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"Green" Open Access

The so-called "green" approach to Open Access involves making work, often a version of a published work, freely and widely available through an online repository. A variety of platforms are available, including disciplinary repositories and institutional repositories hosted by a university or organization, such as University of Houston's Cougar ROAR. The benefit for researchers is the avoidance of costs that may otherwise accompany other modes of open access. Challenges associated with green open access involve the ability of the author to retain the necessary copyright permissions to share their work, publisher restrictions regarding the version of the article (pre-print or post-print) that can be shared, and the perpetuation of traditional publishing models. UH Librarians can help you with these challenges.

Knowing and Leveraging Your Rights

For authors to archive their work in an open access repository, they must retain the appropriate copyright permissions over their scholarly works. Authors publishing in traditional journals often relinquish some or all of their rights to control the dissemination of and access to their work. Many publishers already have established policies permitting authors to archive their work as a part of their standard publishing agreement. Authors should consult SHERPA/RoMEO to determine publishers' policies in this area.

Open Access Repositories

Disciplinary Repositories and Preprint Servers

Discipline or subject repositories are online archives designed to preserve, organize, and disseminate research. Material is deposited by researchers to be freely accessible and cited with limited restrictions.

Institutional Repositories

Institutional repositories are digital collections managed by a university or research organization. Institutional repositories serve a variety of valuable roles, including supporting open access through collecting and sharing an institution's scholarly output. UH's Digital Repository supports open access and the university's scholars, allowing for the discovery of the creative and scholarly output of the University of Houston.