Open Access

We encourage you to considering open access publishing to make your works more broadly available. Learn more about open access and our open access initiatives at the Georgetown University Library:

About Open Access

Open Access at Georgetown

Finding Open Access Materials

Scholarly Works

There are several searchable databases of open access scholarly publications:

Some of the library's subscription databases provide an option to limit search results to open access materials. For example, in Web of Science (GU NetID and password required), choose "Open Access" under "Filter results by".

If you have an article and are looking for an open access version of it, try one of the options below. Neither of these services has 100% coverage of OA scholarship, but both are easy to use and provide access to a high percentage of materials in institutional repositories and on preprint servers.

  • Open Access Button
     - Enter an article's URL, DOI, citation, title, PMC ID, or PubMed ID to search for an OA version of the article
     - You can also search for datasets with the Open Access Button
     - A browser extension is also available - click on "Get the browser extension" link from the Open Access Button's homepage
     - If your article is not found, Open Access Button will give you an option to request the article from the author
  • Unpaywall
    - A browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that searches for open access versions of an articles

Teaching Materials

In 2019, the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), of which Georgetown University is a member, joined the Open Education Network to support and promote the use of open textbooks. Read more about using open materials on our Go Open and Free! Resources for Teaching and Learning page.

Multimedia

By Subject

Funders with Open Access Mandates

  • Federal Agencies Article and Data Sharing Requirements (info from SPARC)
    Policies vary somewhat from agency to agency; many allow for a 12-month embargo period before being made publicly available in an open access repository.
  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
    All funded research, including underlying data, must be immediately and openly available without an embargo period.
  • Ford Foundation
    All grant-funded projects and research must be made available under a Creative Commons license to promote greater transparency and accessibility of materials.
  • Hewlett Foundation
    For project-based grants, any the final materials created with those grant dollars must be made available under a Creative Commons license.
  • cOAlition S
    cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding organizations, has implemented Plan S requiring that scientific publications resulting from their grants must be Open Access.
  • Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies 
    ROARMAP, from the University of Southampton, is a searchable database with links to open access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions, and research funders. 
  • Sherpa Juliet
    Sherpa Juliet is a searchable database of up-to-date information concerning funders' policies and their requirements on open access, publication and data archiving.