Overview of Aalto's open access publications 2023

Open access publications 2023

Aalto's open access target of peer reviewed, scientific publications (publication types A1-A4) was 90,4 % in 2023. In early March 2024, the percentage is 86 %. 

In publication types A1-A2 – journal articles – the percentage is currently 90 %. In publication type A3 - book chapters - the percentage is significantly lower. Open access to scientific books and monographs is more complicated and the national policy on open access to scientific books and monographs is still under preparation. 

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 from Read & Publish agreements. 

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 2023, Aalto’s schools paid open access fees of scientific journal articles worth of almost 450 000 EUR.

Aalto University - Open APC

Read & Publish agreements help researchers and schools with open access fees

As a member of the FinElib consortium, Aalto provides Read & Publish agreements with several publishers. Read & Publish agreements provide our researchers possibility to access scientific journals and collections, and publish articles open access without any fees for authors. Costs of these agreements are covered by Aalto's Research Services.

In 2023, more than 600 articles were published open access through our agreements. Estimation is that if separate open access fees had been paid for these articles, the costs for the schools according to the publishers' average open access fees would have been a total of almost 1 800 000 EUR.

Open access agreements with publishers | Aalto University

In 2023, renewal of several Read & Publish agreements was negotiated

In 2023, the FinELib consortium negotiated with several publishers on renewal of the Read & Publish agreements. The consortium's goal was particularly to obtain significant discounts from publishers, as the costs of the agreements had risen to an unsustainable level. The negotiations ended successfully, and most of the agreements have been renewed or are currently being renewed for the 2024–2025 agreement period.

However, the consortium agreement with the American Chemical Society (ACS) has not been renewed, and the agreement has currently ended on 31 December 2023. FinELib and ACS haven’t been able to reach an agreement in their negotiations, but FinELib still aims to continue the negotiations with ACS.

Agreement between FinELib and ACS not renewed - FinELibRead & Publish agreement with American Chemical Society (ACS) has ended 31.12.2023 | Aalto University

Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) raised in national discussions

Plan S is an open access initiative by research funders such as Research Council of Finland and Horizon Europe. According to Plan S principles, research funders require immediate open access and use of open CC BY license for peer-reviewed scientific publications. For most publishers, this currently means that researchers must choose to publish article open access, which usually requires a separate open access fee.  

Plan S includes a Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), which would allow researchers to self-archive their peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript versions immediately open access under a CC BY license, and thus comply with funders’ Plan S principles without separate open access fees. However, RRS can also be seen as copyright infringement, due to different interpretations of copyright legislation. 

In 2023, RRS was entered into the national discussions both within the National Open Science Coordination and the Finnish University Libraries’ Network (FUN). FUN founded a RRS working group, in which Service Manager Tua Hindersson-Söderholm from Aalto University is also participating. RRS working group aims to investigate whether self-archiving scientific articles under RRS principles could be promoted in a national level, within the framework of the Finnish Copyright Act and the Act on the Openness of Government Activities.

RRS discussed at FUN’s webinar in August – FUN (yliopistokirjastot.fi)

Towards responsible publishing? 

In 2023, Plan S published a new initiative, Towards responsible publishing. The goal of the initiative is a community-based scholarly communication system that empowers scholars to share the full range of their research outputs and to participate in new quality control mechanisms and evaluation standards for these outputs. The aim of the initiative is also to break away from open access fees set by the publishers. 

Towards Responsible Publishing | Plan S (coalition-s.org)

Open-access reformers launch next bold publishing plan

Diamond open access 

Diamond open access refers to open access journals which do not charge fees to either authors or readers. In 2023, we identified diamond open access journals in which Aalto's researchers have published in 2018-2022. According to the survey, approx. 2 % of Aalto's peer-reviewed scientific journal articles are published in diamond open access journals. The results of the survey are indicative.

Savolainen, E., & Seitsonen, K. (2023). Diamond Open Access: Researcher’s Best Friend or just a Distant Relative?. The 18th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing.

Diamond open access publishing and results of the survey were also discussed at a webinar held as a part of Aalto's Research Data Management & Open Science Training:

Current Trends in Academic Publishing: Diamond Open Access Journals, 24.10.2023

What else happened in 2023?  

Read a summary from University of Helsinki (currently available only in Finnish): 

Avoimen tieteen vuosikatsaus 2023: kotimaiset linjaukset ja kansainväliset uutiset – sekä muutama lukuvinkki – Think Open (helsinki.fi) 

Questions?

For any questions related to open access publishing, please don't hesitate to contact Open Science and ACRIS team, [email protected]. 

For any questions related to access to scientific journals and collections, please don't hesitate to contact Library Resources team, [email protected].