Open access: General information

This guide provides information on open access (OA) publishing. It addresses questions such as: What types of OA publishing are there? How do you parallel publish? Why is OA important? How do you find and evaluate OA publication channels? What opportunities do ÅAU researchers have to publish OA? What OA requirements do research funders have? How do you choose a suitable open license?  

 What is open access? 

• Gold OA and Green OA (parallel publishing)

 Why open access? 

• Responsible research practice
• Often required by funders

 Parallel publishing 

• Free OA alternative 
• At ÅAU in AboCRIS
• Search for journal guidelines for parallel publishing: Sherpa/Romeo

 Find and evaluate publication channels 

• Reliable OA journals and books: DOAJ and DOABooks
• Reliable journals: JUFO/Publication Forum
• Evaluate the quality of publication channels: Thick Check Submit
• Predatory publishing and tools to assess the credibility of publication channels

 Preprints 

• Quick OA alternative
• Find preprint servers

 Open licenses (Creative Commons) 

• The Creative Commons licensing system (CC)
• Find the most suitable CC license for your work: License chooser

 ÅAU’s funding for open access fees

• Vouchers and discounts for ÅAU researchers through ÅAU’s agreements
• APC pool (funding for APC fees in journals that meet specific quality criteria and are not covered by ÅAU’s agreements)

• BPC pool (funding for making monographs OA)
   

 Funders’ open access requirements 

• The OA requirement “Plan S” by cOAlition S funders (e.g., Research Council of Finland)
• Check publishing options that meet funders’ OA guidelines: Journal Checker Tool

 Cost transparency - OpenAPC 

• Cost transparency for APC fees

 Glossary 

• Key OA terms

Ask the Open Science team
 

Book a librarian

• Open science and use of images: ImagOA guide