Open access publishing (OA) refers to the free dissemination of scientific information. An open scientific publication is available and usable by everyone without separate compensation. Like many other universities and funders around the world, the University of Eastern Finland demands research results to be published as open access (OA) within the limits of agreements and laws.
Openness brings a scientist more merit, as openly accessible scientific publications are cited more often than articles published only in subscription-based journals. The open publishing of a research study promotes the work’s visibility, utility, and impact, in addition to increasing opportunities for co-operation.
Two routes to open access publishing
Self-archiving
Self-archiving is a globally used, cost-effective and easy way to actualise the principles of open science. The benefits of self-archiving include increased visibility due to open access and guaranteed long-term preservation in the electronic publication archive. In self-archiving, articles originally published in scientific journals are recorded into organisational or disciplinary, national or international open access repositories, from which the publications can be accessed by anyone. In accordance with the publication policy of the University of Eastern Finland, publications are made open access primarily through self-archiving into the university’s own publication archive, UEF eRepository.
Regarding self-archiving, it is recommended to achieve an agreement between the parties of a project early in the writing stage of the article. It is also necessary to comply with the publishing agreement, which may define the type of self-archiving that is allowed. The publishers’ practices and policies regarding self-archiving can be viewed on the websites of the publisher and the journal, as well as on the Sherpa/Romeo service.
Most publishers accept the self-archiving of at least some version of the article, which may be either a final draft/accepted manuscript or the publisher’s print PDF. Most publishers use an embargo period, during which the article may not be published for free online use. However, it is recommended to submit the article for self-archiving immediately after its publishing. Most self-archiving archives (including UEF eRepository) provide the opportunity to at first only display the reference information of the article, allowing for the article itself to become accessible after the embargo period has expired. The embargo periods vary between publishers, but normally they last for about 6–12, sometimes up to 48 months. Financiers may also provide conditions related to the length of the embargo period.
Self-archiving into UEF eRepository is a service that the library provides when you submit the information of your publication into the UEF CRIS research database. In addition to recording the publication information, you need only attach the final draft/accepted manuscript version of your publication (peer-reviewed, but without the publisher’s final formatting, pagination, logos etc.) In the case of an open access article published under a CC licence, no attachment is required. If you want to self-archive a publication that is already found in UEF CRIS, send an email containing the publication’s reference information (doi, authors, article name, and journal information) to erepo@uef.fi, and attach the final draft version of the article. Only peer-reviewed publications are saved at UEF. Preprint versions can be saved, for example, into Arxiv or similar disciplinary-specific preprint archives, such as bioRxiv or psyArXiv.
Open access publishing in an APC journal
Scientific journals usually charge an Article/Author Processing Charge (APC) or a Book Processing Charge (BPC) from the author of an article/book to cover the costs of open publishing.
UEF has outlined that the costs of publishing must always be included in the project’s funding applications. If the APC fees have not been approved as costs in the funding of the project, it is under certain prerequisites possible to pay the APC from UEF’s funds.
UEF authors also have access to other APC benefits, which have been negotiated with various publishers. These benefits vary depending on the publisher. In most cases, the benefit is either a discount on the APC or a possibility to publish an article without the APC when it is published open access in a scientific journal. The author fee benefits are available regardless of the funding method.
UEF also supports open publishing via different Open Access Programs.
SHERPA/RoMEO - resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis
SHERPA/JULIET - information concerning funders' policies and their requirements on open access, publication and data archiving
SHERPA/FACT: Funders & Authors Compliance Tool
PubPeer – platform for open peer reviewing
OpenDOAR – directory of Open Access repositories
ROARMAP - (Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies) - service can be used to check the OA policies of state governments, universities and research funders, among others
EOSC - European Science Cloud portal
Unpaywall – browser extension for finding open access versions of articles
AAM - Accepted Author Manuscript
(see Final draft)
Article/Author Processing Charges (APCs) of OA articles
An article/author processing charge (APC) is a fee which is charged to authors by many scientific publishers to make the article available open access in either an open access journal or hybrid journal. Different academic publishers have widely varying levels of APCs, from a few dozens to over several thousand euros. APCs can be searched e.g. via Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) service but remember to verify the current fee on the journal website. This fee is usually paid by the researcher, and these fees must be considered already at the research funding application.
Embargo
A time period defined by the publisher, during which the article cannot be made available online. The time period varies normally from six months to 12 months. Some publishers don't have embargo periods at all.
Final draft (=AAM; Author's Accepted Manuscript / aka Post-print)
The last version sent from the author to the publisher which has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publishing, but which does not have the final layout of the journal. For example there might not be any page numbers or at least the page numbers will not match the final published version.
The Final Draft is also called a post-print or Accepted Author Manuscript (AAM). The term "post" in Post Print refers to peer-review, not the actual printing. In the same logic, a pre-print is the version before peer-review.
The version with a watermark "Proof" is no longer a Final Draft -version.
Gold OA
Article published in an open access journal which has authoring fees, which are paid by the author or a research group.
Green OA
Article (or, like in most cases, a final draft version of the article) deposited in an organisational repository (UEF eRepository) or a subject matter repository. No costs for the researcher/author.
Hybrid Open Access
A publishing model in which only a portion of the articles are published in open access. Open access publishing requires a payment of an APC (Article Processing Charge).
OA-mandate
An organisational obligation, which states that the publications associated with the organisation must be published as open access. The organisational mandates can be checked at the ROARMAP service.
Open Access
A freely accessible publication, no costs are associated with reading the publication.
Parallel publishing / Self Archiving
A process in which a previously published article is deposited in a web-based repository, from which it is freely available A repository can be an organisational repository or a subject matter specific repository.
Pre-print
Manuscript. The version of the article before peer-review.
Publisher's PDF
The final published version of the article, with the layout of the journal.
When choosing a suitable, reliable and high-quality publishing channel, you can utilise, for example, the following services:
Publication Forum (JUFO) can be searched for scientific journals, series and book publishers that have a JUFO rating. The Publication Forum’s JUFO rating is a quality of publication channels classification by a Finnish science community. You can narrow down your search to only OA journals. You can find more information about Publication forum from UEF Library's blog.
Journal Checker Tool : Plan S Compliance Validator allows you to check is the journal’s publishing policy compatible with Plan S goals.
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database allows you to check the impact factor values and other citing and reference indicators of journals in the Web of Science database. Using JCR is subject to a charge, and you can also access it outside the campus network via UEF Primo using your UEF username and password.
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) contains a comprehensive list of OA journals of various disciplines.
BASE (Bielefeld University Library) is one of the most voluminous search engines for academic web resources
SCImago Journal & Country Rank portal contains indicators for evaluating journals and countries that are based on the Scopus database (e.g. h-index, number of citations, SJR).You can narrow down your search to only OA journals.
Elsevier Journal Finder is a tool by the Elsevier publishing company. It allows you to search for a suitable journal from over 2,000 options. You can narrow down your search to a certain field of science or to OA journals. You also receive bibliometric information of the journals (processing time, impact factor etc.).
Springer Journal Suggester searches all Springer and BioMed Central journals.
Edanz Journal Selector is a tool for choosing suitable journals beyond publisher borders. A journal can be searched, for instance, by field of study or an abstract. You can narrow down your search to OA journals.
Research Square's Journal Guide helps to find the best journal for your research. A growing journal database across all academic fields.
IEEE Publication Recommender helps to find the best match for your scholarly article of technology.
JANE – Journal Article Name Estimator helps you to choose a suitable journal, focusing on disciplines of biomedicine. The search is limited to publications indexed by the Medline database. OA journals are highlighted in the results.
Academic journal guide (CABS, Chartered Association of Business Schools, UK) - guide to the range and quality of journals in which business and management academics publish their research, based upon peer review, editorial and expert judgements.
When choosing a publishing channel, beware of dishonest, so-called predatory OA publishers. Such journal titles have been gathered on the Beall’s List, which, however, is not updated at the moment. The list contains potential or plausible scientifically questionable OA journals that often neglect peer-reviewing and mainly aim for cashing in from scientists.
Also Cabells Predatory Reports can be used for checking potential predatory journals.
For more information:
Beware of predators! blog post in UEF Library's blog
Check list for making sure you choose trusted journals for your research / Think. Check. Submit.
List of journals falsely claiming to be indexed by DOAJ / DOAJ
EndNote Manuscript Matcher suggests the top candidates for your manuscript / EndNote
Evaluating Open Access Journals / Ryerson University Library & Archives
Persistent identifiers, PIDs, are identifiers used to identify something, such as a publication, research data or person, in an online environment. Persistent identifiers are used to ensure hyperlink functionality, even if the physical location of the site in the network were to change. Persistent identifiers are an important piece of metadata. Identifiers generally used in publications include the following: Handle, which is used in open publication archives (e.g. UEF Erepository); DOI, which is used more commonly in commercial publishers’ systems; and URN, which is usually used in data archives, digital collections and publication archives (e.g. UEF Electronic Publications).
ORCID
By creating a personal identifier, a researcher enhances the findability of their publications and makes it easier to monitor references to their work. An identifier is useful in many occasions: for instance, with manuscripts, when peer-reviewing, on a website, in the social media and in your CV. This ensures your visibility in databases and your networking within scientific communities. Some scientific publications also (e.g. PLOS ONE, eLife, Science) require the use of an ORCID identifier.
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) has been recommended to be the national researcher identifier of Finland. The/an international ORCID identifier provides a researcher with a stable and personal digital identifier. The identifier reduces confusions with name changes, researchers with a similar name or different ways of spelling names. In the easy-to-use ORCID service, a researcher can keep their list of publications up to date and automatically connect publishing information via ResearcherID, Scopus Author ID, Europe PubMed Central and CrossRef Metadata Search to their profile. In addition to the publications’ metadata, the information can be imported to the ORCID as BibTeX files from Google Scholar, different databases and reference management softwares (Zotero, Mendeley). Due to the identifier, research output becomes automatically interconnected, and in time the requirement to feed personal details and publishing information several times to different systems will decrease.
Register yourself into the ORCID service and create your personal profile. In addition to publications, you can update your training, career and funding information into the identifier, which makes the ORCID to function as a CV.
For more information:
researchidentifier.fi / information about the ORCID researcher identifier
orcid.org / information about the ORCID researcher identifier and signing in to the service
When a publication is made open, it is usually also licensed. The licence determines how the publication may be further utilised. The most common licence is the Creative Commons (or CC) licence. CC licensing allows for the researcher to select a few additional provisions that can be used to restrict the open use of the publication. If the publication has several authors, CC licensing requires consent from them all.
CC BY (Attribution) requires that the name of the author, the licence and the original place of publication are cited. It allows others to distribute and adapt the publication and make new versions of it (e.g. translations). The commercial use of both the original publication and the adapted version of it is permitted. The adaptation does not need to be CC licensed, meaning that using it for commercial purposes is easier than using the original publication (which is publicly available anyway). The author themselves may also share their article on commercial social media platforms, for example. An efficient licence in terms of increasing the exposure and impact of a piece of research. The licence required or recommend by many funders (including Academy of Finland) as well as both national and international open science guidelines.
CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike) is similar to the CC BY, but any adaptations of the publication must be distributed under the same licence as the original. Utilising the new version commercially is more difficult, because it too must be freely shareable.
CC BY-ND (Attribution-NoDerivatives) is similar to the CC BY, but the original publication may not be adapted. Translations also require a separate permit.
CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) is similar to the CC BY, but the commercial use of both the original publication and its adaptation is prohibited. The adaptation does not need to be licensed under the same terms, with the exception of commercial use. Readers may find it difficult to determine which use falls under commercial use, which reduces the shares a publication may get. Sharing these publications on commercial social media platforms, for example, is prohibited. Please note that using this licence may assign all of the commercial use rights to the publisher.
CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike) is similar to the CC BY, but an adaptation must be licensed under the same terms as the original, and neither may be used commercially.
CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives) is the most restrictive CC licence. The publication may not be adapted or used for commercial purposes. Readers may find it difficult to determine which use falls under commercial use, which reduces the shares a publication may get. Sharing these publications on commercial social media platforms, for example, is prohibited. Please note that using this licence may assign all of the commercial use and adaptation rights to the publisher.
