"By Open Access, we mean the free, immediate, availability on the public Internet of those works which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment – permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software or use them for any other lawful purpose."
Source: SPARC. (2007-2013). Why open access? Retrieved from http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/open-access/why-oa
"Article [level] metrics provide information on the usage and dissemination of published articles. Examples include:
Source: BioMed Central (2014). What are article metrics? Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/articlemetrics/what
A number of publishers are now offering article level metrics for their open access and subscription-based journals:
What are PlumX Metrics?
PlumX Metrics provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment. Examples include, when research is mentioned in the news or is tweeted about. Collectively known as PlumX Metrics, these metrics are divided into five categories to help make sense of the huge amounts of data involved and to enable analysis by comparing like with like. PlumX gathers and brings together appropriate research metrics for all types of scholarly research output. The metrics are put into 5 separate categories: Citations, Usage, Captures, Mentions, and Social Media.
PlumX Metrics in Scopus
The database, Scopus, now uses PlumX Metrics as the primary source of its article-level metrics, along with traditional measures such as citation counts to present a more comprehensive picture of an individual article's impact. The Article Metrics module is found on the Document details page in Scopus. A sidebar highlights the Scopus citation count, field-weighted citation impact, and PlumX metrics. Click on "View All Metrics" to get a more detailed metrics page that displays all available mertics. PlumX Metrics relate to all the ways people interact with an individual publication in the online environment such as usage, captures, mentions in new articles or blog posts, and social media tweets, Facebook likes, etc. For a tutorial on using article-level metrics in Scopus, go to https://tutorials.scopus.com/EN/Metrics/index.html. For the text only version, go to https://tutorials.scopus.com/EN/Metrics/sc_Metrics_textOnly.html.
PlumX Metrics and Other Databases
PlumX Metrics are also available for many articles found in SmartSearch and the many Ebsco databases held by the University Libraries including Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, SportDiscus and others. Simply click on the PlumX link found with the article citation to see the metrics for that particular article.
"Open access publishing allows free access to and distribution of published articles where the author retains copyright of their work by employing a Creative Commons attribution licence, therefore removing any barriers to access.
Source: BioMed Central. (2014). About us. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/about
Check out the Directory of Open Access Journals if you are interested in publishing your research in an open access journal. This website is "a service that indexes and provides access to quality-controlled Open Access Journals and their articles. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use an appropriate quality control system, and it will not be limited to particular languages or subject areas."
Source: DOAJ. (2014). DOAJ FAQs. Retrieved from: http://doaj.org/faq#whatis
