Open Access: An “Open Access 101” and why it is Important for Romania

Abstract

This paper is an introduction to Open Access, rather like a ‘101’ foundation course at an American university. It intends to both explain the concept and its implementation and its desirability. It takes the form of a series of questions whose answers build a good overall picture of Open Access. The questions are actual ones put forward by a US university policymaker when he was gathering together information to make the case for an Open Access policy within his institution. Keywords: open access, open data, science commons, open access policies, scholarly communication, institutional repositories, research metrics.