Open Access (OA) refers to scholarly literature (articles, books, conference presentations, etc.) that are free to read, reuse, remix, and redistribute. 

OA is a response to the paywalling of scholarly literature, meaning the expensive subscription fees charged by some scholarly journals for access to read the articles contained in these journals. Paywalling restricts the access to knowledge to those who cannot afford the subscriptions or who are not affiliated with an institution (like the University of Pittsburgh) that pays the subscriptions for you. 

OA is something that scholars and students can do. If you have published a paper in a subscription journal, many publishers will let you post a version of that article in an Open Access repository like D-Scholarship @ Pitt. It's also worth paying attention to the copyright and licensing terms of any publishing contracts you sign, whether publishing openly or in a traditional subscription-based journal. For help with this, get in touch with our Scholarly Communications team. 

Want to learn more about publishing Open Access at Pitt? Check out the library webpage on Publishing Open Access.