Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (Sauber, P 2010). There are two primary vehicles for delivering OA to research articles, OA journals  and OA repositories. There is a vast number of open access journals available through popular OA platforms like BiomedCentral, DOAJ: Directory of Open access journals and Arxiv. Authors can also consult AOAJSA, a list of open access journals acknowledged by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training which qualify for university subsidy.

Durban University of Technology has its own Institutional Repository consisting primarily theses, dissertations and research publications. The Repository is hosted on an open source platform called DSpace.  According the DUT IR policy, it is mandatory for all theses, dissertations and research publications to be added to the Repository.

Sauber, P. (2010). Open Access Overview. Available: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm . Last accessed 17 August 2011