Political Science: Open Access

Open Access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access normally associated with publisher copyright agreements via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles, theses and dissertations, and scholarly monographs and chapters in books. Access is immediate, online and freely available to the end user. 

In the Open Access environment, authors generally publish under the Creative Commons Attribution License which allows for free and immediate access to, and unrestricted re-use of, original works of all types. Under this license, authors make their scholarly content legally available for re-use, without permission or fees, and for virtually any purpose. Anyone may copy, distribute, or re-use these articles, with the condition that the author(s) and original source are properly cited.

Directory of Open Access Journals

The aim of the DOAJ is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The DOAJ aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. In short, the DOAJ aims to be THE one stop shop for users of open access journals.

The Open Access Publication Fund has been established to support Stellenbosch University (SU) researchers publishing in open access journals with funding.  Open Access journals refer to peer-reviewed journals which are published online and are freely available immediately after publishing.