You may have heard of the phrases "gold" open access and "green" open access.
"Gold" refers to a completely open access work--the author has been it available open access to the publisher and thus freely available to anyone who wants to read it.
"Green" open access refers to the act of depositing a version of a work in an open access repository; the work is made available through the repository, though it may not be open access on the publisher site. (Ex: PubMed Central, Swarthmore College Works)
Many journals offer a route to gold open access these days. Not all publishers allow green open access, and may restrict the sharing of your published work, even in its draft forms.
Is your book available in the HathiTrust Digital Library? If it's in copyright, it won't be viewable to the public. But you can change that--while reserving your rights--by completing a "Rights Holder Permission Agreement". If you maintain control over the copyright of your book, you can make it open access through HathiTrust.
HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. The HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the immense collections of partner institutions in digital form, preserving them securely to be accessed and used today, and in future generations.
Swarthmore College is a partner institution of HathiTrust.
For more information on managing your data, check out the guide to Research Data Management at Swarthmore.
Get more from your research: share it.
Greater visibility allows you to reach a wider audience and leads to earlier and more frequent citations.
Research has begun to demonstrate that the more accessible a publication is, the more readership and citations it ultimately receives, even further increasing the visibility of your work. Open access online articles have appreciably higher citation rates than traditionally published articles across a range of disciplines. (source)
How open is it, really? Openness comes in many different levels; not all are equal.
Click the image for a bigger version. Source