Publishing in Open Access
The Gold Road
It is the publication in Open Access journals.
There are different types of Open Access journals:
- Free and open: free and open access to the contents. They allow the reuse and redissemination of the contents. The publishers act as sponsors and are usually affiliated to scientific societies. This modality is also known as the Platinum Road.
- Pay-per-publication (at the author's expense): authors pay fees for the publication of their originals. See list of Predator journals.
- Commercial journal (hybrid model): there are some publications in which open articles coexist with articles subject to subscription. Sometimes it is the author who pays to publish in these journals, giving rise to what is known as double dipping, a phenomenon consisting of the double financial compensation received by publishers for the same content (from the author/researcher and from subscribers). There is also the possibility that the journal may allow open access after a retention period.
The Green Road
It is the publication in repositories.
There are different types of repositories:
- Institutional: the Institutional Repository of Comillas Pontifical University stores, preserves, organises and disseminates online the results of the academic and research activity of the university community.
- Thematic: they disseminate scientific production in specific areas of knowledge.
Legal aspects of Open Access
- Open Access Mandates [Infographic en SPA].
- At the European level, Horizon Europe projects require open access publishing, research data management following DMP and FAIR principles, and adapting the level of openness to legitimate restrictions and the specific requirements of each call.
- At the national level (Spain):
Law 17/2022 of 5 September, amending Law 14/2011 of 1 June on Science, Technology and Innovation: requires that the results of research funded by the State General Budget be made available in open access.
Royal Decree 99/2011 of 28 January, regulating official doctoral studies: requires the deposit of theses in electronic format in institutional repositories.
Versions of scientific articles
Draft / Discussion Paper.
Preprint / Submitted Version (Version submitted to the editor) Peer-reviewed.
Postprint / Accepted Manuscript (Authors' final version including changes proposed by reviewers). Also called Author's final version.
Published Version / (Final version published by the publisher).
Open Access publishing policies
The author of a work owns the rights to it from the moment of its creation; the rights of moral content cannot be waived. On the other hand, economic rights - exploitation rights - can be assigned to third parties. Therefore, when submitting an article for publication, it is very important to be aware of the publisher's open access policy; although most journals and publishers allow their works to be published in institutional repositories, it is the author's obligation to be informed of the mentioned policies.
To simplify the task there are two projects:
- The Dulcinea project, which aims to identify and analyse the editorial policies of Spanish journals.
- Open Policy Finder with similar objectives and international scope.
Creative Commons licences
Creative Commons is a non-governmental organisation that offers creators of a work a simple way to express their rights as an author. They are a legal instrument that regulates what uses can be made of intellectual works.
They are free of charge, granted in perpetuity and are non-exclusive. The author reserves the right to exploit the work through any other system.
There are six models of Creative Commons licences.
Use of addenda
To avoid the total and exclusive transfer of the exploitation rights of works, we can use an addendum.
The addendum is a document that accompanies the commercial publishing contract and its function is to retain some rights over the work in order to make it available in open access.