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Publishing under Open Access

Publier en Open Access

Two publishing methods

Green path

Principle:

Uploading a copy of documents that have already been published elsewhere to an open archive (such as ORBi).

Currently, 80% of publishers allow submission to an open archive, with or without conditions.

The new stipulations of the FWB Open Access decree, and the amendment of copyright law, also enable you to easily upload articles to institutional directories.

Advantages:

  • the permanent and centralised conservation of documents produced within an institution;
  • increased speed and visibility for your publications;
  • freedom to publish wherever you want;
  • easy access for the reader;
  • ability to disseminate unpublished documents (theses, reports, conferences and seminars, etc.);
  • opportunity to reuse data (activity report, list of publications, dissemination on social networks, etc.);$
  • chance to combine this with the gold path.

Gold path

Principle:

Publishing directly under Open Access. As a result, publications can be accessed directly, without fees for the reader.

Licences:

Usually, the researcher retains their copyright and may be able to apply licences that define the permitted uses for their publication (Creative Commons licences).

If you publish under the gold model, it is a good idea to check whether a licence of this kind is applicable.

Publishing fees (APC)

Periodicals may request publishing fees from the author or their institution.

We strongly recommend that you do not exceed €500 in fees (‘Fair Gold’), the maximum amount allowed by the FRS-FNRS for this type of publication.

Above €500, this is deemed ‘Unfair Gold’. This approach, which was established by large publishing firms, uses the advantages of Open Access to extort large sums of money from researchers.

Advantages:

  • mass dissemination and increased visibility for publications;
  • low publishing cost (or even no cost) for the author;
  • scientific rigour, as well as high-quality selection and assessment (peer-reviewing) processes;
  • increased number of citations due to ease of access.

Pitfalls to avoid

The hybrid model

Some commercial publishers who sell their periodicals under a subscription may also offer authors the option to pay a large sum of money in order to make their article available directly via Open Access. Instead of talking about Open Access, we should refer to this as a hybrid publication.

These publishers claim that they are allowing researchers to benefit from the advantages of Open Access, but they are only multiplying their profits by combining these paid formulae with their subscriptions.

Predators

These are periodicals or publishing firms that offer quick publication for a generally modest sum of money. Although they claim to offer high-quality Open Access, the editorial process is, in reality, non-existent.

Although the questionable quality is often obvious, you must remain vigilant and learn to identify their methods to avoid being trapped.

However, a periodical that is not considered to be a ‘predator’ is not necessarily a high-quality periodical.

A few essential tools

The DOAJ

The Directory of Open Access Journals lists approximately 12,000 titles of high-quality periodicals that are published under Open Access.

Learn more

Compass to Publish

This tool, which was designed by ULiège Library, allows researchers to assess the legitimacy of the periodicals in which they want to publish, thanks to a questionnaire and information pages.

Learn more

Infolit

Identifying a pseudo-periodical in four stages. Like ThinkCheckSubmit, this page contains several criteria to identify so-called ‘predator’ periodicals.

Learn more

Think, Check, Submit

This website offers criteria and resources to help researchers choose an Open-Access periodical in which to publish.

Learn more

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