Open access

Thanks to national agreements between the VSNU, the association of Universities in the Netherlands, and publishers, corresponding authors can now publish Open Access for free or at a discount in many journals. Most of these agreements concern subscription journals with an Open Access option.

Find a journal to publish in; The Journal Browser

This Browser shows information on the costs of publishing in specific journals. The Free Open Access publishing deals of the Dutch Universities with publishers show you instantly where you can publish without cost.

Dutch National Open Access website

How to publish OA for free or at a discount per publisher.

On 4 September 2018, a group national research funding organisation, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and 10 principles. By January 1st 2020,  “By 2020 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants provided by participating national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.”

For more information, pro's an con's we refer you to: 

cOAlition-S website
R.J. Smits in Nature, Radical open-access plan could spell end to journal subscriptions 
VSNU Open Access Roadmap
The Guardian Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?

The University of Twente provides a fund to stimulate Open Access publishing peer-reviewed Open Access Journals and to make their research data sustainably accessible in a trusted repository. Starting January 2019 you can request reimbursement of your Open access articles if they meet the criteria below.

Are you the corresponding author of an article that is published in a peer-reviewed Open Access (OA) journal? If you meet the criteria listed below, the University of Twente will reimburse half or all of the publication costs, depending on the impact factor of the journal, with a maximum reimbursement of €1,500.

You are eligible for an OA Publishing Grant when you meet all of these conditions:
1. You are the corresponding author of the article.
2. The article states University of Twente as your affiliation.
3. The article is published in an OA journal that is registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
4. The article is published in an OA journal that has or is nominated for, an impact factor.

If the impact factor of the OA journal is in the top quartile (Q1) in its field, the grant reimburses 100% of the publication costs, with a maximum of € 1,500. In all other cases, the grant reimburses 50% of the publication costs, with a maximum of € 750.

5. You can only apply for an OA Publishing Grant in the year that your article is published. 
6. You have not received another grant for covering the cost of publishing this article open access.
7. You have not received another OA Publishing Grant from the Open Science Fund in the same calendar year.

This grant will be awarded on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. The grant is a reimbursement to an OFI number of a UT group, so your research group will have to pay the publisher first.

Applications can be done via e-mail. Send this to Carla Gerritsen, it should contain: 1) the link to the published article, 2) the publishers invoice and 3) your research group's OFI number for transferring the reimbursement. 

For questions and support on Open Access publishing, please contact Carla Gerritsen, head library ITC.

OPEN ACCESS: WHO'S AFRAID OF PEER REVIEW? - OCTOBER 2013

A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals.
Read the full text of the article here  Also the "Building Blogs of Science" has an opinion on the matter
titled: Predatoromics of science communication.

Open Access (in line with the Budapest Open Access Initiative) can be defined as the free availability of research and scholarly outputs on the public internet permitting users to make any lawful and non-commercial use of the research material(s) without any legal, technical or financial barriers other than the acknowledgement of the right of the author(s).

We define open access journals as journals that use a funding/business model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access.

More and more funding bodies require that the results of the funded research have to be made publicly available through digital repositories e.g. NWO, KNAW, EU etc.

One misunderstanding about Open Access is that citing Open Access resources is not necessary and that everybody can copy and paste everything without giving credits to the original author. Common practices in academic life have to be followed in the Open Access world as well.

Another misunderstanding is that there are no Open Access journals with an ISI status. On the ITC library website, you will find a list of Open Access Journals. Unfortunately, the amount of OA journals with Impact Factor is still not the same in every academic discipline but it is growing. One of the reasons is that the big publishers are still hesitant towards Open Access.

Most important to realize is that the intellectual freedom and freedom of science remains important. Research publications should be published based on quality and not because one institute has more money than another institute. It should not affect publication behaviour of scientists in developing countries.

Journals that exploit the author-pays model damage scholarly publishing and promote unethical behaviour by scientists, argues Jeffrey Beall. Jeffrey Beall is Scholarly Initiatives Librarian at the University of Colorado Denver. His website "Bealslist" started out as a place to find predatory publishers but also caused discussion. It is still online in a 'saved' last version
With the start of open-access publishing also the predatory publishers came into existence.

An article in NATURE with the title “Predatory publishers are corrupting open access” is explaining what these predatory publishers are, what they do and why we have to be careful when we publish with these predatory publishers.

Journals: 
Directory of Open Access journals: open access scientific journals that use a quality control system.
Scielo Scientific Electronic Library Online. 
ScienceOpen.com (Research and Publishing network) is a platform for scientific communication.
African Journals Online: Open Access section African Open Access journals
Bioline International: Open access to quality research journals published in developing countries.
Medknow: Medknow Publications is a publisher of peer-reviewed, online/print+online journals in the area of STM. 

Books: 
Directory of Open Access books: open access books screened for quality, no predatory publications. 
Open Acces Books on JSTOR

Publishers:
Springer Open Access Journals  and Springer Open Access Books
Elsevier Open Access Journals 
Wiley Open Journals 

Directories: 
The Directory of Open Access Repositories – OpenDOAR: authoritative directory of academic open access repositories that gives a quality-controlled list of repositories. 

Information on Open Access: 
GOAP The Unesco Global Open Acces Portal

OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high-quality academic research by aggregating peer-reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe.   

Oalib (Open Acces Library) is working on a new scholar search engine for all scholars worldwide. Without any registration, Open Access Library allows you free access to a database of over 263,385 openly accessible academic-articles, The ultimate goal of Open Access Library is to prompt academic exchange and advancement.

VIDEO

The Lecture by John Mackenzie Owen titled: Open Access Promises and Pitfalls, at the occasion of the ITC 2010 symposium on Open Acces is still worth watching. (35 min) He is Emeritus Professor of Information Science at the University of Amsterdam.

Introduction: Open Access is a way to eliminate the cost of scientific publications for end-users and their institutions. Open Access could, therefore, lead to free access to information for all. However, there are many obstacles to achieving this goal, and the road to full open access is not free from pitfalls. In this presentation, I shall briefly introduce the concept and background of Open Access, provide an overview of current developments, and discuss some of the major issues, both positive and negative. I shall put special emphasis on aspects that are relevant to developing countries as the possibly chief beneficiaries of Open Access in the long run.