Page content:

The Konstfack policy
Different ways of publishing open access
Publishing in an OA journal
Publisher agreements
Self-archiving
Predatory OA journals
Research funders demanding OA publishing
Open access and artistic research
Creative Commons

By making your research results freely available you reach more readers, fellow researchers as well as members of the public, than if you publish in journals that require subscription. Several research funders demand that the research they have funded should be published open access, and many universities have a policy that encourages open access publishing.

The Konstfack policy

Konstfack’s policy for publishing research publications and artistic works (Appendix to Vice-Chancellor’s decision RÖ §35, 2018-10-01) states that all scientific and artistic research at Konstfack should “if possible be published in peer-reviewed channels and, as far as possible, be made freely available (Open Access)”.

Different ways of publishing open access

There are different ways of publishing open access. One way is to publish in a journal which makes its contents freely available on the internet. Another way is to publish in a journal that requires subscription, but put a copy of the article in an open repository, such as DiVA; so called self-archiving. More about this below.

Publishing in an OA journal

There are several OA journals that make their contents freely available on the internet, within many different research areas. The OA journals are sometimes financed by so called Article Processing Charges (APC). This is a fee which the journal charges when publishing an article. If you plan to submit a manuscript to such a journal it is important to consider to publishing costs when applying for research funding. A resource for finding quality-controlled OA journals is DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals). DOAJ will also tell you if a journal charges an APC.

Publisher agreements

There are agreements between publishers and universities allowing the university’s researchers to publish free of charge in the publisher’s OA journals, or at a discount. Through the national consortium Bibsam Konstfack has an agreement with the publisher Taylor & Francis, enabling Konstfack researchers to publish open access in around 2500 of the publisher’s journals free of charge. The agreement includes Taylor & Francis’ OA journals, and the publisher’s so called hybrid journals, which are part of Taylor & Francis’ Open Select package.

Hybrid journals are subscription based journals, where an author can choose to pay a fee to make an article freely available.

To make an article published in a Taylor & Francis OA or Open Select journal open access without cost through the agreement the corresponding author must belong to a university taking part in the agreement, and this must be specified in the article. When an article has been accepted for publication the Konstfack library can, after verifying that the corresponding author is affiliated to Konstfack, make the article freely available at no cost.

Contact the library for more information!

Self-archiving

Another way of making your publications freely available is to upload a copy in an open repository, such as DiVA. This is sometimes called the green road to open access. Different journals and publishers have different rules for this. To find out what rules apply you can use a resource called SHERPA/RoMEO, where you search for a specific publisher or journal, to check if they allow self-archiving. This will also tell you which version of the article that you are allowed to self-archive. This will often be the so called postprint or author accepted manuscript, which has undergone peer review and contains the final version of the article, but without the publisher’s layout. You can also see if the publisher demands that you wait a specified period of time after publication before self-archiving, a so-called embargo period. The library can help you with finding and interpreting the publisher’s conditions.

Predatory OA journals

There are also companies who exploit the model with article processing charges by posing as legitimate scholarly publishers primarily for the purpose of collecting article processing charges for OA publishing. If you are about to submit your article to an OA journal that you are not familiar with it is a good idea to examine the journal more closely:

• What does the journal’s webpage look like? Does it give a serious impression?
• Is there proper contact information?
• Who are on the editorial board?
• Is the journal listed in DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)?
• What has the journal published previously?

You are welcome to contact the library if you have questions!

Research funders demanding OA publishing

Several of the research funders, among them the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Riksbankens jubileumsfond, the EU, the Wallenberg foundations, Formas and Forte, demand that the research they fund should be published open access.

Using SHERPA Juliet you can check requirements for open access publishing posed by different funders. You are also welcome to contact the library for help with interpreting the funders’ conditions!

Open access and artistic research

Artistic research can be made open access in different ways. In the Konstfack publication database DiVA you can register artistic works that have been made public, including performances and exhibibtions, in the category Artistic output, and upload documentation in the form of images, films, texts, sounds, etc.

There are also tools for making artistic research publically available that will allow you to create a more complex presentation of your research. One of these is the Research Catalogue. Research Catalogue is a platform for publishing and presenting artistic research. The system is maintained and developed by The Society for Artistic Research, a non-profit organisation that works with supporting artistic research. Research Catalogue can be used by individual researchers and artists, as well as universities and organisations to present their research; see for example Konstfack’s Research Catalogue portal. Research Catalogue also funcitons as a publishing platform for several open access journals within the field of artistic research, for example Journal for Artistic Research and VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research. Read more at the Research Catalogue website or contact the library for questions!

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a system of licences that copyright holders can use to share their works with others, and at the same time controll the terms under which others are allowed to use them. Read more about this on the Creative Commons website. The library will also be happy to answer questions about CC licences.

For questions please contact the library!