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Are you familiar with the key guidelines for Open Access publishing?

Published on 20.10.2020
Tampere Universities
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The Open Access movement has gained more momentum over the past few years as several different parties have set out to promote open publishing with clear goals in mind. For example, research funders, universities and research institutes, as well as national actors, have developed statements and policies aimed at moving towards immediate open access, thus improving the visibility and impact of research.

Research publications immediately openly available 2022

Federation of Finnish Learned Societies coordinates the development work on open science at the national level. Under its leadership, for example, the Declaration for Open Science and Research 2020-2025 has been prepared, which has also been signed by Tampere University and Tampere University of Applied Sciences. The objectives of the Declaration are specified in the national policies, of which the National Policy on Open Access to Scholarly Publications (2019) focuses on open access of journal and conference publications.

The goal of the National Policy on Open Access to Scholarly Publications is that all new scientific articles and conference publications will be immediately openly accessible. The target year is set to 2022. In addition, the total cost of scholarly publication channels and individual publications is transparent and publicly available.

Tampere Higher Education Community Open Science Guideline

The joint Open Science Guideline (2018) of Tampere University and TAMK states that the scientific publications of the university community will be opened either by parallel versions or by publishing in high-quality, Gold Open Access channels, if there are any in the field. Publishing on hybrid channels is possible if the publisher does not allow self-archiving or the embargo set by the publisher is unreasonably long. Researchers are required to self-archive their publications. As part of preparing the research process, the researcher should draft a publication plan that defines how the publications will be opened.

To complement the open science policy, an ambitious action plan on Open Science has been drawn up at Tampere University. It states, among other things, that in the next Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) Open Science will be one of the areas assessed. 

Research funders require immediate open access

Funders such as the Academy of Finland and Horizon2020 require the projects they fund to be committed to open access. This requirement often applies to peer-reviewed scientific publications. cOAlition S is a group of national research funding organizations and they aim (Plan S) is an immediate open access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications from 2021 onwards.  The Academy of Finland is one of the coalition's supporters and requires research results to be open access in line with the principles of Plan S. This applies to calls open after 1 January 2021. Here are few main principles of Plan S:

  • You can fulfil the requirements on immediate open access by Plan S by publishing in a fully open access publication channel or platform (Gold OA), self-archiving (Green OA) or by publishing in a hybrid journal that is committed to transition to a fully open access publication channel.
  • Plan S strongly encourages depositing of all publications in a repository. The author’s accepted manuscript or the final published version can be self-archived in a repository.  No embargo period can be applied.
  • The rules for hybrid journals will be tightened. Plan S don´t support publishing in  hybrid journals that are not committed to transition to a fully open access journal within specified time (transformative agreement). The transition period will end at the end of the year 2024.
  • Plan S recommends using the Creative Commons licenses (CC) and requires the use of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license by default.  Secondary license options are the CC BY-SA 4.0 license and use of CC0. In some cases also the use of the CC BY-NC license for individual article is accepted.
  • The costs of open access publishing are covered by the funder. The open access publication channels must be in line with the principles of Plan S. The funders will monitor the price level of open access publishing.
  • Plan S principles for monographs and book chapters will be published by the end of 2021.

The field of open science is now undergoing significant changes. Current news and events from us and from elsewhere you can follow on the Open Science website (https://avointiede.fi/en).

Links:

Tampere higher education community

Tampere higher education community´s Open Science and Research Policy

 Tampere University´s open Science Action Plan:

 Open access guide

 Research impact and visibility guide

National and international declarations and policies

Declaration for open science and research 2020–2025
Open access to scholarly publications. National Policy and executive plan by the research community in Finland for 2020–2025 (1): Policy component for open access to journal and conference articles.
Plan S