I guess this is the day to post intros! Peter Suber, at Open Access News, has published a very concise introduction to the concept of open access. A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access is a shorter version of his Open Acecss Overview. Both are great documents, though the former is certainly easier to digest for those of use with short attention spans.
If you find the subject interesting, Jessamyn also pointed us to some good related resources this week: Removing the Barriers to Research: An Introduction to Open Access for Librarians (again by Peter Suber) and How and Why To Free All Refereed Research From Access- and Impact-Barriers Online, Now (from HEP Libraries Webzine).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Meredith Farkas
Meredith Farkas is a faculty librarian at Portland Community College in Oregon and an adjunct faculty member at San Jose State University's iSchool. She is the author of the book “Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication and Community Online” (Information Today, 2007) and writes the monthly column “Technology in Practice” for American Libraries. Meredith was honored in 2014 with the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award, in 2008 and 2011 with the WISE Excellence in Online Education Award and in 2009 with the LITA/Library Hi Tech award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology. She has been writing the blog Information Wants to be Free since 2004.