Open access

The Netherlands aims to achieve 100% open access in 2020. The guiding principle is that publicly funded research results indeed need to be publicly accessible.

Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) is lending shape to the above principle with its own 100% open access policy. In addition, AUAS has an obligation to act on realising open access due to the Higher Professional Education Council (HBO-raad) signing the Berlin Declaration and the participation of the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (Vereniging Hogescholen) in the national plan entitled Nationaal Plan Open Science (NPOS).

Since 2017, AUAS has had its own 100% open access policy. This policy supports the implementation of the open access targets set out in HvA Strategisch onderzoeksbeleid 2015-2020 (AUAS Strategic research policy 2015-2020). Researchers are required to register and archive (i.e. upload) their research results in Pure . In addition, researchers are expected to either publish these research results open access or make them freely accessible to the public.

When can the AUAS open access policy considered to be met?

• When published open access immediately with a publisher (see 3 and 4 on this webpage).
• When the publication has been made freely accessible (at the least the accepted version, i.e. AAM or postprint) by open archiving in Pure (see 6 on this webpage) no later than six months after publishing with a publisher.

Most research funding organizations attach an Open Access obligation when providing research funds. These Open Access requirements can be found in the guidelines of the various research funding organizations, including the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) the several research programs from the European and private funders as Wellcome Trust or Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation .

Upfront budgeting
Always include the costs of Open Access in your project budget. At the AUAS, there are no additional funds available for claiming this type of cost retrospectively. Take advantage of the discount schemes that the AUAS has with publishers.

Plan S – accelerating open access
Plan S is an initiative of cOAlition S – an international consortium of research funding organizations, including the NWO – aimed at accelerating the transition towards 100% Open Access. With effect from 1 January 2021, publications that result from money from these research funding organizations should be published immediately as Open Access. Plan S primarily focuses in first instance on academic articles. The requirements for monographs and book chapters will be published at a later stage.

The implementation guidelines outline how researchers can meet the requirements of Plan S. The most important requirements for publishing academic articles are: immediate Open Access, accessible under a Creative Commons license and with retention of copyright.

These conditions can be met by:

• publishing in an Open Access journal or on an Open Access platform with a CC BY license;
• archiving a final or accepted peer reviewed version (AAM) direct in the institutional repository with a CC BY license;
• publishing open access with a CC BY license in a (hybrid) journal that is party to a ‘transformative agreement ’ .

Helpful tools
You can use the Journal Checker Tool that is developed by cOAlition S, to determine if a specific journals meets the Plan S requirements.

When a journal doesn’t offer any open access possibilities and the ‘self-archiving policy’ makes it impossible to archive an open version of the AAM immediately: then use the Rights Retention Strategy from cOAlition S to meet the Plan S requirements.

Implementation by NWO/SIA and ZonMw
NWO will implement the principles of Plan S for all calls that are published from 1 January 2021 onwards and will be applicable to publications related to those calls. See for more detailed information the webpage dedicated to Plan S by NWO. Note that the principles will also be obligatory for SIA and ZonMw . Contact these funders for additional information.

If you have any questions about Plan S, you can ask them at openaccess@hva.nl.

When an article, book or book chapter published by a publisher is made immediately accessible to the public and the publication may be disseminated without any restrictions and reused, this is referred to as open access. Stating that a Creative Commons licence applies to a publication indicates that certain legal copyright restrictions have been waived. This makes a publication open access.

If publishing takes place immediately by an open access publisher or in an open access journal (whether hybrid or not), the AUAS open access policy can be considered to be met.

Open access publishers

Open access publishers only publish journals or books that are open access. There are many new market actors; generally speaking, they compare favourably in quality to the traditional publishers. However, there are also so-called 'predatory publishers', who offer few if any editorial services or enable any peer review despite the publishing costs they charge. How can you determine whether a publisher is trustworthy and/or of sufficient quality?

Tip: Use the advice offered on the website Think, Check, Submit to assess journals and publishers.

Or consult the following overviews:

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): all publishers or journals in the DOAJ meet the criteria on transparency and best practices.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): an overview of the book publishers and books that meet the requirements set out by the OAPEN Foundation and Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).

For more information on assessing the quality of open access journals and book publishers, consult openaccess.nl .

Hybrid open access publishers

Traditional standard publishers can also publish open access journals or offer the option to publish open access upon request – and for a fee – in a subscription journal; this is referred to as 'hybrid open access' and 'open on request' publishing. Open access publication of books or chapters is also increasingly an option at traditional publishers.

Publishers will require the payment of an 'article processing charge' (APC) or a 'book processing charge' (BPC) to do so.

Always include the cost of open publishing in your project budget when making a financing application; nearly all research funders allow this. Consult the conditions.

Open access agreements

• ACM

The AUAS Library concluded an open access agreement with the de Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). AUAS researchers can now publish free of charge with a CC BY license in the journals and proceeding part of the ACM Digital Library of this publisher during the length of the agreement (01-01-2021 until 31-12-2023). The publication types ‘research articles, review articles, conference proceedings and any other article types’ are part of the agreement. Show your AUAS affiliation to the publisher by using you organizational mail address on submission to publish open access free charge.

• Elsevier

There has been an agreement in place since 2020 between the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (VH: Vereniging Hogescholen) and the publisher Elsevier, which allows AUAS researchers to publish open access free of charge in nearly all of Elesevier's hybrid and open access journals. This is subject to the condition that submission took place after 1 January 2020 and that the corresponding author was employed by AUAS at the time. The journals that are subject to the agreement can be found on the information page of the Elsevier agreement.

Is it not possible to publish open access with a publisher or has the funding not been found? The open archiving of the accepted version of a publication in Pure will make this open access nevertheless.

In the event that, no later than six months after publication, the accepted version (AAM or postprint) is archived open access in Pure, the AUAS open access policy will have been met.

Once a publication has been open archived, it can be downloaded via personal pages, the AUAS publication overview, the HBO Kennisbank , Narcis and Google Scholar.

Providing open access by open archiving is referred to as 'green open access'. The publication is freely accessible, yet may not be disseminated by others without the consent of the copyright holder(s). It may also not be included in a digital learning environment, for example.

For more information, consult the Open access publishing guide on the Pure support page.

Publishers' embargoes

Publishers have various embargo periods with regard to personally archiving the accepted version of a journal article. These can be found in the publishing agreement or on the Romeo/SHERPA website. The Romeo/SHERPA information is also available in Pure.

AUAS/AUAS researchers hold the copyright

If a research report has been drawn up entirely by AUAS researchers, this can usually be open archived in Pure if the content is not confidential. In some cases, a standardised (i.e. regarding graphic design) version of the publication could be included in the AUAS Open Series (see 5). Consult the Centre for Applied Research (Kenniscentrum) about this.

If AUAS authors did not transfer the copyright when a book was published, the digital version can often be open archived in Pure in consultation with the publisher. Get in touch with the publisher to find out more. Eburon is one of the publishers that allow this.

Publication is freely accessible on the commissioning party's website

If a publication resulting from AUAS research is published on the website of the commissioning party in a freely accessible manner, it may also be possible to archive it in Pure. However, this is not always necessarily the case, so get in touch with the commissioning party and request permission.

Publications with Bohn Stafleu Van Loghum (BSL)

An agreement has been reached with this publisher that publications in BSL journals that AUAS subscribes to may be open archived in Pure when the six-month embargo period has ended. Review the list of the journals involved.

If you have any questions or doubts about engaging in open archiving, get in touch with openaccess@hva.nl.

Overview BSL Journals

Unpaywall is a browser extension that detects all open access versions of articles in repositories and databanks. Does the AUAS Library not have a subscription and do you not have access? In that case, this extension could be a solution (the browser extension is only available for Chrome and Firefox).

OpenAIRE's search engine EXPLORE provides access to over 27 million open access publications from 15,000 institutions and 18 research funders.

The following are definitions of terms that are often encountered in relation to open access.

Author Processing Charge (APC)

The fee paid to publish an article open access. In 2017, the average APC was €1,700. Depending on the journal, APCs for open access articles can range from €400 to as high as €4,000.

Book Processing Charge (BPC)

The fee paid to publish a book open access. The costs of open access publication of a book differ among publishers, ranging between €7,000 and €15,000.

Corresponding author

For publishers, the corresponding author is the author submitting the article. In order to be eligible for a discount scheme, there is usually a requirement that the corresponding author is affiliated with (i.e. employed by) AUAS.

Creative Commons licence (CC)

Stating that a Creative Commons licence applies to a publication indicates that certain legal copyright restrictions have been waived. There are various sorts of CC licences, with CC-BY being the one with the fewest restrictions. Most research funders require this licence or recommend it, since this makes the publication fully accessible according to the definitions of the Berlin Declaration (2003).

Diamond open access

If an author is able to publish open access in an open access journal or on an open access platform because the costs have already been paid by an institution (academic or otherwise), this is referred to as 'diamond open access'. Examples of diamond open access include Glossa and SciPost.

Gold open access

If a publication is immediately published open access with a Creative Commons licence by a publisher, this is referred to as 'gold open access'. Generally, this will involve paying an Author Processing Charge (APC) or a Book Processing Charge (BPC).

Green open access

If a version of a publication (postprint, preprint, publisher's PDF) is made open access by open archiving after the fact, this is referred to as 'green open access'. This does not involve any costs.

Hybrid journal

A hybrid journal is a traditional subscription journal in which open access publication is also possible if an APC is paid. In the Netherlands, AUAS has an agreement with Elsevier, allowing AUAS researchers to publish open access free of charge in all Elsevier hybrid journals.

Open access

If a publication is freely accessible and everyone can read its contents, download, copy, distribute, print or index it, use it for educational purposes, search for it and in it, or otherwise use it in accordance with the legally applicable agreements, such a publication is referred to as 'open access'. In this regard, also consult the Berlin Declaration (2003).

However, publications that are only freely accessible (green open access) are often simply referred to as being open access, although complete copyright applies to them and they do not meet the requirements of the Berlin Declaration.

Postprint

The accepted version after peer review is referred to as the 'postprint'. This is the final version of a publication prior to its being published, although it is still lacking the publisher's graphic design features (i.e. style, page numbering, etc.). This version is sometimes also referred to as the 'author accepted manuscript' (AAM).

Preprint

The 'preprint' is the author's version of a publication. This is the original version that the author submitted to the publisher.