World Book and Copyright Day

April 23rd, 2016 marks World Book and Copyright Day, a day designed not only to promote reading, but also to recognize the importance of books. For us, this means the use of open access as a distribution channel that allows for accessibility to, and use of, published content.  

In recent years, the steady growth of open access publishing has prompted the development and implementation of various governmental, institutional and funder policies mandating the free accessibility of research publications. 

To pay tribute to this day and the growth of open access, we would like to highlight our Edited Volume books. Edited Volumes are IntechOpen initiated projects that provide a medium for researchers from all over the world to share their latest research findings in the form of book chapters.

These books are at the core of IntechOpen’s publishing offerings, we are the current holder of the largest collection of open access books, and are a great example of the collaborative atmosphere that not only makes open access unique but also fosters and encourages the proliferation of knowledge.

Researchers are provided with an opportunity to join a project that aligns with their current research, not limits it, and where they can publish said research in direct correlation with what other researchers are studying and presenting.

What one researcher publishes within an open access book chapter can freely be built upon by another researcher, as long as the original content and its author are properly cited and acknowledged. It is this type of collaboration that brings us to copyright.

Chapters are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Through the utilization of this type of license, researches retain copyright of their work. To recognize the importance of the work that is being presented, there is a need to allow researchers this retention of copyright to encourage further development of both their work and the work of their fellow researchers.

This means that researchers will never have to pay permission fees and can adapt, use, and further build upon the material from the published chapters. This approach helps eliminate any barriers to the further development of scientific research allowing it to be even more impactful within the scientific community by having it be available to all, indefinitely.