Open access agreements with publishers
Publish without APC fees
Overview of Aalto's open access publications 2024
91 % of Aalto's scientific journal articles published in 2024 are available open access.
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Open access publications 2024
Aalto's open access target of peer reviewed, scientific publications (publication types A1-A4) was 92,4 % in 2024. In March 2025, the percentage is 88 %.
In publication types A1-A2 – journal articles – the percentage is currently 91 %. In publication type A3 - book chapters - the percentage is significantly lower, 52 %.
Open access 2024
Publication types A1-A4
3276
publications (A1-A4)
88 %
publications open access (A1-A4)
91 %
journal articles open access (A1-A2)
52 %
book chapters open access (A3)
86 %
conference articles open access (A4)
Read & Publish agreements support researchers in open access publishing
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. Agreements cover many major publishers (e.g. Elsevier and Springer Nature), but not all journals of these publishers are included in the agreements. However, altogether agreements cover more than 10 000 scientific journals.
In 2024, more than 700 articles were published open access by utilizing our agreements. If separate open access fees had been paid for these articles, estimated costs according to the publishers' average open access fees would have been a total of almost 2 300 000 EUR.
Open access fees paid outside Read & Publish agreements
OpenAPC service includes open data of open access fees paid by institutions outside Read & Publish agreements. In Aalto University, this data is based on combining data from Aalto’s research information system ACRIS (publication data) and individual open access fees (APC invoices). OpenAPC displays information of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles at publisher, journal and article level, and data is updated four times a year. Other publication types are excluded from OpenAPC.
In 2024, Aalto paid open access fees of about 200 scientific journal articles not covered by Read & Publish agreements, worth of about 500 000 EUR.
National monitoring of total costs of open access publishing
Total costs of open access and scientific publishing to Finnish institutions are monitored on a national level as part of the monitoring of open science and research in Finland. Latest results were published in February 2025 and utilize data from 2023.
Based on the data from 2023, Finnish institutions paid publishers over 25,1 million euros for transformative Read & Publish agreements (21,5 million euros in 2021) and an additional 4,6 million euros for separate open access fees (APC fees and BPC fees, 4,2 million euros in 2021).
Open access fees
Article processing charges (APC fees)
ABC of open access publishing
As a part of the Training in Research Data Management and Open Science, an online webinar ABC of open access publishing was held in autumn 2024. Webinar discusses e.g. different types of open access, Creative Commons licenses in open access publishing as well as funder’s open access requirements.
Rights Retention Strategy (RRS)
Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) enables authors to retain copyright of their peer-reviewed, author accepted manuscripts (AAM). RRS was developed by COAlition S under Plan S initiative with the aim to achieve immediate open access to scientific publications without separate open access fees.
How is Rights Retention Strategy implemented? What are its benefits and challenges? What is the current situation in Finland? Read a summary from University of Helsinki (currently available only in Finnish):
What else happened in 2024?
Read a summary from University of Helsinki (currently available only in Finnish):
Contact information
For any questions related to open access publishing, please don't hesitate to contact Open Science and ACRIS team, acris@aalto.fi.
For any questions related to access to scientific journals and collections, please don't hesitate to contact Library Resources team, oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi.
Open Access Publishing
Open access ensures that scientific publications are accessible to everyone free of charge.
Library resources and collections
Electronic and print information resources in Aalto University's education and research disciplines.
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