Researcher / author

How can open access benefit you?

Open access can boost the visibility, dissemination, use and impact of your work.

What can you do?

• Be aware of your rights; don’t just give them away. At the very least, retain your right to exploitation as long as possible.

• Make use of Creative Commons licences to organise your rights. This will make it easier to tackle any infringements. Some publishers offer authors a choice between several CC licences.

• Deposit a copy of your article or book (together with the relevant research data) in your institute’s repository. Contact your repository manager for instructions on how to do this.

• Are you publishing in an open access journal? If the agreements with your publisher permit, also deposit your publication immediately in your institute’s repository. A repository generally has the usage data and tools for CVs and citation analysis. All publications are shown in NARCIS or the HBO Knowledge Base and are archived in the e-Depot of the National Library of the Netherlands. Searchability is also guaranteed via Google and Google Scholar.

• It is not enough to publish on your own website. Websites date quickly and provide no guarantee that the full publication will remain findable. At the very least, you should deposit a copy in the repository.

• Is your research funded by FP7 or Horizon 2020? If so, you are obliged to deposit peer- reviewed articles and final versions of manuscripts in a repository, or do you best to do so within 6 or 12 months of publication.

• Is your research funded by the European Research Council (ERC)? If so, you are obliged to make digital copies of your publications available in open access within six months of official publication. This can be done through your institute’s repository, in discipline-specific repositories or via your own website.

• It is best to send your fresh article to an open access journal. These are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or the Electronic Journals Library. Open access journals differ in one important respect from traditional journals: they can be consulted free of charge.

• Do you require funding because the open access journal charges a publication fee? Many research funders provide assistance with publication costs. Your own university may also offer funding options, for example, through discount agreements (SAGE) or ‘piggyback’ memberships (Biomed Central). A few universities (TU Delft and Utrecht) have a fund that helps defray the cost of open access publishing.

• If you are more ambitious, consider starting your own open access journal or publishing your book in open access.

• Join the editorial board of journals, series, wikis and other open access publications.

• If you edit a journal whose publisher is not prepared to take these steps, look for alternatives, such as the ones described in Create Change. Or consider giving up your editorial post and launching a new open access journal. There are many academic libraries all set to help you.