OA / OER Toolkit: Talking Points

• Open access is the idea that information should be made free to read to anyone with an Internet connection.
• Research journals are the source for cutting-edge knowledge in every field from history to medicine, yet students, professors, and even doctors are denied access to information every day because they or their institution can't afford it.
• Faculty write the articles for free, they review them for free, and they edit them for free. And then publishers sell them back to universities at prices so high that many libraries can't afford them.
• Journals often cost $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000 per subscription, per year -- and prices continue to outmatch inflation year after year.
• Publishers' profit margins exceed that of companies like Apple, Disney, and Google.

Select talking points adapted from Open Access Flyer made available under a CC-BY 3.0 license by the Right to Research Coalition with support by SPARC.

For talking points on key policy and community developments, check out SPARC's talking points on issues of interest to their members: http://www.sparc.arl.org/resource/talking-points

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• Your work is more discoverable via search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, and Bing. Studies have shown this often leads to an increased citation rate (200 - 600%!)
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• You can preserve all your scholarly work in a single place. CUNY Academic Works accepts the full range of scholarly and creative output - not just journal articles and books!
• Your work is more discoverable to potential collaborators within and outside of CUNY.
• Your work is accessible to scholars and students who can't access it, as well as the wider public.
• You're supporting CUNY's mission of making knowledge accessible and affordable.