The Open Access movement
Open Access is a movement, born within the academic world, that promotes free access to results from scientific research and favours the sharing and growth of scientific knowledge. The aim is to ensure maximum visibility and use of documents, via open access, starting with the basic idea that the results of publicly funded research must be available to everyone.
Open access literature does not mean without expense. Open access to research results and scientific culture is not free of charge, there are costs to be met, to make research available. Some journals are entirely open access: each article is available, without any restriction. Other journals are hybrid, in the sense that they are magazines with traditional subscriptions, but offer authors the possibility of paying an amount to make their article freely accessible to anyone in the world. The other articles in the journal are only accessible via subscription.
Some publishers offer all their titles under a kind of open access policy, others have different policies for different titles. Other research funding organisations have Open Access policies. To monitor these policies, see:
- SHERPA's Juliet database of funder policies;
- BioMed Central's table for funding policies
- the ROARMAP list of the largest funders and university policies
Why do Open Access
Many supporters of OA promote free access as they are convinced that the results of publicly-funded research must be available to all; as citizens have paid for this research, they should be able to access it at no additional cost.
OA has been approved of by several forces. The web offers new publication methods: it makes circulating research easier, broader, faster and often less expensive. The web offers new means and methods for sharing and using research and for supporting teaching, creating a demand for an access model that allows professors and universities to take full advantage of these new media and methods, or new openings for research using institutional or subject repositories. By exploiting the potential offered by the internet, the articles are made accessible free of charge to users, without the restrictions and barriers foreseen by traditional licences. Diffusion of information guarantees a real impact: the easier it is to download an article, the more it is read and the more it is cited. This favours the sharing of knowledge and therefore a faster advance of knowledge, without barriers, worldwide. Lastly many believe that open access will contribute to reducing the problems of high prices and restrictive conditions of use faced by universities who purchase licences and traditional journals in digital format.
Advantages for researchers: greater visibility for research work filed in institutional archives and published in Open Access journals, which translates into greater visibility, more citations (up to 600% depending on the subject), immediate diffusion of research results, greater impact for the author.
Advantages for the institution: an international window for the production of its own professors/researchers and possible economies of scale on subscription costs.
Advantages for the scientific community: research results have greater visibility (greater dissemination), are seen earlier (thanks to self-archiving, there is no need to wait for material to be printed); thanks to greater dissemination, there is a greater impact and higher circulation of ideas; knowledge benefits from an overall increased growth and diffusion, which is also much faster; the free circulation of research results and data sets contributes to reducing the cultural divide.
Politecnico Open Access policy
The Politecnico di Milano promotes open access to scientific literature in compliance with what is established by its own statute and as a signatory of the Messina Declaration. To do this, it has an Open Access policy that applies the EU Commission Recommendations and national law 7 ottobre 2013, n. 112.
The university policy, that has been active since 1st October 2014, states that professors, researchers, and collaborators of the Politecnico di Milano feed the university's institutional open access archive by self-archiving their scientific products in it. An institutional archive is a platform where members of the academic community file electronic documents, the result of university teaching and research activity. The institutional archive can be queried via search engines on the web, and spread and enhances the value of the university's scientific productions. Re-Public@polimi is the name of the Politecnico di Milano's institutional repository, that collects electronic documents coming from professors', researchers' and collaborators' work at the university.
How to publish in Open Access
Versions, copyright, IRIS, catalogue
There are two paths for ensuring open access:
- GREEN ROAD: self-archiving in archives open for public consultation that gather together the research work carried out by the authors, in accordance with publishing policies
- GOLD ROAD: publication in open access magazines, that guarantee peer review, that are free for the user.
Publishing policies
The rapid diffusion of University policies in favour of open access and diffusion of institutional archives has brought most publishers to allow the publication of articles published in institutional repositories (Green OA).
To know more about foreign publishers' policies on auto-self-archiving in institutional repositories or on personal websites, please refer to the website Sherpa/RoMEO
- Green - allows the self-archiving of pre-print and post-prints
- Blue - allows the self-archiving of post-prints
- Yellow - allows the self-archiving of pre-prints
- White- does not allow any self-archiving
It is in the author's interest to know his own rights.
he recommendation is to always read the entire publishing contract carefully to see what the terms are about auto-self-archiving and add a clause (addendum) that asks to maintain some exclusive rights for oneself (including, for example, the one regarding self-archiving in open institutional archives).
How Politecnico finances Open Access: Transformative Agreements
HOW THE UNIVERSITY FINANCES OPEN ACCESS
Transformative agreements, also known as Read & Publish contracts, are a new type of agreement between publishers and member institutions of the CRUI consortium which bring about a profound change in the business model adopted so far in academic publishing.
Moving from a standard type of contract in which the publisher offers access to their online resources in exchange for a fee, there is a gradual transition towards a model in which membership fees include a part for subscription and access to subscription content (reading) and a part for open access publication (publishing). The reading cost decreases during the course of contract whilst the publishing cost increases over the same period.
Transformative agreements have a transitional/evolutionary character: ideally the end goal is to arrive at agreements that entirely shift subscription costs from subscription acquisition to funding the publication of Open Access articles by transforming hybrid OA journals (which include both subscription and open access articles) into Gold OA journals (where all content is open access).
TRANSFORMATIVE AGREEMENTS AND THE POLITECNICO DI MILANO
On behalf of the Politecnico, the Library Services will participate in transformative agreements negotiated by CARE-CRUI (Electronic Resource Access Coordination Group - Conference of Italian University Rectors) as of the second half of 2020, with the following international publishers:
- Association for Computing Machinery
- American Chemical Society (in renewal negotiations)
- AIP - American Institute of Physics
- Elsevier
- Emerald
- IEEE- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
- RSC-Royal Society of Chemistry
- Springer
- Wiley (in renewal negotiations)
The costs required for open access publication (APC - Article Processing Charge) are entirely borne by the Politecnico’s Library Services. Vouchers or tokens for the publication of open access articles are available on a yearly basis, until they are exhausted and without pre-established distribution among the entities participating in the contract.
The basic cost for publication (APC) is covered: any additional material (extra pages, images with particular resolution, etc.) remains the responsibility of the author(s).
Necessary requirements
An essential condition in order to take advantage of the funding and to publish open access with costs borne by the Politecnico, is that the corresponding author has a formal active role at the Politecnico di Milano upon acceptance of their article.
For the transformative agreements drawn up with the CRUI, the publisher requires a Politecnico’s representative in charge of the contract to verify/approve the affiliation indicated by the corresponding author. In case of articles published by multiple authors only the submitting Corresponding Author who submitted the article may qualify as an Affiliated Author. Affiliation is the element which allows the “publishing” part of each contract to be used to pay the APCs (Article Processing Charge) for open access publication.
Publication procedure
The publication process is handled entirely by the publisher. For the transformative agreements signed by CRUI, the publisher requires verification/validation of the affiliation indicated by the corresponding author. The University cannot handle requests submitted to the publisher to change the corresponding author.
Once the request is validated, the article is published under a Creative Commons license. The author retains copyright and can immediately place the published version (Publisher’s Version/pdf) into the Politecnico’s online catalogue Iris RE.PUBLIC as open access.
Negotiations with other publishers are ongoing. Any new agreement signed by the CRUI to which the Politecnico di Milano will participate will be promptly communicated to those concerned.
For information and support
Write to openaccess@polimi.it
Association for Computing Machinery
- Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery
- Academic sector: science and technology
- Duration of the agreement: 2022-2025) taking effect from the 1st of May 2022
- Publishing license: CC BY 4.0. The author retains the copyright.
- General Terms and Conditions: The contract provides the possibility of publishing an illimitated number of articles in Open Accesslicense on the ACM Digital library without any direct expense by the author.
- Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author.
- Eligible Authors will be identified through their Institution name and/or email domain.
- Types of articles: Research articles, Review articles, Conference or proceedings papers, Short Papers, Technical Note/Note, Tutorial, Case Study, Interview, Surveywork
- List of publications: ACM Digital Library
Insights:publication workflow
American Chemical Society
- Publisher: American Chemical Society
- Academic sector: Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences
- Duration of the agreement: Four years (2020-2023)
- Publishing license: CC-BY 4.0. (with some exceptions for CC BY NC) The author retains the copyright
- General Terms and Conditions: the contract provides the opportunity for the corresponding authors of participating institutions to publish open access all articles published in the publisher’s hybrid OA journals (journals with open and restricted access), with publication costs already borne by the university.
- Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author. To facilitate the affiliation recognition process, the publisher recommends using the institutional email and the institution’s name
- Types of articles: Original Papers and Review Papers. Brief Communications are excluded
- List of publications: All Pubs
- Retrospective conversion to Open Access: The contract stipulates that authors can choose the Open Access option, changing the license and publication mode of articles already published in the same journals but not in open access. The decision must be made within a year of publication.
Further information:
How to Publish Open Access
AIP - American Institute of Physics
- Publisher: AIP
- Academic sector: physical sciences
- Duration of the agreement: four years (2023-2026) taking effect from the January 1st, 2023.
- Publishing license: CC BY 4.0. The author retains the copyright.
- General Terms and Conditions: The contract provides the possibility of publishing articles in Open Accesslicense on the Hybrid Journals (29 titles) without any direct expense by the author. The number of publications in the OA envisaged in the contract has a limit for each year: 279 in 2023, 296 in 2024, 311 in 2025, 323 in 2026.
- Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author.
- Eligible Authors will be identified through their Institution Ringold ID.
- Types of articles: Article, Conference article, Letter, Research update, Review.
- List of publications: All Pubs.
- Retrospective conversion to Open Access: The contract comes into effect on the 1st of January 2023 and provides for the possibility of recovering the previous year, with the passage to open access of the articles published under subscription starting from that date.
Further information:
Contratto trasformativo CARE CRUI-AIP
Author Guide Read & Publish Workflows
Elsevier
- Publisher: Elsevier
- Academic sector: Multidisciplinary
- Duration of the agreement: five years (2023-2027) taking effect from the 1st of January 2023.
- Publishing license: CC BY 4.0 (which will be set by default in the system) or CC BY NC ND 4.0. Copyright will remain with the author (NB: The CC BY NC ND license is not compliant with the Horizon Europe open access mandate. For scientific publications linked to projects financed with the current framework programme, the mandatory license is the CC BY, the widest in terms of sharing and use).
- General Terms and Conditions: The contract provides the possibility of publishing articles in Open Accesslicense on the Hybrid Journals (over 1,800 titles) and in fully Gold Open Access journals (605 titles) without any direct expense by the author. The number of publications in the OA envisaged in the contract has a limit for the first two years, while for the remaining three contractual years it is unlimited.
- Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author. Eligible Authors will be identified through their Institution name.
- Types of articles: Original Paper, Reviews Paper e Case Report. From January 1, 2025, the types of Eligible Articles will also include short communications.
- List of publications: All Pubs
Further information:
Italy - CRUI Consortium Agreement
Open access information for journal authors
Gold Open Access: Central Funding agreement (publishing journey video)
IOP - Institute of Physics
Publisher: IOPScience
- Academic sector: physical sciences and other scientific fields (chemistry, geology, etc.)
- Duration of the agreement: four years (2022-2025). Coverage of Open Access publishing costs is active from 1st January 2023
- Publishing license: preferably CC BY 4.0. The author retains the copyright
- General Terms and Conditions: The contract provides the opportunity, for the corresponding authors from participating institutions, to publish open access all articles published from the 1st of January 2023 in the publisher’s hybrid OA (journals with open and restricted access) and Gold OA(journals with only open access content) journals, with publication costs already borne by the university. The journals of the American Astronomical Society do not participate in the contract: from 2022 they adopt the gold model but do not accept adherence to the transformative agreements
- Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Service
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author. To facilitate the affiliation recognition process, the publisher recommends using the institutional email or the institution’s name
- Types of articles: paper, special issue paper, review e/o letter
- List of publications: Consult the list of hybrid journals on the page
- Workflow: for eligible articles, the publisher will inform the corresponding author of the possibility of publishing open under this contract. In the event of a positive response from the corresponding author, the article will be published in open access. Periodically, institutions will receive lists of approved articles for subsequent verification of affiliation.
- Retrospective conversion to Open Access: retrospective conversion of any eligible articles that escape IOP selection published after January 1, 2023 is expected
Approfondimenti:
Emerald
- Publisher: Emerald
- Academic sector: Social Sciences (Economy, Business, Management, Finance, Law, Labour Studies), Engineering and Psychology
- Duration of the agreement: Five years (2020-2024)
- Publishing license: CC-BY. The author will be entitled to the copyright.
- General Terms and Conditions: The contract provides the opportunity for the corresponding authors from participating institutions to publish open access all articles published in hybrid OA journals (journals with open and restricted access), included in the subscribed-to collection and in the publisher’s Gold OA journals (journals with only open access content), with publication costs already borne by the university.
Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author. To facilitate the affiliation recognition process, the publisher recommends using the institutional email or the institution’s name
- Types of articles: Original Papers and Review Papers. Brief Communications are excluded
- List of publications: Emerald journal list
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- Publisher: IEEE
- Academic sector: science and technology (electrical engineering and computer science)
- Duration of the agreement: three years (2022-2024) taking effect from the 1st of August 2022
- Publishing license: CC BY 4.0 and CC BY NC ND. The author retains the copyright.
- General Terms and Conditions: the contract provides the opportunity for the corresponding authors from participating institutions to publish open access all articles published from the 1st of August 2022 in the publisher’s hybrid OA (journals with open and restricted access) and Gold OA (journals with only open access content) journals, with publication costs already borne by the university.
- Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author. To facilitate the affiliation recognition process, the publisher recommends using the institutional email and/or Ringold ID
- Types of articles: regular papers, review papers, briefs, invited reviews, surveys
- List of publications: https://open.ieee.org/publishing-options/ieee-title-list/
- Retrospective conversion to Open Access: the contract comes into effect on the 1st of August 2022 and provides the opportunity to transfer previous articles into OA - articles which were published by affiliate authors in hybrid periodicals in the 90 days before the stipulation of the contract, i.e., with a publication date within the period 1 May 1 – 31 July 2022.
- The conversion will only happen at your request. To make the conversion the corresponding author must make a prompt and explicit request to the publisher by emailing emailingonlinesupport@ieee.org within 15 October 2022, providing the Article DOI, Article Title, Institution, Corresponding Author’s Email.
Further information:
Author Process (TouchFree)
Royal Society of Chemistry
- Publisher: RSC
- Academic sector: science and technology
- Duration of the agreement: three years (2022-2024) taking effect from the 1st of January 2022
- Publishing license: CC BY 4.0 and CC BY NC. The author retains the copyright
- General Terms and Conditions: The contract provides the opportunity for the corresponding authors from participating institutions to publish open access all articles published in hybrid OA journals (journals with open and restricted access), included in the subscribed-to collection as well as in hybrid OA journals in the subscribed-to collection which become Gold OA journals (journals with only open access content) during the term of the contract.
- Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author. To facilitate the affiliation recognition process, the publisher recommends using the institutional email.
- Types of articles: among those listed here;
- List of publications: Consult the list of hybrid journals on the page
Further information:
Author Guide ReadPublish Workflows
Springer
- Publisher: Springer
- Academic sector: Multidisciplinary
- Duration of the agreement: Five years (2020-2024) taking effect from the 1st of July 2020
- Publishing license: CC-BY (with some exceptions for CC BY NC) The author retains the copyright.
- General Terms and Conditions: The contract provides the opportunity for the corresponding authors from participating institutions to publish open access all articles published in hybrid OA journals (journals with open and restricted access) included in the complete, subscribed-to collection, with publication costs already borne by the university. Complete subscribed-to collection can be accessed from the platform SpringerLink. Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author. To facilitate the affiliation recognition process, the publisher recommends using the institutional email and/or the IP address and/or the institution’s name.
- Types of articles: Original Papersand Review Papers.Brief Communications and Reports are excluded
- List of publications: Consult the revised list of hybrid journals on the page Open access journals.
Further information:
Guide for Corresponding authors
Wiley
- Publisher: Wiley
- Academic sector: Multidisciplinary
- Duration of the agreement: Four years (2020-2023) taking effect from the 4th of March 2021.
- Publishing license: CC-BY (with some exceptions for CC BY NC). The author retains the copyright.
- General Terms and Conditions: The contract provides the opportunity for the corresponding authors from participating institutions to publish Open Access all articles published in hybrid OA journals (journals with open and restricted access), included in the subscribed-to Database collection as well as in hybrid journals which become full Open Access during the term of the contract, with publication costs already borne by the university. Said journals can be accessed from the platform Wiley Online Library.
- Fees are part of the cost of the contract and are charged to the University Archive and Library Services.
- Basic condition to receive financial support: affiliation of the corresponding author. To facilitate the affiliation recognition process, the publisher recommends using the institutional email and/or the IP address and/or the institution’s name.
- Types of articles: Original Papersand Review Papers.Brief Communications are excluded
- List of publications: Hybrid journals included in the collection Database di Wiley Digital Library; list of Hybrid journals which have become Gold OA.
Further information:
How to Order Open Access with OnlineOpen
CONTRACTS WITH SPECIAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS
APS – AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
APS American Physical Society journals – the signing between CRUI-CARE and INFN of the SCOAP3 Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics agreement provides the following for the APS publisher:
- publication in the OA Physical Review C, Physical Review D and Physical Review Letters journals in Open Access without additional costs;
- acknowledgement of authors regarding the intellectual property of Open Access publications
- protection of the above-mentioned publications through CC-BY copyright[1] and protection of metadata through CC0 copyright.
[1] Permits the distribution, modification and creation of works derived from the original, even for commercial purposes, provided an appropriate acknowledgement of authorship is made, a link to the licence is provided and it is indicated whether modifications have been made; page for Creative Commons Licenses
How to get support on Open Access issues
A University scientific literature open access work group has been established with archiving and intellectual property management technical tasks. The group can be contacted at the email address openaccess@polimi.it.
Websites of interest:
- DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals
Updated list of OA Journals - Open Access Journals with IF
List of journals with Impact Factor - OpenDOAR: Directory of Open Access Repositories
List of institutional and subject repositories - ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)
Database that indexes the creation, location and growth of open access institutional archives and their content - PLEIADI
Website for Italian Electronic Scientific Literature in Open Archives and Institutional Repositories. This is the national platform for centralised access to the scientific literature deposited in Italian open archives, established and managed by universities and research bodies. - Wiki on Open Access in Italy
Website on Open Access that registers news and information about the national and international movement - CRUI guidelines
Guidelines issued by CRUI (Conference of Italian University Rectors) and developed by the national work group on Open Access
Materials and useful references for publication and/or auto-self-archiving in open access:
- list of publishers taken from Sherpa/RoMEO (currently being drawn up)
- Beall's List - List of unreliable OA publishers
- Addenda
- SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
Association of university and research libraries that cooperate to create a more open scientific communication system - Addendum SPARC
- Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine - Software that allows personalisation of own Addendum
- Communication Letter to publishers
- Exemption letter from Politecnico Open Access Policy
- SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
- Inserting attachments in IRIS RE.PUBLIC@POLIMI (italian version)
Material from conferences and seminars
This section contains the stored materials that were presented during seminars organised by the Politecnico di Milano about open access and the materials produced during national conferences on OA.
22/09/2014 - University Policy and Publishing Strategies at the Politecnico di Milano