Progress of every profession, academic discipline and society at large rides on the back of research and development. Research generates new information and knowledge. It is a standardized process of identifying problem, collecting data or evidence, tabulating data and its analysis, drawing inference and establishing new facts in the form of information. Information has its life cycle: conception, generation, communication, evaluation and validation, use, impact and lastly a fuel for new ideas. Research results are published in journals, conference proceedings, monographs, dissertations, reports, and now the web provides many a new forum for its communication. Since their origin in the 17th century, the journals have remained very popular and important channels for dissemination of new ideas and research. Journals have become inseparable organ of scholarship and research communication, and are a huge and wide industry. Their proliferation (with high mortality rate), high cost of production, cumbersome distribution, waiting time for authors to get published, and then more time in getting listed in indexing services, increasing subscription rates, and lastly archiving of back volumes have led to a serious problem known as "Serials Crisis". The ICT, especially the internet and the WWW, descended from the cyber space to solve all these problems over night in the new avatar of e-journals. Their inherent features and versatility have made them immensely popular. Then in the beginning of the 21st century emerged the Open Access (OA) movement with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). Philosophy of open access is to provide free of charge and unhindered access to research and its publications without copyright restrictions. The movement got support from great scientists, educationists, publishers, research institutions, professional associations and library organizations. The other OA declarations at Berlin and Bethesda put it on strong footings. Its philosophy is: research funded by tax payers should be available free of charge to tax payers. Research being a public good should be available to all irrespective of their paying capacity. The OA has many forms of access and usage varying from total freedom from paying any charges, full permission to copy, download, print, distribute, archive, translate and even change format to its usage with varying restrictions.
In the beginning, OA publications were doubted for their authenticity and quality: established authors and researchers shied away both from contributing to and citing from OA literature. But Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, 1997) and its code of conduct formulated in collaboration with DOAJ and OASPA, etc. have stemmed the rot. They have defined best practices and compiled principles of transparency for quality control to sift the grain from the chaff; to keep the fraudulent at bay. Now it is accepted that contributors to OA get increased visibility, global presence, increased accessibility, increased collaboration, increased impact both in citations and applications, and lastly instant feedback, comments and critical reflections. This movement has got roots due to its systematic advocacy campaign. Since 2008 every year 21-27 October is celebrated as the OA week throughout the world. There are many organizations which advocate OA through social media and provide guidance for others.
Open Access research literature has not only made new ideas easy and quick to disseminate, but the impact of research can be quantitatively gauged by various bibliometric, scientometric and webometric methods such as h-index, i-10 index, etc. to measure the scientific productivity, its flow, speed and lastly its concrete influence on individuals, and on the progress of a discipline. The OA movement is gaining momentum every day, thanks to technology, organizational efforts for quality control and its measureable impact on productivity and further research. It needs to be strengthened with participation of every researcher, scientist, educationist and librarian. This module covers five units, covering these issues. At the end of this module, you are expected to be able to:
- Define scholarly communication and open access, and promote and differentiate between the various forms of Open Access;
- Explain issues related to rights management, incl. copyright, copy-left, authors’ rights and related intellectual property rights;
- Demonstrate the impact of Open Access within a scholarly communication environment.
This is Module One of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Library Schools.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002319/231920E.pdf.

Four-volume curriculum about open access for library schools, from UNESCO:

Module 1: Introduction to Open Access
Contents: Scholarly Communication Process; Open Access: History and Developments; Rights and Licenses; Advocacy for Open Access; Open Access Research Impacts
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231920.locale=en

Module 2: Open Access Infrastructure
Contents: Open Access Repositories; Open Journals; More about Open Approaches
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232204.locale=en

Module 3: Resource Optimization
Contents: Open Access Mandates and Policies; Content Management in Open Access Context; Harvesting and Integration
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232201.locale=en

Module 4: Interoperability and Retrieval
Contents: Resource Description for OA Resources; Interoperability Issues for Open Access; Retrieval of Information for OA Resources
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232199.locale=en

Five-volume curriculum about open access for researchers, from UNESCO:

Module 1: Scholarly Communication
Contents: Introduction to Scholarly Communication; Communicating with Peer Review Journals; Electronic Journals and Databases; Serials Crisis
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231938.locale=en

Module 2: Concepts of Openness and Open Access
Contents: Introduction to Open Access; Routes to Open Access; Networks and Organizations Promotion Open Access; Open Access Mandates and Policies; Open Access Issues and Challenges
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232207.locale=en

Module 3: Intellectual Property Rights
Contents: Understanding Intellectual Property Rights; Copyright; Alternative to a Strict Copyright Regime
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232208.locale=en

Module 4: Research Evaluation Metrics
Contents: Introduction to Research Evaluation Metrics and Related Indicators; Innovations in Measuring Science and Scholarship; Article and Author Level Measurements; Online Citation and Reference Management Tools
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232210.locale=en

Module 5: Sharing Your Work in Open Access
Contents: The Publishing Process; Share Research Results in Open Access
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232211.locale=en

This module dwells on a number of methods (including old and new) available for research evaluation. The module comprises the following four units:
Unit 1. Introduction to Research Evaluation Metrics and Related Indicators.
Unit 2. Innovations in Measuring Science and Scholarship: Analytical Tools and Indicators in Evaluation Scholarship Communications.
Unit 3. Article and Author Level Measurements, and
Unit 4. Online Citation and Reference Management Tools.
Brief overviews of the units are presented below.
Unit 1 encompassed and discussed citation analysis, use of citation-based indicators for research evaluation, common bibliometric indicators, classical bibliometric laws, author level indicators using authors' public profiles, article level metrics using altmetric tools. It is to be noted that author level indicators and article level metrics are new tools for research evaluation. Author level indicators encompasses h index, citations count, i10 index, g index, articles with citation, average citations per article, Eigenfactor score, impact points, and RG score. Article level metrics or altmetrics are based on Twitter, Facebook, Mendeley, CiteULike, and Delicious which have been discussed. All technical terms used in the Unit have been defined.
Unit 2 deals with analytical tools and indicators used in evaluating scholarly communications. The tools covered are The Web of Science, Scopus, Indian Citation Index (ICI), CiteSeerX, Google Scholar and Google Scholar Citations. Among these all the tools except Indian Citation Index (ICI) are international in scope. ICI is not very much known outside India. It is a powerful tool as far Indian scholarly literature is concerned. As Indian journals publish a sizable amount of foreign literature, the tool will be useful for foreign countries as well. The analytical products with journal performance metrics Journal Citation Reports (JCR®) has also been described. In the chapter titled New Platforms for Evaluating Scholarly Communications three websites i.e. SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) [ScimagoJR.com], eigenFACTOR.org, JournalMetrics.com and one software called Publish or Perish (POP) Software have been discussed.
Article and author level measurements have been discussed in Unit 3. Author and researcher identifiers are absolutely essential for searching databases in the WWW because a name like D Singh can harbour a number of names such as Dan Singh, Dhan Singh, Dhyan Singh, Darbara Singh, Daulat Singh, Durlabh Singh and more. The ResearcherID.com, launched by Thomson Reuters, is a web-based global registry of authors and researchers that individualises each and every name. Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) is also a registry that uniquely identifies an author or researcher. Both have been discussed in this Unit. Article Level Metrics (Altmetrics) has been treated in this Unit with the discussion as to how altmetrics can be measured with Altmetric.com and ImpactStory.org. Altmetrics for Online Journals has also been touched. There are a number of academic social networks of which ResearchGate.net, Academia.edu, GetCited.org, etc. have been discussed. Regional journal networks with bibliometric indicators are also in existence. Two networks of this type such as SciELO – Scientific Electronic Library Online, and Redalyc have been dealt with.
The last unit (Unit 4) is on online citation and reference management tools. The tools discussed are Mendeley, CiteULike, Zotero, Google Scholar Library, and EndNote Basic. The features of all the management tools have been discussed with figures, tables, and text boxes.
This is Module Four of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Researchers.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232210E.pdf

Researchers, scholars and scientists main business is scholarly communication. We communicate about our work to others, as we push the boundaries of what we know and the society knows. We question established notions and truths about science. We share our findings with others, and in a way that is popularly known as scholarly communication which emerged with the publication of first journal in 1665. However, the term gained popularity only in the 1970s, as access to peer reviewed and scholarly communication became difficult. This module has four units covering introduction to scholarly communication, peer reviewed journals, electronica journals and databases and the Serials Crisis. At the end of this module, the learner is expected to be able to:
- Explain philosophy, mission, and objectives of scholarly communication
- Describe the process of scholarly communication
- Identify different channels of scholarly communication
- Discuss the dysfunctioning of the scholarly communication
In Unit 1, Introduction to scholarly communication, we have discussed different aspects of scholarly communication – particularly its genesis, importance and ethics of academic publishing, and different communication channels available in academic publishing. Some of these channels are commonly described as primary sources as they provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. Historically, scientific journals were initiated by learned societies and other scholarly communities for reporting results of concluded research works or scientific discoveries. Now many forprofit publishers have started publishing research journals.
Unit 2, Communicating with Peer Review Journals, covers two important academic publishing channels, namely peer reviewed journals, conferences and their proceedings. This Unit also highlights different methods and procedures of peer reviewing for publishing primary literature emanated from research studies. The peer reviewing is essential for validating quality of research findings conveyed by researchers, which are subject to fulfilment of ethical standards and appropriate research design, sampling and other methodological issues.
In Unit 3, Electronic journals and databases, we have discussed the emergence of electronic journals in academic and research environment due to wide proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in research communications and academic publishing. Scientific communities and scientific communications from the global South are getting substantive attentions through adaptation of electronic journals and electronic academic databases in the process of research communications.
In Unit 4, the Serials Crisis, we discuss the cost of peer reviewed publications and the problems faced by researchers in developing countries. The focus of this unit is on highlighting the problems and discusses possible solutions including the emergence of open access as one of the solutions. Open access journal publishing helps in mitigating some of the problems associated with serials crisis.
This is Module One of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Researchers.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002319/231938e.pdf

This is the last Module of the course on Open Access for researchers. So far you have studied about Open Access, its history, advantages, initiatives, copyrights and licensing, evaluation matrix for research – all in the context of scholarly communication. In this Module with just two units, we would like to help you share your work in Open Access though repositories and journals. At the end of this module, you are expected to be able to:
- Understand the publication process involved in dissemination of scholarly works;
- Choose appropriate Open Access journals and repositories for sharing research results;
- Use social media to promote personal research work and build reputation.
In Unit 1, we discuss the research publication process at five stages – planning stage, preparing stage, pre-publication stage, publication stage and postpublication stage. We emphasize the importance of social media in sharing and making your work visible to the target groups.
In Unit 2, we focus on sharing your research through OA repositories and Journals. First we discussed the different types of repositories to select and highlighted the steps that you may consider including deposit in your own institutional repositories or in global open repositories. We then discuss the sources of finding and deciding on OA journals. This unit also provides guidance on choosing the right OA journals, as the quality of OA journals is often questioned.
This is Module Five of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Researchers.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232211E.pdf