Open access: New 2021! How to comply with funders' requirements

Many funders require that researchers within their projects publish open access:
Plan S (cOAlition S):
“With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately
available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.”

Rights Retention Strategy:

"cOAlition S has developed a Rights Retention Strategy to give researchers supported by a cOAlition S funder the freedom to publish in their journal of choice, including subscription journals, whilst remaining fully compliant with Plan S."

Academy of Finland:

“We require that Academy-funded projects see to that the scientific publications in which the project’s results are published are open-access, and that the projects' data are made widely available."

EU Horizon 2020/Horizon Europe:

“Each beneficiary must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to its results.”

The aim for all ÅAU researchers is to comply with the demands by The Open Science National Coordination team:

The Open Science National Coordination team within the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies has adopted a policy on open access to scholarly publications. According to this, researchers affiliated with a Finnish research organisation shall make sure that when they submit an article to a  journal or a conference publication from January 1st 2022 onwards it shall either be published gold open access or they shall ensure that they can parallel publish it in AboCRIS without embargo and with a CC licence attached.

The policy can be read here.

There are several ways to comply with the funders' demands ("Plan S"):

1. Publish in a gold (full) open access journal or hybrid open access in a journal with a "transformative arrangement" (see arrangements for ÅAU authors here).

Check beforehand that the journal complies with Plan S -> Journal Checker Tool.

If yes > go ahead and submit!

If no >

2. Publish in any journal but make sure when you submit that you are allowed to parallel publish in a compliant way. Journal Checker Tool will advice you on this: What can I do now? -> Rights Retention. Parallel publish the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or the Publisher's final version (VoR) in AboCRIS. Note: no embargo allowed, CC-license (preferrably CC-BY) required.

Not all publishers explicitly allow parallel publishing without an embargo period. In those cases, you as an author should do the following:

1. Inform the publisher that the AAM resulting from your submission carries a CC BY public copyright licence in either the submission letter or the acknowledgements section, or both, like this: “This research was funded, in whole or in part, by [Organisation name, Grant #]. A CC BY or equivalent licence is applied to [the AAM/ the VoR] arising from this submission, in accordance with the grant’s open access conditions’’.

2. On publication: deposit your AAM in AboCRIS.

In case of any disagreement with a publisher, authors should contact their cOAlition S organisation (= your funder).

Note: If you want help with contacting the publisher you are welcome to send an e-mail to openscience@abo.fi ! 

Most academic publishers and publications allow researchers to deposit a copy of their final, peer-reviewed version (Author's Accepted Manuscript) of their article in an open digital repository. Information on the self-archiving policies of different publishers and publications can be found in the SHERPA/RoMEO service or on the publishers' webpages.

If information on the journal’s publishing policy is unavailable and the publishing contract offered by the publisher or journal fails to mention the matter, researchers can suggest that such a clause be added to the contract.

Below is a letter template that researchers can use when getting in touch with the publisher.