Open access refers to the free, immediate, online availability of research outputs such as journal articles, books with rights to use these outputs full in the digital environment. It is a publishing model for scholarly communication that makes research information available to readers at no cost, as opposed to the traditional subscription model in which readers have access to scholarly information by paying a subscription.

Open science is about transparency, sharing, inclusivity whose principle aim is to democratize access to research, promote equitable resource distribution, foster accountability and trustworthiness, accelerate self-correction and improve rigor and reproducibility.

Open scholarship includes open access, open science and all forms of openness in the practice of research, education and knowledge exchange in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research publications, data, lab notes and other
scholarly processes and works are properly and ethically managed and evaluated and unless restricted for justifiable reasons are freely available to all levels of society under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the work and its underlying data and methods.