Open access (OA) publishing means free dissemination of scientific information by publishing a research paper or article on the Internet and granting the scientific community and the general public's rights to read, copy, print and link to the entire publication.
There are different ways to make your research paper or article open access.
Gold OAIn gold OA the publishers make the paper or article immediately and freely available from the point of publication, and usually apply an article processing charge. The APC can be costly. There are however a growing number of Gold OA journals with no fees to the author, and these are often referred to as diamond open access.
Green OAParallel publishing, self-archiving
Green OA involves making a copy of paper or article, usually the final draft, openly available in an institutional repository, for example LUTPub. Publishers stipulate which version of the paper or article can be deposited and specify an embargo period following publication before the paper can be made open access. You can check your publisher's open access policies and summaries of self-archiving permissions from SHERPA/RoMeo.
It is worth noticing that while social networking services such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu make it easy to share your publications, they are not considered official repositories and therefore don't qualify as green OA.
Hybrid OA Hybrid OA refers to subscription journals that charge an extra fee to make a specific article open access while the remainder of the journal remains behind a paywall.
Many research funders, such as EU's Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, require open access to the results of publicly funded research. Academy of Finland requires that the scientific publications on the results of Academy-funded research projects are open access, and that the research data produced by the projects are made widely available.
Academy of Finland is part of cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations, that have launched the Plan S iniative. Plan S requires that, from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.
There are different versions of the manuscripts during the publishing process of a scientific article. Only certain versions are allowed to be shared, parallel published or self-archived, so knowing the names for different versions is important. The names may vary among publishers.
![diagram moving through the stages of a research publication. author versions: submitted manuscript (pre-print); [peer review and revisions]; accepted manuscript (post-print) - deposit this for possible Green OA. publisher's versions, after copyediting, typesetting, formatting: in-press version (some journals only); published version (publisher's PDF) - deposit this for possible Gold OA in DRO.](https://libapps-au.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/accounts/105087/images/author-vs-publisher-versions.png)
Image source: Deakin University Library (CC BY)
| Version name and variations | Explanation | Notes |
|
Pre-print Same as: submitted version, submitted manuscript, author's original |
The article manuscript that has been submitted to the journal for review process. Not been reviewed yet. | |
|
Post-print Same as: final draft, accepted version, author's accepted manuscript, AAM, post-review |
The article manuscript that has been fully reviewed and accepted for publication. The text itself is the same as in the final, published article but it does not have any typesetting or formatting made by the publisher. However, if the publisher's template has been used the manuscript may look similar to the final published article but there are no DOI or other identification available. The accepted manuscript may contain the comments of the reviewers. | |
|
Article proof Also: uncorrected proof, corrected proof, journal pre-proof |
An article proofs are versions which shows how the article will look like in a print or online form. The publisher has made some editing to the article but it is not yet in the final form and may be changed. Proofs are versions between the accepted version and the final published version. | The right to self-archive an article proof depends on the publisher. |
|
Published version Same as: final version, final article, version of record, VoR, camera ready |
The version which has been copy-edited and typeset by the publisher and available from the publisher's original source. | |
| Early view, ahead-of-print, online first, in press | Usually the same version as the final published version but may be lacking the volume, issue or page number information. The article is published online when the early view is available. |
Table source: The University of Sheffield Library https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/open-access/key-terms#article-versions
| APC (article processing charge) | An APC is a fee paid to the publisher to make an article free at point of access (Gold OA or Hybrid OA). |
| Double dipping | Double-dipping describes the situation where a journal charges an APC on top of its normal subscription fee if an author wishes to make their particular article OA. In effect, the institution is paying twice. (Hybrid OA) |
| Embargo | A period of time defined by the publisher during which the author can not publish a self-archived open access copy of the publication in question. Embargo periods are typically from 6-36 months. The embargo period starts from the date of publication. |
| Final published version/Publisher PDF | The paper or article in the format in which it appears in the publication (i.e., the final version with the proper layout). |
| Institutional Repository | A university's or research facility's online database of their OA works. Repositories do not undertake peer review but do hold material that has been peer reviewed elsewhere. In addition repositories can hold 'grey literature' such as Theses, Discussion Papers, Datasets etc. LUT's repository is LUTPub. |
| Parallel publishing | The paper or article is published in a journal by a publisher, but a copy (usually the final draft) is made available OA in a repository. (Green OA) |
| Post-print/Final draft/Author accepted manuscript | A paper or article that has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication but hasn't yet been laid out for publication by the publisher. |
| Pre-print | A draft version of a paper or article that hasn't been peer reviewed. |
To read more about copyright and licencing in open access publishing, please see Copyright: Open Publishing.
You can get more visibility to your publication by
Before sharing full text versions of your publications, please make sure you follow the publisher's terms and conditions. These can usually be found from the publisher's website (usually under titles such as Open access policy or Sharing your work).
For more tips on how to increase the visibility of your work, please see Researcher Profiles and Networks.