The following is a brief list of definitions related to open access. If you encounter an unfamiliar term related to open access and would like to add it to the list, please feel free to contact me.
Gold Open Access – author or institution pay a fee to make peer-reviewed articles available to all on journal publisher web sites.
Green Open Access – author or institution can archive peer-reviewed articles in openly accessible digital repositories.
Open Access - the practice of providing free, unrestricted access to research results and literature. Research results can be read by anyone at any time without having to go to a library that subscribes to a journal or request it through interlibrary loan.
Postprint (Post-print) - an article that has been written and submitted to a scholarly journal that has been peer-reviewed. It is not the final version which is published by the journal.
Preprint (Pre-Print) – an article that has been written and submitted to a scholarly journal that has not been peer-reviewed.
Version of Record – the official final version of a scholarly article that has been peer reviewed and published in a journal.