Various forms of Open Access publishing
There are different forms of Open Access publishing: gold, green, hybrid and diamond.
- Gold Open Access means publishing in open access journals. It is common to pay a publication fee, a so-called Article Processing Charge (APC) or Book Processing Charge (BPC) for such publication. You can read more about APCs below.
- Green Open Access means that research results are published in separate scientific archives that make them freely available on the internet. Ostfold University College has a scientific archive called Brage, which will eventually become part of the National Scientific Archive. On April 17, 2023, the University College's rights strategy (RRS) came into power, and this means that in all cases, regardless of the publishers' own policies, can authors of articles archive and publish versions of their peer-reviewed articles in such a scientific archive. Academic staff at Ostfold University College can upload a version of their article in connection with registration in Cristin. Read more about self archiving in Brage.
- Hybrid Open Access is the subscription-based journals' approach to open access. These journals contain both open access articles and articles that are located behind a paywall. Journals that follow this model only provide open access to individual articles for which APCs are paid.
- Diamond Open Access involves journals that publish articles openly without charging a publication fee. Both publishing and reading are free. The journal ELLA – Education, Literature, Language, which is run by Ostfold University College, is an example of a diamond journal.
Publication fees and Ostfold University College's publication fund
Although research results can often be made available on the internet in the form of Open Access publication of scientific articles, publishing in an Open Access journal is usually not free. The APCs, or publication fees, that you often have to pay vary from journal to journal and from publisher to publisher. Ostfold University College has a publishing fund that you as an employee can apply to for support if the journal you want to publish in requires a publication fee.
Open Access agreements
Based on national consortum agreements on open publishing with various major academic publishers, all researchers at Ostfold University College can publish articles in journals operated by these organizations as Gold Open Access without paying publication fees. This is chosen when an article manuscript is submitted to the relevant publisher, and in these cases there is no need to apply for publication funding.
Copyright and licenses
Publishing in an Open Access journal means deciding which type of Creative Commons license you want to apply to your article.
Creative Commons licenses work differently than traditional copyrights. In traditional academic publishing, most of the rights to an author's work are transferred to the publisher. The fact that the publisher holds the copyright may mean that the opportunities to distribute and reuse the work in question are severely limited. Creative Commons licenses, on the other hand, are open licenses that describe an "agreement" between the author and the reader.
In academic work bearing a CC BY license signals that the reader is granted permission for a variety of uses and reuses of the work, while the author retains the right to be credited as the author of the work. There are different CC-licenses that can be used for different purposes, whether it's text, music, images or anything else. CC BY is the license type most often used by scientific journals that are Open Access (not hybrid journals). CC BY facilitates the widest possible dissemination and sharing of knowledge, while ensuring the author's right to attribution.
Read more about the licensing of research data in data archives for open access and open publication of datasets.
Other resources for Open Access publishing
Below provides an explaination of various resources that are useful to be familiar with when it comes to Open Access publishing.
The channel register
The Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir) administers the service Register of scientific publication channels, also known as the Channel Register. Here you can search for publication channels (journals, series and publishers) to see if they are considered scientific (level 1 and level 2). It is also possible to submit proposals for registration at level 1.
Predatory journals
Rogue publishers are often referred to as predatory publishers or predatory journals and often exploit the Open Access model to make money. They create many journals in a variety of disciplines and have poor or non-existent editorial procedures, for example when it comes to the peer review process. These publishers are often aggressive towards researchers, often via emails where they can make lucrative and flattering offers to get your results published faster than with others.
To avoid publishing in such predatory journals, you can do the following:
- Always check whether the channel you want to publish on is registered in the Channel Register. If it is not registered there, it may be a sign that it is a rogue operator. Feel free to contact the library or research administration anyway to make your own assessment of the channel. You can also check whether there is any information about the channel in question in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
- Search for information about the channel on the internet and see if it is linked to predatory publishers or predatory journals in any possible way.
- Use the website Think. Check. Submit. has created a short video with tips on how to distinguish predatory journals from serious journals.
- Check if the journal is a predatory journal via the resource page Beall's List.
Don't give in to the temptation to submit your manuscript to an unknown publisher who promises fast peer review and quick publication. Even if the article is actually published, there is still a great risk that it will just be a black hole on your CV.
Level X
There are publication channels that the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills and the National Committee for Publication are in doubt as to whether they should be approved at level 1 based on the current criteria. Such publication channels are often classified as level X. The Channel Register administers an updated list of level X journals at any given time.
Sherpa Romeo
Sherpa Romeo collects and analyzes publishers' Open Access policies. This resource also provides summaries of each journal's self-archiving policy, which can be useful to check when self-archiving in Brage to achieve green Open Access publication of an article.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexes and provides access to high-quality Open Access journals.
ORCiD-ID
ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is an international standard for unique identification of researchers. If you have an ORCiD identifier, it is linked to your research activity, not the institution you are employed at, and can therefore be used throughout your research career.
Through this identifier, your research results are linked to you regardless of whether you change your name, place of residence or institutional affiliation. In this way, you as a researcher will not be confused with others, even though, for example, specific Norwegian spellings may result in different results in different publications, especially internationally. This in turn makes it easier for others to find both your work and you as a professional. ORCiD will ensure that results are not linked to the wrong person, and can also simplify application processes related to research projects, reporting and analysis of research results.
ORCiD is a nonprofit organization that is supported by publishers, universities and granting organizations over the whole world.
You can simply create your own ORCiD.