Section 3 Open Access

**55**

**Chapter 4**

**Abstract**

Publishing

a tool of data collection.

**1. Introduction**

*Omer Hassan Abdelrahman*

Overview of the Principles

and Practices of Open Access

This chapter provides an overview of the principles and practices of open access (OA) publishing. It discusses various aspects of this emerging mode of scholarly publishing, including the definition of Open Access and its different types and models in addition to its growth and impact. The chapter also highlights the implications of open access publishing on copyright issues and how creative commons licenses are used to deal with this issue. The main focus of the chapter is to outline and discuss the different advantages and benefits of open access publishing, refuting a number of myths and misconceptions about OA publishing, and to highlight how authors and researchers can benefit from publishing their intellectual works in an open access channel. The chapter adopts the literature review as a methodology and

**Keywords:** open access publishing, types of open access publishing, open access and

Proprietary or "paywall" publishing mode dominated the scholarly world throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This is for-profit commercial publishing where publishers make their returns by the collection of research of scholars, application of peer-review, offering of editorial and formatting services, the collation of this research into subject-specific journals, and then selling subscription-based access of these works to academic libraries, scholarly societies and individual researchers. Access to individual articles on a short-term basis (typically 24 hours) is also supplied on a pay-for-use model. Commercial publishers also provide publishing facilities for books and monographs, although these have been on the decline [1]. The advent and wide use of the internet have strongly affected the process of scholarly publishing worldwide. A new mode of publication has emerged and widely employed by scholars and researchers. This new mode is Open Access (OA) publishing of scholarly work. This chapter will discuss OA focusing on its benefits to all the stakeholders and presenting other aspects of this new way of scholarly communication including its definition, types, development, its pros and

copyright, creative commons licenses, benefits of open access publishing

cons and the myths and misconceptions surrounding it.

#### **Chapter 4**
