Open access
Open access (OA) means that research results are published in such a way that they are freely accessible online. There are two “roads” to OA, the “golden road”, and the “green road”.
In Lund University’s policy on publishing, researchers are encouraged to publish OA as much as possible in order to increase research visibility, use and impact. Today, many of the large research funders demand that research results be published so that they are freely accessible to everyone.
We have compiled OA information in the following links based on the two routes to OA: publishing directly in an OA journal (the golden road) and self-archiving (the green road).
The golden road
Open Access journals are journals whose content is freely available to readers; publication costs are covered through a financial model other than subscription. More and more research fields are gaining good, open access alternatives for publishing as the number of OA journals increases.
Some OA journals require authors to pay a publication fee, which covers the cost of the publishing process. Several universities support OA publishing by paying a portion of the publication fee. At Lund University, there is a publishing fund that covers 50 per cent of the publication fee, provided that the journal meets certain quality standards.
Support for publishing fees on the University Library's page.
The green road / Self-archiving
You have the right to self-archive all publications to which you own the copyright as well as publications that have been approved for self-archiving by the publishers through an agreement or policy. Many international journal publishers have general policies on self-archiving. They are compiled in the SHERPA/RoMEO service, which provides a possibility to search for the names of publishers or journals.
Read more about the rules on our pages on copyright and self-archiving.
Related information
Read more about OA on the National Library's website
Lund University encourages publishing in OA journals in their policy:
Publishing policy of Lund University (PDF 26 kB, new tab, in Swedish)
The open access symbol, an open padlock composed by the letters O and A, signifies free access to research publications.