Open Access FAQ

Open Access publishing couples the immediate online access to scholarly works with appropriate scholarly citation and credit. It is the free, online availability of research articles combined with the right to use them in a digital environment. Works should be made immediately available, without an embargo.

There are many different types of Open Access.

Gold

• Fully Open Access Journals: Publishers who support fully open access journals sometimes may charge an Article Processing Charge (APC). They only publish Open Access. DOAJ is a trusted resource for finding Open Access journals. Quality Open Access articles will have gone through a peer-review process, and quality journals will be transparent about that. They will also be transparent about the price of their APCs.
• Hybrid Open Access Journals: Some traditional publishers, like Springer, Elsevier, Wiley, and more, offer journals where authors can make a choice between publishing the traditional route or publishing Open Access. As with fully open access journals in the gold route, hybrid OA journals also charge an APC to make the work open access. Other articles in this journal remain behind a paywall and accessible only through a subscription.

Green

• This type of Open Access publishing takes place at the repository level. Journal policies may allow authors to archive the pre- or post-print versions of their articles. Sherpa Romeo is a good resource to check journal archiving policies. Some examples of repositories include the UND Scholarly Commons, ArXiv, and Digital Library of the Caribbean.

Diamond

• Diamond Open Access Journals do not charge article processing charges. These are usually funded through library subsidy models, institutions, or societies. Filtering by ‘journals without APCs” in DOAJ will provide you with a list of diamond OA journals.

Note that for a work to be truly open access, authors need to give users the rights to use them in a digital environment. Some Open Access articles can be free of price barriers but not permission barriers, so it allows for free online access to works but not reuse, republication, or remixing of the work.

Creative Commons Licenses are how authors can allow users to reuse, redistribute, or remix their work, depending on which type of license they choose.

When working with sponsored research, it is strongly encouraged for researchers to write in the APC amount into any grants they receive. If your work is required to be open access as part of the federal research mandate, you should write in the APC amount into your grant. It’s helpful to research the journal ahead of time to make sure you know what the charge is going to be.

Read and publish agreements allow UND faculty to publish OA at no additional cost. They also allow the authors to keep their copyright. While it’s still going the for-profit publisher route, these agreements minimize or eliminate the financial burden to faculty that arises with Article Processing Charges (APCs).

The Chester Fritz Library is excited to announce a pilot Open Access Publishing Fund (the UND Article Processing Charge Fund) to support UND Researchers. The funding will go to support Article Processing Charges (APCs). We know that trying to combat the high APC prices can be a burden. If accepted, applicants will be awarded up to 2,000 dollars to pay for APCs. We can award up to 10 applications per year and will only cover research that is not sponsored.

The Diamond OA route is increasingly becoming more popular as more members of the publishing community are not interested in the high article processing charges. This could be an option for those that are considering an alternative.

Brittany Fischer, the Scholarly Communications & Social Sciences Librarian at the Chester Fritz Library can help you with questions on Open Access grants, publishing, authors rights and more.