Inside Higher Ed reported today that five major universities have signed a Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity, an agreement that pledges to support journals that provide free and open access to content, upholding the rigors of peer review and research while providing greater access to publications that previously have been quite costly and published only in print or closed online subscriptions. 

I’m particularly interested in this development as it relates to the individual’s increased ability to share their work with audiences larger than those a subscription publication may be able to provide. I’ve been working with a client on a new Portfolio tool for academics, and in a lot of our market research, academics cited publications’ unwillingness to share content as a major barrier to them being able to showcase their work to larger audiences. 

With online portfolios, websites and blog becoming a major venue for those in higher ed to publish their work to the wider world, this move by universities to support opening the walled garden of research to the general public will be a major boon to academics looking to increase their visibility in their field. 

It will definitely be interesting to see how this open access plays out, but if  you want to learn more about the compact, you can read Inside Higher Ed’s take here. You can also weigh in on academic portfolios and how those in higher ed showcase their work by taking a quick survey here!