Introduction to Open Access (OA)

Open Access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted Internet access to research publications.

There are three approaches to making research results Open Access (OA). One is to deposit a copy of an article in an open access repository, also known as self-archiving, another is to publish in an open access journal and the third one is to publish in a so-called hybrid journal. For all three cases we provide a copy of the article open access in the research portal Chalmers Research.

Parallel publishing

Chalmers Open Access policy focuses on so-called parallel publishing or self-archiving, which means that a copy of the work should be published in full-text in research.chalmers.se. A majority of the publishers registered in the database SHERPA/RoMEO allows parallel publishing. It is most often the author's final, accepted and corrected version of the article that is submitted. Some publishers require that a prepage is used; contact us and we will assist you.

Publishing in Open Access journals

Open Access journals are peer reviewed journals published freely available online. The costs for publications are often covered by an APC (article processing charge) instead of subscriptions, but there are also many journals that don’t have any APC:s. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an excellent tool for finding an appropriate journal. In a number of journals the APC is covered for Chalmers' researchers by the library's agreements. Find out more at Publish OA - paid-for by the library.

Hybrid publishing

A third option to Open Access is to publish the article in a subscription-based journal and pay a fee to make the single article freely available. As a researcher at Chalmers you have the opportunity to do this for free in a large number of journals. Find out more at Publish OA - paid-for by the library.

Contact

If you have questions regarding publishing and Open Access, please contact us at research.lib@chalmers.se