Open-Access Publishing in Special Education and Related Fields: Making Scholarship Freely Available to All

Open access to research findings, syntheses of research, and papers providing guidance on implementing research-based practices is critical for informing policy and practice in special education and related fields. Yet most published articles are behind paywalls and cannot be accessed freely by many practitioners, policymakers, individuals with disabilities and their families, and other interested parties. In this article, we describe the benefits of open-access publishing for researchers and research consumers, as well as different types of open-access publishing--with a particular focus on self-archiving or green open-access publishing. Self-archiving makes papers freely available, with little time burden and no monetary cost to authors. We provide recommendations for what, where, when, and how to self archive one’s papers. We conclude by sharing our own experiences with open-access publishing.