FAQ

If you are obliged to provide immediate access to a published article (e.g. under the terms of the project), you must choose an open access journal. This is the so-called gold way of open access, where the article is immediately accessible on the journal/publisher's website. Open access journals can be found in the Directory of Open Access Journals database (DOAJ). 

There are publication charges (APCs) associated with the gold open access route. These fees are paid for by the author, usually by the university or research organisation that the author works for, or can be paid from the budget of a grant or research project. Open access publishing fees are allowable in research grants, so keep this in mind when writing project applications.

You can also find journals in the DOAJ database that do not require APCs - apply the "No article processing charges (APCs)" filter when searching.

Another way to fulfil the open access requirement is to publish in a traditional journal and then self-archive the article - depositing it in a repository (e.g. the UPCE Digital Library). This is the so-called green way of open access.

You must be careful about the time limit you have to publish the article. While many publishers allow auto-archiving of articles, but only after a time embargo, which can be up to 3 years (some journals from Elsevier), other publishers allow you to publish a version of an article immediately after it is published in the journal (e.g. IEEE). You can quickly check the policy of individual journals in the Sherpa/Romeo database, and the information should also be available on the journal's website or in your contract with the publisher.

The green open access way is based on self-archiving: an author publishes his/her article in a subscription-based journal and makes the version that the publisher allows to be published available in an open repository. 

Open access to scientific publications is provided by the author.  When depositing an article in the repository, the author respects the terms of the journal's self-archiving. 

For more information, see Self-Archiving (Green Open Access). 

The gold open access way is based on publishing in peer-reviewed open access scientific journals.

Open access to scientific publications is provided by the publisher.

For more information, see Open Journals (Gold Open Access). 

According to UPCE Directive No. 2/2015, authors are obliged to attach the full text of the paper in the form of a postprint (accepted version, accepted manuscript) to the OBD record for results of type J (journal article) and D (proceedings). If you have published in an open access journal, you can attach the "published" version. The full text will then be published in the UPCE Digital Library according to the publisher's policy. 

The postprint (accepted version) is the version of the article that has been accepted for publication, AFTER the peer review process, the comments and edits from the peer review process have been incorporated, but this version is not yet formatted by the publisher. 

Some publishers allow the postprint to be simply downloaded. The corresponding author, who communicates with the editors and sends individual versions of the article to the journal, should carry the postprint. 

Predatory journals and publishers are parasitic on the model of paid open journals. The primary goal of predatory journals is to collect article processing charges (APCs) and generate profit, not to publish and make available scientific results and promote open access.

For typical characteristics of predators and tips on how to avoid them, see Predatory Publishing.

It is a new direction/initiative whose principles can be applied to the whole research process, the subsequent dissemination of results and their accessibility to the general public. At the same time, open science promotes collaboration in science as well as the involvement of society in science. 

Open science is not just an open access publishing and research data management scheme. It also includes open peer review, open educational materials, citizen science and more.

For example, the Horizon Europe Framework Programme obliges all beneficiaries to ensure open access to scientific information, publications, research data and other outputs, and establish a Data Management Plan.

Research data can take various forms and may be digital as well as non-digital. Apart from common forms such as spreadsheets, these can be, for example, photographs, audio and video recordings, questionnaires, test responses, interview transcripts, laboratory notebooks, field notes, codebooks, software, code, or samples and specimens.

For more information, see Research data.

Data Management Plan (DMP) is a document that specifies what data will be created and how, and outlines the plans for sharing and preservation of the data, both during and after the research project. Some funders require that a DMP is completed and submitted as part of the grant agreement. More information about DMP, see Data Management Plan. 

The University of Pardubice does not have its own data repository yet. For sharing data, we recommend using subject specific repositories, which you can find, e.g., at re3data.org, or a general-purpose repository such as Zenodo, Figshare or Dryad. For more information, see Data repositories.

The European Commission is taking the initiative in including open science requirements in their funding programmes (e.g., Horizont 2020 followed by Horizon Europe), however, other research funders are joining the effort, too. 

For more information on the terms and conditions of specific funders, see Research Funders' Policies. 

Links to relevant datasets may be included in published articles.

Furthermore, datasets can be found in data repositories, both general (e.g. Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad, OSF) and subject specific (subject specific repositories can be searched using the Registry of Research Data Repositories).

A reliable source of existing datasets are data journals, which publish peer-reviewed papers that describe published datasets and so ensure that the datasets are well described and of high quality

In addition to these sources, you can also use dataset search engines such as Mendeley Data or Google Dataset Search.

In your research, you can also use public administration data published as open data which you can find in the National Open Data Catalogue (NKOD).