The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Open Access Spectrum (OAS) Evaluation Tool is a useful resource for a journal’s degree of openness.
Using the criteria established in the Public Library of Science’s HowOpenIsIt? Guide, the OAS tool is based on a 100-point scale. According to the OAS website the tool also provides the following advantages:
A distinct evaluation of a journal’s policies regarding reader rights, reuse rights, copyrights, author posting rights, automatic posting, and machine readability.
Can be used to help determine compliance with funder policies, institutional mandates, and researchers’ individual values.
Offers a unique opportunity for publishers to independently validate their journals’ degree of openness and compliance with funder/campus policies.
Pulls together – in one single, accurate web resource – information that is otherwise buried across scores of publisher websites.
The tool is aiming to assess 1000 journals by the end of 2015 from a wide range of disciplines, countries of origin, and business models.
For more information about open access, visit the Libraries guide at http://guides.gru.edu/openaccess.
