NISO’s work with OAMI should lead to the recommendation of a standard OA indicator to be utilised by all members of the scholarly information supply chain. In the meantime, many commercial publishers and some librarians managing repositories have developed local icons to be used to indicate open access of article level content or even of data sets. The most common symbol is use today is that of an “unlocked” lock icon. Some publishers use green radial buttons or green coded symbols to indicate open access to content on their publishing sites. To date, there is not a single identifier available.

In this void, a number of researchers have developed the idea for an OA Button. The intent of the OA Button is to create a safe, easy to use browser bookmarklet that one can use to show the global effects of research paywalls – and to help get access to the research needed. Every time you hit a paywall blocking your research, click the button. Fill out a short form, add your experience to the map along with thousands of others. Then use the tools located on their web site to search for access to papers, and spread the word with social media. Still in a nascent stage of development, it will be interesting to see what impacts the OA Button may have on opening up research. Right now, it is primarily indicating the need for wider distributed content. Whether it will result in more ubiquitous availability of content is yet to be seen.

6.1 Addition of global OA Content to library catalogues & discovery systems
6.2 Participation in OAISter
6.3 Necessary Metadata
6.4 Exposure of local repository on Google
6.5 Indexing of gold OA journals and the need for OA designation
6.6 Usage data (PIRUS, IRUS-UK, COUNTER 4)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.