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The Konstfack policy
Different ways of publishing open access
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)”.

Here you will find examples of peer reviewed open access articles from Konstfack.

 

Different ways of publishing open access

There are several ways to make research articles openly available. Below is an overview of the most common options.

Publishing in an OA journal

Open access journals make their articles freely available online immediately after publication. Such journals exist in most research fields.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

Many open access journals are funded through an Article Processing Charge (APC). If you plan to publish in a journal that charges an APC, you might want to consider this cost when applying for research funding.

A useful tool for finding peer‑reviewed open access journals is DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), which also indicates whether a journal charges an APC.

There are also open access journals that do not charge a publishing fee. Many of these are non-profit and are published by universities, researchers, learned societies or other research institutions. Diamond Discovery Hub is a European list of such OA journals.

 

 

Publisher agreements

Some publishers have agreements with Swedish higher education institutions that allow researchers to publish open access at no cost or at a reduced price.

Taylor & Francis

Through the national library consortium Bibsam, Konstfack has an agreement with the publisher Taylor & Francis. This allows Konstfack researchers to publish open access in more than 2,500 journals without paying an APC.

The agreement covers:

• fully open access journals
• hybrid journals (subscription‑based journals where individual articles can be made open access)

To be eligible:

• the corresponding author must be affiliated with a participating institution
• this affiliation must be clearly stated in the article

 

Support from research funders

Swedish research funders cover publication costs for certain publishers that publish only open access journals during 2024–2026, provided that the corresponding author is affiliated with a Bibsam member institution. Publishers included are eLife, Frontiers, JMIR Publications, MJS Publishing, PLOS, MDPI, Pensoft Publishers och Copernicus.

Open Research Europe

The publishing platform Open Research Europe (ORE) has so far been available to researchers with EU funding. Following a decision made by ten European research funders and research organisations, ORE will be available to researchers in Sweden without requiring EU funding from autumn 2026. The platform offers peer‑reviewed open access publishing free of charge.

Self-archiving

Another way to make research openly available is self‑archiving, i.e. depositing a copy of your article in an open repository such as DiVA.

Policies vary between publishers and journals. Using Open policy finder, you can check:

• whether self‑archiving is permitted
• which version may be shared
• whether an embargo period applies
  
  

Contact the library for more information about diffferent ways of publishing open access!

 

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 Open policy finder 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!