Open access (OA) publishing means that scientific, artistic and other material is made available to the public for free.
Open access means that scientific output is made permanently and freely available online in a controlled way. This makes it possible for anyone to read, use and download research results. As of august 2020 SLU has issued a new policy for scientific publishing which mandates all peer-reviewed research papers to be made open access. In addition, a steadily growing number of research funders demands open access for funded research.
Open access can benefit you as an author in several ways, e.g. better visibility and increased citations for your research. It also enables a larger audience such as practitioners and policy makers to access publically funded research.
There are two ways of publishing open access. Either you simply publish your work in a journal that offers open access or you self-archive an accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in SLU’s publication database (SLUpub).
If you publish open access with a journal, the publisher may take out a fee for this. SLU have met agreements with several scientific publishers (e.g. Elsevier, Wiley, SpringerNature, etc.) that transfer these costs from authors to the university. That way you as an author do not have to pay for open access. The only condition to be eligible for these funds is that SLU is the primary stated affiliation of the corresponding author. You can read more about our open access agreements on the library web pages.
A majority of publishers allows self-archiving and it is a cost-efficient alternative when making your research open. Self-archiving is free of charge but the publisher may demand that the open version of your paper is embargoed and delayed for some months. The university library offer support on self-archiving. By self-archiving in SLUpub you get help with rights management, handling of embargoes and publishing. Read more on how to self-archive here!
More information on open access is available on the library web pages. There you can find information on open access and copyright, licenses and on how you may assess the credibility and quality of journals.
By Olof Frank, SLU University Library