UTServicesLISADigital Competence Centre, DCCHow the UT’s Open Access Team can help you

How the UT’s Open Access Team can help you

UT authors have many possibilities to publish Open Access (OA) in high-quality journals at no cost. They can do so in about 12000 OA journals that don’t charge costs, and in almost 10000 journals that offer submitting UT authors a 100% discount on the cost of OA publishing. The workflow for those discounts might seem a bit confusing at first glance, but that is why the Open Access Team has created tools and guidelines for UT researchers. When still in doubt, contact the information specialist of your faculty for support, says UT’s Open Access Specialist Nicole Loorbach. She explains how the central OA Team can help you, and offers some handy tips such as the OA-publishing flowchart.

‘Our central OA team can help, for instance, with questions about the rules of Plan S or what Creative Commons licence to choose. We offer support for filling out the Open Science section when you are applying for research funding. And if you are in doubt, we can help to assess the quality of an OA journal.’

Help with solving practical OA problems
‘Furthermore, we can solve practical problems for researchers. The UT has many agreements with publishers that enable UT authors to publish OA with a 100% discount on the cost of OA publishing (Article Processing Costs, or APCs). To qualify for the APC discount, the submitting author must be affiliated with the UT. It is important to always use your UT email address when you submit your article. Therefore, when a PhD student is about to leave the UT, it can be better to let another UT author submit the article to ensure the discount. But we have good contacts with many publishers. We may be able to set things straight even when the discount was not given initially.’

How can I be sure about the quality of an Open Access Journal?
Most questions that we get, revolve around two questions, says Loorbach. ‘How can I be sure about the quality of an OA Journal?’ and ‘How can I cover the cost?’ With the rise of open access, so-called predatory journals came into existence as well, but high-quality journals are recognizable. They are transparent about the costs and the publication process and will follow all the usual steps in that process. In the case of predatory journals, the peer-review step is often missing. We advise you to use the checklist on Think. Check. Submit. to check the quality and trustworthiness of the journal or publisher.’ 

How can I cover the cost of OA publishing?
Loorbach stresses that by now, there are a great many high-quality journals in which UT authors can publish OA immediately with a licence for re-use and at no cost. ‘To start with, there are almost 12000 high-quality OA journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) that don’t charge APCs. Furthermore, there are almost 10000 high-quality journals that let submitting UT authors publish OA at a 100% discount, thanks to agreements between the Universities of The Netherlands and publishers. These 22000 peer-reviewed journals are of high quality.’

Loorbach: ‘Moreover, the faculty BMS offers its authors reimbursement from the BMS Open Access Fund and more faculties are considering similar funds. And when you include budget for OA publishing in your EU or NWO funding application, then you can cover the cost of resulting OA publications from your research’s budget. NWO also has an Open Access Book Fund if you want to publish your NWO-funded research in an OA book. And when you publication results from Horizon funding, you can publish it OA at no cost on the Open Research Europe platform.

Always check the UT Journal Browser & OA-publishing flowchart
Loorbach sees that a lot of these ‘costless’ OA opportunities are still missed by UT authors. ‘So, our advice is to always check the UT Journal Browser. We made a flowchart that tells you what steps to take when publishing an article open access as a UT author. If you follow the steps, you will always end up with an open version after max six months!’

Automatically open after six months
‘Since the start of this year, we have been making all short publications in UT Research Information openly available after six months, unless you opt out. Of course, as a UT author, it is your responsibility to make sure your publications are uploaded to Pure. If you do so, the University Library does the rest. So far, only two researchers have opted out.’

‘We are curious to know why researchers opt out, but we will never refuse because it’s their choice. The disadvantage of opening publications after six months is that there is no licence for re-use. So, we encourage everyone to publish OA immediately with a licence for re-use, and we will gladly help if you have any questions. Open access can boost the visibility, dissemination, use and impact of your research and it accelerates innovation, so do not hesitate to contact us.’

Contact the OA team:

open-access@utwente.nl

dr. N.R. Loorbach (Nicole)
Specialist Open Access
R. Cruz Martinez (Roberto)
Information Specialist Faculty BMS | UT Specialist Open Access
dr.ir. M.G.P. van Veller (Marco)
Information Specialist ITC

Contact your faculty’s information specialist: www.utwente.nl/librarians

More information and tips about OA publishing: www.utwente.nl/openaccess

Check the New UT Open Access Policy (2021)