Open Access

Open access (OA) is a form of publishing that is becoming more and more common for scholarly publications. Several of Sweden's research funding agencies require open access publishing of findings that they have funded. By publishing your research open access, it will be freely available via the Internet for anyone in the world. By doing so, you contribute to a fairer distribution of research results globally, allowing less privileged institutions and regions access. As an added bonus, the number of researchers who can read your research increases compared to if you only publish in a subscription journal. Having more readers in turn increases your chance of being cited. There are two ways to make your results freely available: by publishing in an open access journal or by self-archiving.

We offer:

Grants from Linnaeus University's reserved assets for open access publishing

If you are a researcher at Linnaeus University and the author of a publication that is published open access, you can apply for a publishing grant to cover the publishing fee, in whole or in part. A number of criteria should be fulfilled for the application to be approved.

Read more about the terms at the page Grants for publishing open access.

Guidance when publishing open access

Most journals and publishers offer open access publishing in some form, but there are major differences in what fees are charged and what rights you as an author have. We can advise you on selecting a publication to submit your manuscript to, and help you interpret how you may disseminate your article once it has been published.

Advice about prepaid and discounted publication fees

As an employee at Linnaeus University, you have access to various prepaid or discounted publishing fees. We can assist you with information on available agreements and what you as an author need to do to get access to them.

Read more at the page Grants for publishing open access.

Self-archiving in DiVA

If you have published in a traditional, subscription-based journal, you can also publish a copy in DiVA. This is called self-archiving and makes the publication freely available. An increasing number of research funding agencies require research results to be made freely available (open access). Publishing in DiVA can be a way to meet this requirement.

Read more on the page DiVA - Publish and Register

Publishing of journals and conference volumes in LnuOpen

Do you want to start a journal or publish a conference publication? As a researcher at Linnaeus University, you can publish and manage journals and conference publications in LnuOpen, free of charge. The publications will be freely available and searchable in, for example, Google. LnuOpen is based on the open source software Open Journal Systems - OJS.

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) means that research results are published freely on the web and that anyone can read, download, print, copy, distribute and quote the material free of charge, provided that no copyright law is violated.

Open access has emerged as a protest against high subscription costs, which cause limited dissemination of publications, but also as a protest against a system that forces universities to pay three times for their research - first through research grants, then through the peer review process which is carried out by researchers in their working hours and finally through the subscription fees required for the institutions to gain access to the publications.

The basic idea of open access is that publicly funded research should be freely accessible to all, thus facilitating future research and enabling citizens to access scholarly information. Open access is an established alternative to the traditional scholarly journal and many research funders demand that the results of the research they support must be published open access. It is mainly research articles and conference contributions that are published open access, but also raw data, book chapters and books can be published open access.

Read more about open access on Wikipedia.

Why Publish Open Access?

Open access publishing provides several benefits, such as:

Publicly funded research will benefit everyone - citizens paying for research through taxes, professionals and policy makers outside the academic world, as well as researchers around the world, regardless of whether they are affiliated to a university that can pay high subscription costs or not.
As more people gain access to research, it can be used to a greater extent than before, thus allowing it to better contribute to the development of society.
The increased availability means that you as a researcher are likely to get more readers, thus increasing the chance of being mentioned in social media and increasing the chance of being cited in scholarly publications.
The time between a journal accepting and publishing an article is in many cases shorter, and the dissemination is faster and more efficient, for example through social media. This benefits researchers and the society as a whole as new research results can be accessed earlier.
When publishing in open access journals, the author usually retains the copyright and can therefore retain control of the material.
Many research funders require open access publishing.
Open access can reduce the costs of universities. Universities pay for the same research several times: when the research is carried out, the peer review process in the form of the researchers' salary, and when the library pays subscription fees to gain access to the published research.

Policy for scholarly publishing at Linnaeus University

Contact us

Do you have questions regarding open access? Please contact researchsupport@lnu.se.