Postupy Open practices

Open publishing is increasingly being required as a condition for grants funded from public resources, which is regulated in the Czech Republic by Act 130/2002 Sb., o podpoře výzkumu, experimentálního vývoje a inovací. This law emphasizes that the results of research funded by public resources should be accessible to the broader public. Grant agencies, such as Grantová agentura České republiky (GA ČR) or the European Commission through the Horizon Europe program, require grant recipients to publish their articles in open access and make their data available according to FAIR principles. This enhances transparency, ensures efficient use of funds, and enables further utilization of results within the scientific community and beyond.

Options for Publishing in Open Access

The cornerstone of Open Science is open publishing. Publishers make part or all of their publications publicly and freely accessible, thereby facilitating the dissemination of scientific outputs. In practice, this often involves shifting publishing costs from readers to authors in the form of Article Processing Charges (APCs). These fees are often quite high, amounting to thousands of euros per article. Depending on the approach to APCs, journals can be categorized into three main open access routes: green, gold, or diamond.

Diamond Open Access means that the journal allows authors to publish in open access entirely free of charge, with publishing costs covered by an institution or organization supporting the journal. Examples include Journal for Artistic Research, Živá hudba, and ArteActa.

Gold Open Access involves publishing articles in open access after paying APCs. The journal then guarantees open access to the article and its long-term availability.

Green Open Access allows the author, after reaching an agreement with the publisher, to independently provide open access to their article by depositing it in an appropriate repository. This ensures open access through the author’s initiative. However, it is essential to have a contractual agreement with the publisher to avoid copyright violations.

What About APCs?

APCs (Article Processing Charges) represent a significant cost for researchers. However, since open publishing requirements often come from funding agencies, APCs are included in eligible expenses. It is therefore advisable to account for these costs when preparing grant proposals, as the agency imposing the open access requirements typically provides funding to cover these fees.

If you plan to publish outside of grant-funded projects, you can choose journals that follow the diamond open access model, where APCs do not apply. Additionally, without a grant, you are not bound by agency requirements to select journals based on their ranking in databases like WoS or Scopus.

Another option is transformative agreements, which may reduce or waive APC fees for researchers. While these agreements might give the impression that publishing is free, this "free" access is enabled by institutional membership in a consortium, which requires paying membership fees. Currently, AMU is not a member of consortia with transformative agreements.

Copyright and Open Licenses

Open publishing does not threaten copyright; on the contrary, it fully respects it and allows authors to retain control over their work. When publishing in open access, authors typically retain copyright and can also choose a license that specifies how their work can be further used. Commonly used licenses, such as Creative Commons, allow authors to define the conditions under which others can share, modify, or use their work while ensuring that proper attribution is given.

This model protects authors from misuse of their work, such as unauthorized commercial exploitation, while also promoting broader dissemination and impact of their research. Open publishing not only preserves authors' rights but strengthens them by providing greater transparency and control over how their work is shared and used, as opposed to cases where copyright is transferred to publishers.

The selection of open licenses allows authors to clearly define the conditions under which their work may be handled. Creative Commons (CC) licenses are among the most widely used open licenses, offering graduated options based on the level of openness. Individual license components include:

• BY: Requires attribution of the original work to the author.
• SA (Share Alike): Requires that if the work is modified or adapted, it must be distributed under the same license as the original.
• NC (Non-Commercial): Prohibits the use of the work for commercial purposes.
• ND (Non-Derivatives): Prohibits modifications of the work.

Licenses provide a transparent way to specify how a work can be used. The principles of Open Science advocate for the most open licenses possible, such as CC BY, while still preserving copyright.

When assigning a license to your own work, it is important to remember that an existing license can be replaced with a more open one, but not the other way around. If a license is later replaced with a more restrictive one, the work may still be used under the terms of the most open license under which it was previously made available.

A detailed manual for choosing a license is available here.