What is OA?

Open access is the process by which academic research or scholarly content is made freely and permanently available online for anyone, anywhere. To read and build upon.

But how exactly does this work and what should you take into account as an author?

General

Open access (also known as open access publishing and free online scholarship) emphasizes the unrestricted availability of cultural and scientific achievements, in particular their free online availability. This means the consent of the author to the distribution of his work. It is VWE’s mission to support such dissemination.

Green open access

The green way to Open Access publishing is to publish an article in a traditional subscription journal (not Open Access). After publication a version of the article is also placed in an Open Access institutional repository (open publication database).

This is called ‘self-archiving’ because publications are registered by authors themselves.

Authors from TU/e are requested to register all academic publications and to upload the final authors’ versions. You do not need to prepare your own publication for open access. The IEC will make your publication available through Green Open Access, if allowed by the publisher.

Gold open access – full

In a gold open access journal all publications are freely accessible to readers immediately and without restrictions. In this open access model there are no subscriptions fees and publishers gain their income by charging authors (or their institutions) when articles are accepted. These charges are known as ‘article processing charges’ (APCs). This variant of open access is generally referred to as full gold open access or pure gold open access (to distinguish it from hybrid gold open access).

“Did you know: a maximum of 15,000 euros per year per scientific position is requested for full gold open access publications. In that case, you, as a researcher, do not incur any or reduced costs associated with open access publication.”

Gold open access – hybrid

In this variant of gold open access authors publish in traditional subscription journals, but may offer gold open access to their articles by paying APCs. Open access is then offered to all readers immediately as articles appear on-line. Usually only part of articles in hybrid gold open access journals are actually made available in this way. Articles which are published in such journals but which are not available via gold open access cannot be viewed by readers who do not subscribe to those journals.

How can scientists publish OA themselves?

“For a scientist who wants to publish Open Access, the process begins with the university to which one is affiliated. Here you can find out whether the APC or BPC costs have already been paid by the university or not. Any author can give their publication ‘full gold’ to the VWE repository anyway. But the advice is also to think about where and how you want to publish further at the start of the research, and if necessary to include the APC costs in the application for funding.