How to publish with open access

Background

Open access has its background from the 1990s, when more and more material could be shared over the early Internet, mainly in the natural sciences. At the same time, more and more publishers began to charge for their digital material, which in the long run entailed high costs for the higher education institutions. The Open Access movement is a reaction to these two developments and is manifested in the Budapest Initiative in 2001 and the Berlin Declaration in 2003.

Why open access?

In recent years, the work to make research results available to everyone has been driven by many different groups in society, ranging from researchers and politicians to publishers and funders.

Open access is highlighted in the research bill "Knowledge in collaboration" (2016/17:50), where the Swedish government's goal is that all scientific publications that are the result of publicly funded research should be openly available when they are published. The idea is that the shift will be completed by 2026 at the latest.

At University West, there is a Vice-Chancellor's decision from 2010 in which the Vice-Chancellor decided "that authors should consider publishing in journals freely available to the reader in accordance with SUHF's recommendations".

There are many benefits for both society and the author of publishing open access works:

• More readers, more dissemination and more citations
• Better research quality
• Contribute to new research ideas
• Available material can influence decision-makers and policies
• Any requirements from funders are met

The image below shows the benefits of open access.

(Karolinska Institutet University Library, 2023)

Why is open access introduced? (National Library of Sweden)

There are different models for publishing your work with open access. Below are the different options to go about it:

Diamond/Platinum

• Means completely open publishing in journals, books or platforms
• No fee from the author or reader.
• As an author, you retain your copyright to your work
• Often run and paid for by authorities or universities.
• The model is not yet so common
• Journals of this model can be found in the database DOAJ, books in DOAB.

Gold (Golden)

• Means completely open publishing in journals or platforms.
• Fee for the author, but not for the reader.
• The majority of publishers and platforms charge an Article Processing Charge (APC or Book Processing Charge, BPC) to the author
• With this model, the author retains his copyright
• This model can also be called "fully" or "pure".
• Journals of this model can be found in the database DOAJ, books in DOAB.

Green

• No fee for authors or readers.
• This means that the publisher gives the author the opportunity to upload the peer-reviewed and accepted author manuscript, so-called post-print, for example in DiVA or website, after publication.
• In most cases, the author retains his or her copyright to his or her author's manuscript.
• Most publishers allow this type of open access, which allows an author to choose a subscription-based journal or an open access journal/book with a high APC (Article Processing Charge) or BPC (Book Processing Charge) that matches their manuscript best, but still make the article/book freely available.
• Information about what applies to a publisher/journal can be found in the database Open Policy Finder.
• Sometimes the rules at the publisher can mean a delay before you can publish, from six months and up. This is called an embargo.
• This model is also called self-archiving.

Hybrid

• Fee for the author, but not for the reader.
• For articles, this means a combination of both subscription-based and open access content, so-called hybrid journals.
• When an article/book is published openly available in a hybrid journal, an Article Processing Charge (APC) is always charged to the author for the publication.
• In this model, the author obtains copyright to his or her works.
• University West has agreements with many hybrid journals, which means that the author does not have to pay APC (or receive a certain discount). To see our agreements, it is possible to search for journals in the SciFree service. (These agreements do not apply to books).

To see what applies to publishing with open access for your funder, there are these two tools:

• Open Policy Finder is a database where you can see different research funders' policies on open access
• The Journal Checker Tool is a tool where you can compare journal, funder and your institution to find out which publishing options are supported by your funder's open access policy.

The Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) is a database that lists high-quality and peer-reviewed Open Access journals. In DOAJ you can search by subject, journal or ISSN and there you will find journals with diamond or gold open access. In the results list, you can immediately see whether you need to pay a publication fee or not.

BISON is a tool where you can get tips on open access journals using your title and abstract. The magazines are either of the diamond or gold model.

SciFree is a service where you can find which journals the library has an agreement with where you can publish with open access free of charge or with a discount. Here, the majority of the magazines are hybrid, but there are also occasional golds.  To take part in the agreements, see what you need to do as an author below:

• A requirement is that you are the contact person for the publisher (corresponding author), are employed or a doctoral student at University West and have provided your email address at University West.
• Make sure that you provided the correct affiliation. If necessary, you can add additional organization affiliation.
• Once an article is accepted, you will receive information from the publisher on how to proceed.
• The library verifies that you belong to University West so that the process can proceed

Open Policy Finder is the database where you can see what opportunities you have to self-archive, so-called green open access. Here you can see what different journals allow to publish your last, approved and corrected manuscript, also called post-print, with open access.

There are several platforms and services for publishing open access books:

• The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a database where you can search for freely available e-books, but also see which publishers have open access publishing.
• OAPEN is a platform where you can find free e-books and publishers that publish with open access in the same way as in DOAB.
• Open Book Publishers is a publishing house with a focus on the humanities and social studies. The publisher offers a diamond model for open access publishing, which means that the author does not have to pay the Book Processing Charge (BPC).
• Kriterium is a Swedish platform for reviewing, publishing and disseminating high-quality scientific books, which also means that all publications are published with open access.
• The OA Books Toolkit is a website that provides information on publishing open access books.