A social movement aimed at furthering the democratization of knowledge by making scientific outputs open for public use. Typically, this means publishing articles onto pre-print servers, or moving away from for-profit publishers like Elsevier. Open Access is an important element of the [[Open Science]] movement. ## Types of Open Access There are multiple types of open access that reflect different levels of openness. - **Gold:** An article is made publicly available on the publisher's website under a [[Creative Commons License|CC license]] immediately after publication. An [[Article Processing Charge|APC]] is usually paid by the author. No subscription or charge is paid to any part of the journal. - **Hybrid:** The same as Gold open access, but the journal may require a subscription in general, but authors can optionally pay an [[Article Processing Charge|APC]] to have their individual article be made publicly available. - **Diamond/Platinum:** The same as Gold open access, but where no [[Article Processing Charge|APC]] is charged. - **Bronze:** An article is free to read on a publisher's web page (there is no paywall), but does not come with an accompanying license allowing re-use. - **Green:** An article is published in a closed-access journal, but the article makes a copy of the article freely available in an open access repository. Occasionally, there may be an embargo before the article may be made public.