Overview of Aalto's open access publications 2022
Open access publications
Aalto's open access target of peer reviewed, scientific publications (categories A1-A4) was 86 % in 2022. At the end of February 2023, the percentage is 85 %, almost on target.
Figure depicts the progress of Aalto's open access publications 2020-2022. The share of green open access publications (parallel publishing) has clearly decreased, and at the same time the share of hybrid open access publications has increased. This change is to a large extent due to Aalto’s open access agreements which mostly include hybrid journals, as well as Plan S open access principles applied by research funders that support publishing in full open access journals.
Costs of open access publishing
The costs of open access publishing can be divided into open access fees (also called article processing charges, APCs) and the costs incurred from transformative agreements. Transformative agreements provide our researchers possibility to access scientific journals and collections, and publish articles open access without any fees for authors.
OpenAPC service includes open data of open access fees paid by institutions. In Aalto, this data is based on combining data from Aalto’s research information system ACRIS (publication data) and Rondo (open access payments). OpenAPC displays information of journal articles at publisher, journal and article level, and data is updated four times a year.
In 2022, Aalto paid open access fees of journal articles worth of almost 470 000 EUR.
Open access agreements help researchers with open access fees
As a member of the FinElib consortium, Aalto provides open access agreements with several publishers. Costs of these transformative agreements are covered by Aalto's Research Services.
In 2022, approx. 33 % of Aalto's full and hybrid open access publications were published open access through our agreements.
What to expect in 2023?
Aalto's open access target of peer reviewed, scientific publications (categories A1-A4) is 90,4 % in 2023. Is it possible to reach this target, and can this be done without increasing the costs of open access publishing?
Plan S effect
Plan S open access initiative affects open access requirements of research funders such as Academy of Finland and Horizon Europe starting from funding calls 1 January 2021 onwards. According to Plan S principles, research funders require immediate open access and use of open CC BY license in peer-reviewed publications. For most publishers, this currently means that researchers must choose to publish article open access, which usually requires a separate open access fee.
RRS to help?
Plan S includes a Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), which would allow researchers to parallel publish their peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript versions immediately open access under a CC BY license, and thus comply with Plan S principles without any separate open access fees.
Several universities in Europe (e.g. four Norwegian universities) have already included RRS in their open access policies. However, RRS can also be seen as copyright infringement, due to different interpretations of copyright legislation. In Finland, RRS requires both national and university-level discussions.
Diamond open access (cost-free open access)
Diamond open access refers to full open access journals and platforms which do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Currently, 8–9 % of the scientific publications worldwide are published according to diamond open access model. In 2022, an international Action Plan for Diamond Open Access was prepared, with the aim to support and further develop diamond open access publishing model. Plan S organisations, including Academy of Finland, support this action plan.
During 2023, our goal in Aalto is to collect more information about diamond open access channels currently used in Aalto, as well as increase information of diamond open access channels among Aalto's researchers.
Help and guidance?
Aalto’s Open Science and ACRIS team gives guidance in Plan S and funders’ open access requirements, publishers’ policies and open access agreements.
You can contact us at acris@aalto.fi.
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