DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
When publishing in Open Access journals the published articles are quickly made available for free on the Internet and parts of the copyright are retained with the author. DOAJ lists more than 3850 peer-reviewed scientific journals that are Open Access. DOAJ is provided by Lund university.
Journal Info
Journal Info is another help for researchers to find suitable journals to publish in. It is a database containing information about more than 18 000 journals, subscription based as well as Open Access. The data is no longer updated though and should be used with some caution.
BioMed Central
BioMed Central is a commercial publisher that publishes Open Access journals. SLU is a supporting member of BioMed Central and SLU researchers get a 15 % discount when publishing with BioMed Central. Find out which SLU researchers have already published with BMC.
PLoS - Public Library of Science
PLoS is a non-profit organization of scientists committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature accessible free of charge to scientists and to the public around the world, for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good. It has had great success with its journals within medicine and biology. The journal PLoS Biology, founded in 2003, has an impact factor of 14.3, and is among the top-ten journals in general biology.
SHERPA RoMEO
Parallel publishing means that a research article is published in a traditional subscription journal and then also deposited in an open digital archive. SLU provides the Epsilon open archive, where our researchers can deposit their articles, reports, conference proceedings etc. In a traditional journal, published articles are only accessible through costly subscriptions, often provided to scientists through their institution's library. By also depositing a copy of their articles in an open archive, researchers facilitate others' access to significant texts and new findings, regardless of the readers' financial means.
Each journal publisher has its own policy for parallel publishing. To find out what policy applies to a certain journal, visit SHERPA/RoMEO - Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving. It keeps an extensive list of publishers and journals and describes their policies regarding other means of publishing, e.g. on the researcher's personal web page or in a university's open archive. Around 70 % of all scientific journals allow authors to deposit a copy of a published article in an open archive, without any special contracts, provided that certain terms are met.
Author Addendum
In some cases the publisher demands that the author asks special permission to retain the right to deposit an article in an open archive, like Epsilon. In these cases you can fill in the SPARC author addendum (PDF-file) and enclose it with the publishing contract. Read SPARC's information on how the addendum is used.
An alternative to traditional publishing agreements is to offer an article under a Creative Commons licence (CCL). There are a number of different licences, where the authors choose sets of conditions they wish to apply to their work. Not all publishers will accept these licenses, as they are designed to let the authors keep a major part of the copyrights. CCL offers information about their licences here.
Permission to include an article in a thesis
To obtain permission to include your already published articles in your final thesis, and also for its electronic publishing in Epsilon, you may use an addendum provided by the SLU: Request to use material included in the electronic version, Doctoral dissertation at SLU (PDF-file). NB: If an agreement or addendum described in the sections above is used, the SLU addendum is not necessary.
National and international support for Open Access
The Berlin declaration
The Berlin declaration (PDF-file) was written after a conference held in Berlin 2003, defining and encouraging Open Access. Read more about it here.
The Association of Swedish Higher Education (SUHF)
SUHF signed the Berlin declaration (PDF-file) in 2004, thereby declaring itself to be in favour of Open Access.
The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and Formas
The Swedish Research Council signed the Berlin declaration in 2005 and, as a research funder, is actively looking for ways to further support Open Access. The Council also signed the petition to the EU commission, requesting open access to publicly funded research. From the turn of the year 2010 the Council requires researchers granted funds by the Authority to publish their material Open Access. Press release from The Swedish Research Council.
The research council Formas signed the Berlin declaration in 2008 and have also decided that all grantees from the beginning of the year 2010 shall publish their findings as Open Access. Press release from Formas (in Swedish only).
ScieCom info
ScieCom info is a Nordic-Baltic Forum for Scientific Communication.
Higher education
Some examples of well-known institutions of higher education and research with mandated open access are Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Law School, Stanford School of Education and MIT.
Full text archives
The Epsilon open archive is one of many full text archives. Some others can be found here:
OAIster
OAIster is a search service harvesting data from more than 1100 freely available, mostly academic, full text archives including the SLU Epsilon. Produced by Univ. of Michigan Digital Library Production Services, USA.
BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
BASE is a multidisciplinary search service for full text archives, including Epsilon, and other scientific sources of information. Read more ...
NARCIS
Get free access to research material from Dutch universities through this meta-search service.
Uppsök
Uppsök contains undergraduate theses from Swedish universities in full text.
Further information
Open Access information. Swedish project maintained by six universities, about Open Access, copyright, background, scholarly communication etc. Pages in English.
A short history of Open Access: Timeline of the Open Access Movement, by Peter Suber (SPARC).