Seychelles Research Journal is an open access publication, offering the free transfer of scholarly information.
Open access publications are possible because of the availability of online technologies and, understandably, the number of journals which are produced in this way is increasing worldwide.
An open access publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
- The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, world-wide, perpetual (for the lifetime of the applicable copyright) right of access to, and a licence to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organisation that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
An open access publication is a property of individual works, not necessarily of journals or of publishers.
Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.
This definition of open access publication has been taken from the Position statement by the Wellcome Trust in support of open access publishing and was based on the definition arrived at by delegates who attended a meeting on open access publishing convened by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in July 2003.
A more detailed explanation of open access publications is provided by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. See https://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-statement-on-open-access-to-scholarly-literature-and-research-documentation
Seychelles Research Journal 