIsIt?®”
- Clarify the definition of OA
- Standardize terminology
- Illustrate a continuum of “more open” versus “less open”
- Enable people to compare and contrast publications and policies
- Broaden the understanding of OA to a wider audience
- Determine how open a publisher and/or publication is by using the grid
| OAS in English | Download PDF |
| OAS in Chinese | Download PDF |
| OAS in Spanish | Download PDF |
| OAS in Italian | Download PDF |
| OAS in Portuguese | Download PDF |
| OAS in French | Download PDF |
| OAS in Catalan | Download PDF |
| OAS Frequently Asked Questions in English | Download Document |
| OAS Slideshow | View Slideshow |
| Assess Where You Are On the OAS Grid | Download PDF |
| Folding Instructions for the OAS | Download PDF |
PLOS Journals Using OAS Grid
See OAS Frequently Asked Questions
[…] all open access publishing falls cleanly into the green or gold categories; PLoS has a spectrum of criteria to consider on open access, from reader rights, to author rights, to the machine readability of the […]