Researcher / author

How can open access benefit you?

Open access can boost the visibility, dissemination, use and impact of your work.

What can you do?

• Be aware of your rights; don’t just give them away. With many subscription journals, an author automatically transfers part of the copyright to the publisher. At the very least, retain your right to exploitation as long as possible.

• Make use of Creative Commons licenses to organise your rights. This will make it easier to tackle any infringements. Some publishers offer authors a choice between several CC licenses. All CC BY variations are open access, but there are financiers who set requirements for which license an author may select.

• Deposit a copy of your article or book (together with the relevant research data) in your institute’s repository. In most cases, a publisher allows a post-print version of the article to be made public in the repository after a certain period of time. Contact your repository manager for instructions on how to do this.

• Are you publishing in an open access journal? If the agreements with your publisher permit, also deposit your publication immediately in your institute’s repository. A repository generally has the usage data and tools for CVs and citation analysis. All publications are shown in NARCIS or the HBO Knowledge Base. Searchability is also guaranteed via Google and Google Scholar.

• It is not enough to publish on your own website or on social media. Websites date quickly and provide no guarantee that the full publication will remain findable. Sharing a publication via social media is also not always legal. In any case, also place a copy in your institution-wide repository.

• Is your research funded by Horizon 2020, European Research Council (ERC), NWO, or an other financier, then you are probably obliged to make digital copies of your publications available as open access, whether or not within a certain period after the official publication (embargo period). You are also often required to deposit peer-reviewed articles and final versions of manuscripts in a repository, or try this as well as possible, within a certain period after publication. The open access policy of a financier can be found on the Sherpa Juliet website.

• It is best to send your article to an open access journal. These are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Open access journals differ in one important respect from traditional journals: they can be consulted free of charge.

• The author often has to pay for publishing in open access (an "Article Processing Charge", APC). Do you require funding because the open access journal charges a publication fee? Financing options are often available, either within the framework of national deals (9000+ journals) or within your own university. In addition, individual universities may also offer funding options, for example, through special memberships (e.g. with Biomed Central). A few universities (TU Delft and Utrecht) have a fund that helps defray the cost of open access publishing.

• If you are more ambitious, consider starting your own open access journal or publishing your book in open access. All Dutch universities offer services in the field of open access, where you can go with your questions.

• Join the editorial board of journals, series, wikis and other open access publications.

• If you edit a journal whose publisher is not prepared to take these steps, look for alternatives, such as the ones described in Create Change. Or consider giving up your editorial post and launching a new open access journal. There are many academic libraries all set to help you.