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Scholarly Communications: What is Open Access?

A collection of Open Access Week events and resources for 2020.

Statement of Support for Open Access

Open Research Repository is OCAD University’s open access archive. Open access literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (1).

At the September 26, 2016 OCAD University Senate Regular Business Meeting, University Senate voted unanimously to endorse a Statement of Support for open access:

OCAD University recognizes that open access is consistent with its commitment to accessibility, transformative education, scholarship, research, and innovation. OCAD University encourages all OCAD U authors and creators to deposit their research outputs into OCAD University’s Open Research Repository for preservation and dissemination.

In recognition of the complexity and diversity of creative production and the unique outputs that constitute research and scholarly publishing in the art and design fields, the University will provide leadership and support negotiating the open access domain. Intellectual property rights, responsibilities, academic freedoms, and collective agreements will be respected.

For assistance contact the Scholarly Communications team at repository@ocadu.ca or visit our deposit guide for help with self-deposit.

1.            Suber P. Open access. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press; 2012. 242 p. (MIT Press essential knowledge series).

Open Access and Publicly Accessible Resources supporting Art, Design, and Liberal Arts and Sciences

The African American Performance Art Archive
The African American Performance Art Archive (aapaa.org) makes crucial documentation of historically significant performances by African American artists available on-line to artists, scholars, and students in the spirit of intellectual exchange.

African American Visual Artists Database
The mission of the African American Visual Artists Database is to establish a free public access record of the historical and ongoing contribution of artists of African descent to the visual arts, and to provide a visual and textual informational resource for non-profit educational use with unrestricted free access to all members of the global community. Our mission is to encourage the inclusion of artists of the African Diaspora in those areas where they continue to be underrepresented: the curricula and scholarship of schools and universities, museums and private collections, gallery and public exhibition spaces, public and institutional commissions.

Art Canada Institute
The Art Canada Institute is a non-profit research organization based at Massey College, University of Toronto, whose mandate is to promote the study of an inclusive multi-vocal Canadian art history to as broad an audience as possible, in both English and French, within Canada and internationally.

​ArtCan
ArtCan is the public face of the Canadian Art Commons for History of Art Education and Training (CACHET), a national network funded by the Partnership Development Grant Program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

ART-Dok
ART-Dok is the full-text server of the "Specialised Information Service for Art, Photography, Design", arthistoricum.net and is made available by Heidelberg University Library. It offers members of the academic community worldwide the opportunity to publish their texts in electronic format on the internet at no charge.

As for now, ART-Dok provides free full-text access to 3,746 publications.

Art Journal Open
Art Journal Open takes advantage of the unique qualities of the web to present artists’ projects, scholarly essays, conversations and interviews, notes from the field, artifacts of materials and process, and news items. The site embraces the evolving nature of multimedia formats and techniques, seeking to serve as a provisional, suggestive, and projective archive for contemporary art.

The Avery Review
The Avery Review is an open access journal dedicated to thinking about books, buildings, and other architectural media It is a project of the Office of Publications at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.

Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art (CCCA)
The CCCA documents the careers of some of Canada's leading professional artists, designers, art writers, and art organizations that have helped shape the Canadian art scene since the 1960s.

Dictionary of Art Historians
Search or browse full text biographies and authoritative entries on the key scholars, museum professionals and academic historians of art for classic and contemporary art history research.

The Research Catalogue (RC) is a searchable database for archiving artistic research. The open source status of the RC is essential to its nature and serves its function as a connective and transitional layer between academic discourse and artistic practice, thereby constituting a discursive field for artistic research.

Open Access Explained

Cham, Jorge. What Is Open Access? Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics), 2012. Film.