FAQ

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  1. What is the difference between the 'green road' and the 'golden road'?

    Broadly speaking there are two routes to open access: the 'green road' and the 'golden' road:

    • the 'green road':
      The green road is based on self-archiving. Before or after publication, a researcher will upload the ‘post-reviewed preprint’ of her/his article to a repository (a publicly accessible database) rendering the publication freely available to the rest of the world. This will, of course, be subject to the applicable copyright restrictions. 
    • the 'golden road':
      When the gold road option is chosen, the publication will immediately be rendered available in open access journals, via the website of the publisher. This option is usually not free of charge. The publication costs -referred to as ‘article processing charges’ (APCs) - are paid by the author or the institution where s/he is employed. These publication fees vary between 0 and 2,500 euros; in exceptional cases a fee as high as 5,000 euros can even be charged.
  2. Why does Hasselt University choose for the 'green road'?

    Choosing the green road option has a lot of advantages: 

    • many research funds as well as the European Commission request or even mandate to make research available in open access for full exposure; by uploading a full text open access version in the Document Server you comply to this mandate;
    • maximum archiving (long-term storage) of the own publication output;
    • free choice of journal is guaranteed; authors still decide in which journal they choose to publish their research papers;
    • no risk of "double dipping" wherein the publishers retain both the fee for the open access publication of an article ('APC') plus the regular subscription price for the journal;
    • much cheaper than the golden road;
    • publication lists can be exported and integrated in websites;
    • publications are part of (a) evaluation and (b) the allocation and distribution of basic funding, research funding and resources, both within Hasselt University, Flanders and internationally.
  3. What is the UHasselt policy concerning 'gold open access'?

    UHasselt authors are, of course, allowed to pay 'article processing charges'  and to publish their research papers in open access journals. Hasselt University, however, will not financially support this gold open access route. In other words: the university does not host a fund to help pay the APCs.

  4. Will UHasselt authors still be able to publish in a journal of their choice?

    UHasselt authors will of course still decide in which journal they choose to publish their research papers. They will merely have to ensure that a copy of the final, peer-reviewed paper is deposited in the institutional repository (Document Server@UHasselt).

  5. How do I publish work that was funded by FWO, ERC, Horizon 2020 or FP7?

    If your research was funded by FWO, ERC or a framework programme of the European Union (e.g. Horizon 2020 or FP7), you will be required to make this available in Open Access. Click here for a step-by-step plan to help you meet these conditions (docx).

  6. Why make your work available in open access? What's in it for you?

    • the visibility of your publication grows;
    • because open access publications are easily accessible, they are more widely circulated and cited;
    • readers with limited financial means also have access to your work (cf. a lot of scientific work is being financed by public means; it is fair to have the results of this research open to all).
  7. How can you find out whether your journal has a policy compliant with depositing your manuscript in an institutional repository?

    To avoid misunderstandings: the University Library will monitor the publisher’s open access policy and will adapt the accessibility of the text in the Document Server to ensure its compliance with that open access policy. So this is something you don't have to worry about.

    I you do want to check it yourself, you can consult the individual journal's policy at: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php or at http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers.html. About two-thirds of journals do allow this practice. If the journal you wish to publish in does not permit it, an embargo will be imposed on the full text in the Document Server (cf. in that case the text can only be consulted by UHasselt staff and UHasselt students once they have logged in).

  8. What about copyright?

    Some authors worry that they will have copyright problems if they deposit their work in repositories. Even if the author does not own the exploitation rights of his work, a lot of publishers do allow self-archiving of publications that they own the rights of. The SHERPA/ROMEO database can be a useful tool to check your publisher's policy. Moreover, there exist different licences and when entering into a publishing agreement, one can try to persuade the publisher to accept non-exclusive rights of use so the right to exploit your work online is not lost. You could consider attaching an addendum to your publishing agreement in order to retain the right to self-archive your contribution in a non-commercial repository. A number of author addenda can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet (see, for example, SPARC and Creative Commons licences). To become legally binding, the addendum must be countersigned by the publisher. Some publishers refuse to accept such author addenda. However, as mentioned above, the majority are nonetheless willing to allow self-archiving in an open access repository.

  9. Doesn't open access stimulate plagiarism?

    The fact that a document is freely available on the internet does not invite users to plagiate it without consent, quite the contrary. Not only is your open access-publication protected under the same copyright laws as conventional documents, cases of plagiarism (especially the copy/paste kind) are much easier to detect when the source is available in open access (on the internet, through a search engine).

  10. An increasing number of open access journals is available; how can you know which ones are good?

    To assess the quality of an open access journal, researchers may consider the following points:

    • Is the journal listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals?
      Peer review is at the basis of quality assurance of scholarly journals. All journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) exercise a form of peer-review or editorial quality control to guarantee the content. 
    • Is the journal listed in Web of Science?
      Open access journals with an impact factor are covered by Web of Science and Scopus. Very often open access journals are young journals and therefore don't have an impact factor yet. Because of that, initiatives have recently been started to develop other quality criteria for open access journals. Look at Quality Open Access Market (QOAM), which stresses transparency of the peer review process as an important criterion.  With these cards  libraries provide an opinion on the transparency of the websites of open access and hybrid journals. Additionally QOAM also publishes Valuation Scorecards, which allows authors to share their experiences with scientific journals.
  11. What are hybrid journals?

    In hybrid journals, all articles are available to subscribers and some articles are available to everyone as they are made open access. With these journals, you can choose to publish an article as open access. The problem is that universities then pay double: they pay first to offer open access to an article, and then again to be able to read an article through subscriptions. This is known as "double dipping".

  12. What do the terms preprint and post-print mean?

    The preprint is the manuscript which has neither been subjected to peer review nor accepted for publication.
    The post-print is the peer-reviewed version of the manuscript that has been accepted for publication (usually in a Word or LaTeX file). In terms of content, this will be the same as the published version, but without the publisher’s lay-out.

  13. Isn't self archiving time consuming?

    Some scholars have reservations about the amount of time needed for self-archiving. However, according to a study by Carr and Harnad (2005), even researchers who self-archive often do not need to spend more than 40 minutes a year on the task. Moreover, repositories are also time-saving, as they may help to prepare lists of publications, to keep an online CV or bibliography and allows to give easy access to one's publications to others.

  14. Which version of your article should you upload?

    Upload the post-print version of your article, i.e. the peer-reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication. In terms of content, this will be the same as the published version, but without the publisher’s lay-out. This version is also referred to as the ‘author version’ or the ‘post-reviewed preprint’.

  15. When should you upload your article?

    We recommend executing the upload of your publication concurrent to its official publication by the publisher.

  16. Where should you upload your article?

    Upload your article to the Document Server, this is the UHasselt repository.
    If your publisher permits you to do so, you can also upload a copy of your manuscript to ArXivPubMed CentralRePeCResearchGate or Mendeley.

  17. Do you need to deposit your paper if the journal publishing your research already provides immediate open access to your articles?

    Yes. Hasselt University still wishes to have your work deposited in our repository to enable it to maintain a compete record of institutional research output.

  18. What if there is no 'author version' available?

    If there is no 'author version' available, the University Library will provide assistance in the creation of such a version, if feasible.

  19. What kind of support does the University Library offer?

    All UHasselt authors are expected to upload the author’s version of their peer-reviewed publications in the UHasselt repository. Only a very basic set of bibliographical data has to be provided. The University Library will check and will complete these data using the uploaded author's version or metadata extracted from academic databases. If there is no author’s version available, the University Library will provide assistance in the creation of such a version. The University Library also aims to include the published version in the Document Server. 
    The UHasselt author will receive an email confirming the successful inclusion of her/his work in the repository. Should there be any missing details, the University Library will contact the UHasselt author.
    Publications that are recorded in the Web of Science will be checked by the University Library once they have been included in the Web of Science, and if necessary uploaded to the Document Server, after which the researcher will be asked for the author’s version.
    For every text uploaded, the University Library will monitor the publisher’s open access policy and take into account any remarks with regard to the protection of intellectual rights. The University Library will adapt the accessibility of the text in the Document Server to ensure its compliance with the open access policy and remarks as referred to above.
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