Open Access Publishing

Open access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access to peer-reviewed research journal articles via the internet. This is done for a variety of reasons and is particularly good for the dissemination of new knowledge. Evidence shows that this practice increases article citations.

The Vice Chancellor, Professor Loyiso Nongxa, signed the Berlin Declaration on 9 November 2012, and thereby committed the university “to address the challenges of the Internet as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge.” Read more

There are two ways in which OA publication can be practiced.

1. Green OA Self-Archiving

In this mode authors publish in their selected journals and then self-archive a version of the article for free public use in the institutional repository. It is necessary to send the author’s addendum with the original manuscript to the publishing journal so as to secure permission to self-archive without contravening copy right law. The Wits Author’s Addendum is available.

The Wits repository is called the Wits Institutional Repository on DSpace or WIReDSpace for short.