Open Access

It has become common for funding agencies to require Open Access publishing when allocating funds for research projects. However, the specific conditions can vary; for example, whether an embargo period is accepted, and whether the requirement applies to all types of publications or only articles.

The library assists grant recipients in understanding the Open Access requirements applicable to them and in identifying relevant publishers and journals compatible with these requirements. This assistance is provided through personal guidance as well as webinars on the topic, which are held regularly.

Publishers often require an article processing charge (APC) to enable publishing articles as Open Access. In this context, researchers at UCPH are eligible for various APC discounts and waivers through agreements with publishers. The library ensures that these agreements are communicated to researchers and guides them on which agreements apply to them and how to utilise them.

If an article is published in a subscription-based journal, the accepted manuscript can often be made available through a repository, usually after a publisher-imposed embargo period. This practice of making the article freely available in an earlier version is called green Open Access and constitutes an important element in Denmark’s National Strategy for Open Access.

The library assists researchers in identifying the length of the embargo period imposed by a specific journal and the type of usage license (such as Creative Commons or the publisher's own license) the journal allows. Additionally, the library offers researchers the option to make earlier versions of their articles available on the University of Copenhagen's research registration platform, CURIS. Subsequently, the library will ensure compliance with the publisher's conditions and update metadata in CURIS.

For further information and support, please visit the library’s Open Access Submission Form.

The library offers support to journal editors affiliated with Danish universities who wish to publish their journals for free on the Royal Library's publishing portal, tidsskrift.dk. The library assists editors with various initiatives aimed at increasing the visibility and scholarly credibility of the journals. For example, the library helps in assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to the journal's articles and formulating the journal's policies and processes related to peer review, Open Access, copyright, and licenses. Additionally, the editors are provided guidance on indexing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), an international database of quality-assessed Open Access journals.

Predatory journals are journals that pretend to be scholarly Open Access journals but do not adhere to ethical principles of research publishing and lack proper peer review. Typically, predatory journals aim to scam money by enticing authors to pay for publication. Being published in a predatory journal can harm a researcher's professional reputation, and once a publication is released in such a journal, it can be expensive and cumbersome to remove it or subsequently publish it in a legitimate scientific journal.

The library assists researchers in verifying journals before manuscript submission, helping them avoid falling into the trap of predatory journals.