Open access and dissemination of research results

Open access (OA) means that you can freely access research information on the internet. The purpose of OA is to make research results more useful and accessible to more people.

Researchers funded by the Foundation must publish their research results open access, that is, freely available online. This applies to peer-reviewed journal articles and conference publications.

OA publishing may take place in two main ways. Either researchers can publish directly in an online OA journal where the publication immediately becomes freely available, or they can opt for ‘parallel publishing’. The researchers then publish their articles in the usual way in academic journals. However, their agreement with the journal permits them to store their articles at the same time, or within six months at the most, in an open archive where it is freely available online. The parallel published version must be the final, fully edited and approved text for publication.

Today, the great majority of Swedish HEIs have open archives. Södertörn University has its own publication database in the DiVA portal, which also allows archiving. Publications registered in the University’s open archive will also be accessible on the national SwePub database.

To date, the OA rules have applied solely to peer-reviewed texts in journals and conference reports, and not to monographs or book chapters. Where the latter are concerned, the researchers are encouraged to publish these with open access as well.

The Foundation funds costs of disseminating project results with a standard grant, which is automatically added to the project’s budget by the application system. These costs may include for example printing, language editing, translation, publication with open access.

For further information about OA, see the National Library of Sweden website.