Open Access
Open Access
Open access is a model of publication that provides for immediate, permanent, cost-free, and unrestricted online access to the published results of publicly funded science and research in full-text form. Open access increases the visibility of the results of science and research, which can lead to more citations of published work and greater influence and higher prestige for authors. It also speeds up communication of the latest scientific results and facilitates feedback from inside and outside the community. It allows for greater control over what happens to a publication, increases the transparency of scientific communication, and promotes the effective use of results, labor, and funding by reducing duplication in the research process. It also serves as a tool in the fight against plagiarism.
CURRENT AVAILABILITY OF DISCOUNTS ON PUBLICATION FEES (TOKENS)
The current availability of tokens (which are discounts on the cost of open access publication) can be found on the website of the Open Science Support Centre.
The availability of tokens can change quickly. To be sure there are tokens available for your publication, always contact the Open Science Support Centre or the faculty coordinator for open access of the Charles University Social Sciences Faculty, Jonáš Klos (jonas.klos@fsv.cuni.cz) as soon as possible.
CRITERIA FOR IMPLEMENTING THE PRINCIPLES OF OPEN ACCESS
For a publication and its results to be considered open access, reader access to the publication must be:
1. PERMANENT
Access to the text must be permitted on a long-term basis. The published results must be archived.
2. IMMEDIATE
Access to the results must be permitted in a repository immediately upon their publication (or even earlier). This means no temporary embargos on access.
3. COST-FREE
Those who wish to use the results of the research must be allowed access to them without charge.
4. UNRESTRICTED
Texts may not be made available for online reading only. Rather, they must be made available to the public for reuse (for example, under a Creative Commons license). Authors must also retain not only copyrights, but also property and publication rights.
WAYS TO PUBLISH IN OPEN ACCESS FORM
There are two basic models of open access publishing: green and gold. There is also a less frequent model that is more advantageous to authors, the diamond (sometimes referred to as platinum) model of open access publishing. These publication models are complementary because no one is required to choose one or the other. On the contrary, it is often advantageous to combine them.
GREEN OPEN ACCESS
This is a model where an author self-archives his or her research results in a trustworthy repository (for example that of a professional association or an institution).
GOLD OPEN ACCESS
Publication in an academic journal or with a publisher where the reader is not required to pay a fee or a pay for a subscription in order to access the work. However, the publisher or the institution to which an author belongs does charge the author a fee for publishing an article or monograph. This fee (called an article processing charge (APC) or book processing charge (BPC)) covers the publisher’s cost of publishing the author’s text.
DIAMOND OR PLATINUM OPEN ACCESS
This model is similar to gold open access, but in this case neither the authors nor their institutions pay any publishing fees. The costs of publication are borne by the publisher itself or by a sponsor or foundation.
Other models do not fulfill all the criteria of open access publishing.
Please beware of different terms like “free open access,” “available access,” or “bronze open access.” Such models are only pretending to be open access and do not fulfill one or more of the criteria mentioned above (for example, the author must surrender some rights, the publisher’s contract does not guarantee readers immediate and permanent access, and/or no unrestricted license for reuse is granted). This mainly becomes a problem when conditions are imposed on open access publication by the provider of a grant.
