To keep in mind when publishing
You have some things to consider before publishing. Choose publisher, journal or venue carefully. For instance, you need to understand how copyright works, in particular Creative Commons licenses.
Copyright
KTH Library recommends that you keep the copyright of your text, regardless of how you choose to publish. As an author, you own both the moral copyright, and the economic copyright. The economic right can be sold or transferred to a publisher or other organisation when you publish, but you have several good options to keep that right. Read more on the page Publish open access .
Keep in mind to:
- Familiarise yourself with the publishers’ varying terms and choose a publisher accordingly. Search Sherpa Romeo to check the terms of different publishers.
- Read the agreement you are given by the publisher closely before signing.
- Check that the agreement you sign with the publisher does not violate rules and requirements from KTH, research funders or corresponding stakeholders. Consider whether you need permission to self-archive an article, use the results in your teaching, etc.
- Negotiate a supplementary agreement with the publisher on improved terms. More information and examples of author addendums can be found at SPARC .
Creative Commons licenses
If you want to be able to share your text, you can assign a Creative Commons license (CC licens) to it. Remember to do this when you submit your manuscript, or, at the latest, before you sign an agreement with a publisher. Creative Commons supply different degrees of licenses that specify in what ways others are allowed to use your work. The license clearly states which rights and restrictions apply. A CC license can only be used on copyrighted material. One of the basic requirements is that you must always acknowledge the author.
Questionable publishers
Just as among traditional journals there are, unfortunately, open access journals that are not serious. In these cases, these are publishers and journals that do not live up to scientific standards, and which instead have the main agenda of enticing researchers to pay a fee to publish the text. Contact us if you need help with determining if a journal seems serious. You can also use the guide Think, Check, Submit .
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a directory of quality controlled open access journals. The journals listed in DOAJ are peer-reviewed, with a high scientific level.
Before submitting your article to a journal, make sure that the publisher is serious. The library will not cover any costs for APC:s (Article Processing Charges) in questionable or unserious journals.
Research funders and open access
Many research funders now require that the research they fund be published open access. This applies to both Swedish and international funders such as the Swedish Research Council and the European Research Council. More and more funders are also demanding open access to research data.
It is important to know that from 2017, researchers who are granted grants from the Swedish Research Council will publish with a CC license. Funders within Horizon 2020 recommend a CC license for research publications.
The British organisation Jisc maintains a list of funders’ data policies, open access publication requirements and archiving requirements, called Sherpa Juliet . Policy information from common Swedish research funders is also included.
