 For me, open access is exactly what it sounds like. It is giving anyone who wants this information access to it with no strings attached. Open access is something I think is really important. It's, to my understanding, it's the platform that allows digital research content to be available to anybody immediately. And it also allows researchers to use the resources. Scholarship is built on other people's work, and the more access we have, the better it is for all of us. So as a scientist and educator, I believe that science advances and builds on previous knowledge or previous work. So all of my research work builds on others' work. And when, if I can make a little contribution to the scientific field, I want to make my knowledge available for others. If somebody wants this information, they can have it. I have put in this work for other members of our community, and for anybody who wants it, I, and I don't think that information should be hidden behind a table. But open access is more content. And for example, when I'm conducting literature reviews on just about anything to solve just about any problem, open access gives me more literature. And then also, when I'm looking for opportunities to collaborate with researchers, I would find more information if I have more content openly available. So it's quite important. If my work can even help one person guide them in a direction for their research, it's worth it because I see the scholarly community as a global community, and we work with each other and in conversation with each other. That is what citing is, that is what reading each other's work is. And if we can't access each other's articles or information, those are closed doors and closed avenues of communication. And I think the more open we are with each other, the better it is for everyone. When you look at the scenario deep down, it's about the fact that more people see what you're doing and more people have opportunity to build on what you're doing, or to even reach out and try to collaborate with you. So that's a very big, very big thing. So over the, these years, I think I met with two groups of people that who want access to like scientific publications, but they unfortunately don't have access. One group of people is those working in like small companies. So, you know, small companies are really, really heavy in R&D. So they do need scientific articles to have a reference with. So they usually ask me for my publications. And another group of people would be those people from smaller institutions and developing countries. You know, I think the reason is that they cannot afford the subscription cost. That's why they really will benefit from open access and institutional repository. Well, imagine people who don't have access to any of those big platforms. You know, they basically will have next to nothing if not for open access. So I recognize the fact that it's a very important system. And it just fosters collaboration, you know, pushes research out there more, and then makes for more opportunities for research as to solve, you know, new problems. Actually, most of my previous publications were published in journals that are not open access. So that means not a lot of people, not a lot of researchers can have access to it. So usually, occasionally, we will receive an email to ask us whether you can provide this publication to me because we don't have access to it. So usually I will respond to their email and send my papers over. And I think the institutional repository gives us an opportunity that we can upload our version, different versions of our publication onto the institutional repository so that they can be free to everybody. I was really excited to find that UA has an institutional repository. I think that institutional repositories are very cool because they show a smaller academic community. They show the work that's being produced by whatever institution that is. So in this case, UA. And as soon as I saw that I could submit it, I wanted to do that. I wasn't able to publish my paper open access, but I figured this was the next best thing. And I've had a really great experience at UA and I want to give back in any way that I can. And for me, that's submitting work that I've had published into the Ion. It is a fairly easy process and the repository stuff are really helpful. So I basically just sent a list of my publications to the repository stuff. And what I got from them is that they probably look into the publisher's policies and let me know what versions either pre-print or post-print versions of the article that I can deposit into the repository. And then I just shared my manuscripts with the repository stuff and those will be uploaded online. And that's very fast. Once I submitted my article to a journal, that is not perpetual access guaranteed for the UA body or the UA community. Contracts are very tricky and fickle and we could lose access to a journal or that journal could go under. Something could happen where not everyone who we at this point has access does in the future. And so by submitting more or less the same article into an IR that gives access in perpetuity that we don't necessarily get through that scholarly journal. My name is Laura Langberg and I'm getting my master's in library and information studies at the University of Alabama. My name is Ifai Opala. I'm a graduate teaching research assistant at the Department of Civil Construction Environmental Engineering, a College of Engineering here at the University of Alabama. My name is Lin-Yang Kong. I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Human Nutrition and Hospitality Management.