Priceless Knowledge: Self-archiving and the Costs of Open Access Publishing

Why self-archive your publications? 

Self-archiving is a way to ensure the long-term availability of research publications and to make an article openly available without paying article processing charges (APCs). It enables anyone to access research without financial or technical barriers. 

Self-archiving involves depositing a version of a publication, either the accepted manuscript or the publisher's version, in an institutional repository such as Trepo or Theseus, where it remains permanently accessible to everyone. In a repository, the self-archived version is assigned a persistent identifier (URN), which can be easily shared through social media and other online services. Self-archiving also increases the visibility and impact of a publication at no additional cost. According to Huang et al. (2024), than publications made openly available solely through publishers' websites. 

A study by Eve (2024) found that more than two million scholarly articles with persistent identifiers (DOI) had disappeared from the web. These articles had not been deposited in repositories that ensure their long-term availability. Research by Laakso et al. likewise highlights the disappearance of open scholarly publications from the internet, a phenomenon observed across all academic disciplines and geographical regions. Open access publishing alone does not therefore guarantee the long-term availability of knowledge. Publishers may also intentionally restrict access to scholarly information for geopolitical reasons. Ensuring continued access to research and the long-term availability of scholarly knowledge requires sustained investment in preservation, as well as in the diversification, maintenance, and resilience of infrastructures. Self-archiving a version of a publication in an institutional repository contributes to information resilience and effective risk management. Research outputs remain available through the repository even if a journal or publisher ceases operations, technical problems arise in the digital environment, or access to the original publication is restricted. 

Self-archiving is also a way to meet research funders’ requirements for open access to publications. Research funders such as the Research Council of Finland and Horizon Europe require the self-archiving of peer-reviewed publications arising from the projects they fund, regardless of the original publication venue. Self-archiving may also, in some circumstances, be the only way to make an article openly available in accordance with a funder’s open access policy. 

Self-Archiving at the Tampere Universities 

In accordance with the open science policies of Tampere University and Tampere University of Applied Sciences' Open RDI operation guidelines and principles (2024), the permitted version of a publication is self-archived in the respective institutional repository regardless of whether the original publication is already openly available. 

Harvard University introduced its Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) in 2008, and since then more than 150 universities have adopted their own rights retention policies. These include institutions such as Princeton University, MIT, and the University of Oxford. In Finland, rights retention policies have been adopted by 12 universities and two universities of applied sciences. 

By decision of their respective presidents, Tampere University and Tampere University of Applied Sciences have adopted a Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), which enables the immediate self-archiving of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers (publication types A1-A4 in the Ministry of Education and Culture's publication data collection) in their institutional repositories under a Creative Commons licence.

At Tampere University, authors can upload a version of their article suitable for self-archiving to TUNICRIS or send it to oa [at] tuni.fi (oa[at]tuni[dot]fi) for deposit. The library validates the publication metadata and checks how the publication should be self-archived, after which the article is made available in Trepo. At Tampere University of Applied Sciences, authors enter the publication metadata in Justus and upload a version of the article suitable for self-archiving. The library validates the publication metadata and checks how the publication should be self-archived, after which the article is made available in Theseus, the shared institutional repository of Finnish universities of applied sciences.

To learn more about how different publication types and publishing models affect self-archiving, see the library's guidance on self-archiving.

Paid Open Access Publishing 

Open access publishing is often discussed in terms of how an article is made openly available, either through Read and Publish and transformative agreements or by paying an APC directly to the publisher. Under these agreements, the library pays both for access to subscription content and for open access publishing in selected journals or publisher portfolios. However, the publishing rights provided by these agreements do not necessarily extend to all of the publisher's journals, and the number of articles that can be published open access may be limited. 

The aim of open access publishing has been to make scholarly publishing both sustainable and accessible to everyone. However, the cost of publishing agreements and APCs has continued to rise year after year. At the same time, scholarly publishing has become increasingly concentrated among a small number of large commercial publishers, including Elsevier, Sage, Springer Nature, and Taylor & Francis, as well as open access publishers such as Frontiers Media SA and MDPI, whose profit margins are approximately 30%. 

According to Akbulut (2026), the costs of scholarly publishing consistently outpace general economic inflation, indicating a structural problem that threatens access to scholarly knowledge. 

Publishing tip: If you want to publish open access without paying an APC, consider a Diamond Open Access journal. Diamond OA journals do not charge authors for open access publishing. You can find suitable journals through the Diamond Discovery Hub or by searching the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and filtering for journals that do not charge APCs.

Text: Sari Leppänen and Piatta Hellevaara