Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. OA is compatible with copyright, peer review, revenue (even profit), print, preservation, prestige, quality, career-advancement, indexing, and other features and supportive services associated with conventional scholarly literature.
found strong evidence that, even in a journal that is widely available in research libraries, OA articles are more immediately recognized and cited by peers than non-OA articles published in the same journal.
Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo.
Many of the resources listed on the Open Access and Author Rights pages were taken from Jon Wheeler's Open Access Libguide.