Scientific research works published in open access allow immediate free access to the entire content of scientific publications on the World Wide Web and copyright management. The author retains the copyright and authorizes the publisher to publish. Permitted and unauthorized use is usually marked with a Creative Commons (CC) license, which is chosen by the author or publisher, taking into account the terms of the funders. The difference between open and free access is that in the case of free access, the author transfers copyright to the publisher.

Benefits of Open Access:

• Increased and free access to scientific research results: open access enables users unlimited access to scientific research data on the World Wide Web without subscription restrictions, which enables access even to users with limited financial resources.
• Copyright retention: open access enables copyright management, which allows authors to retain their copyrights.
• Increased visibility and citation: with open access, scientific research data becomes more accessible and visible, which enables a higher rate of citation.
• Immediate access: with open access, scientific research data is accessible immediately upon publication on the World Wide Web.
• Involvement of the interested public: open access enables the involvement of the interested public in the research process.
• Wider reusability: open access enables wider reuse of scientific research data for further research.
• Researchers’ networking: open access with wide access to scientific research results enables cooperation between researchers from different countries.

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing. It was announced in 2018 by cOAlition S, which was founded by a group of research funders with the support of the European Commission (EC) and the European Research Council (ERC). In the initiative Slovenia is presented by Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS). Plan S includes ten principles with recommendations for their implementation. The main principle states that from 2021 all scientific publications funded by public funds are published on platforms that support open access.

Search engines and tools for finding high-quality open access scientific research data:

• CORE (COnnecting REpositories): a non-profit bibliographic database of the world’s scientific literature that it managed by The Open University;
• CORE Discovery: browser extension that enables faster search of scientific research data published in open access;
• BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): one of the most extensive databases in the world, especially for academic resources, which is managed by the Bielefeld University Library;
• EndNote Click: browser extension that enables faster search of scientific research data published in open access;
• Unpaywall: an open database that includes more than 50.000.000 free scientific articles;
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): an open database that enables the search through gold journals;
• Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): an open database that provides access to open access scientific monographs;
• Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR): directory of trusted repositories;
• Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR): directory of trusted repositories;
• Registry of Research Data Repositories (Re3data): directory of trusted repositories;
• Open Science Slovenia: access to knowledge from Slovenian research organizations.
  

Subpage Open Science at UP UK is funded by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation within the framework of the Action Plan for the Open Science (Objective 6.2 ReZrIS30).