Open Access Publishing
As an author, you have two main options for publishing OA:
- directly in an OA journal or with a publisher that offers OA for books, such as mdwPress ("Diamond" or "Gold" Open Access) and/or
- by storing your publication, which is to be published with "closed" (paid) access or has already been published, on an OA publication server, e.g. on pub.mdw ("Green" Open Access). Legal restrictions may apply.
Where can I publish Open Access?
You can find quality-assured OA journals e.g. in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ; also see the link collection). Most OA book publishers list their publications in the Directory of Open Access Books: when looking for a suitable publisher, it is advisable to browse by subject.
For authors working at the mdw, an OA publication server is available for preliminary and secondary publications as well as for the first publication of conference papers (including posters), research reports and working papers. In addition, you have the opportunity to publish on the musicological repository musiconn.publish and, regardless of subject, on Zenodo. All of these repositories are publicly funded, trustworthy infrastructures.
The Sherpa/RoMEO database helps authors to look up the licences of many publishers and journals for rights clearance. However, it is strongly recommended that you check the author's agreements, which can usually be found on the publisher's websites, before submitting a manuscript there.
Background to Open Access Business Models
While "the golden road" includes fees (article/author publishing charges, APC), which are covered by the institution of the authors under certain conditions, "the diamond road" is financed differently depending on the business model of the publisher. For example, research institutions often support the technical infrastructure and provide staff for the administration of "diamond" publishers. mdwPress combines “golden” and “diamond” elements. A variant of the “golden” road is Hybrid Open Access, in which individual articles can be “bailed” from subscription journals which otherwise require charges to be accessed.
"The green road" is in most cases also supported by institutional funds. In order to enable "green" open access to the publication that was previously published with "closed" (paid) access, authors must carefully check the publisher's licence: Sometimes only a certain version of the work can be published on an OA publication server, and sometimes this is only permitted after a certain period of time (“embargo”). It is still common for commercial publishers without an OA program to not allow republication at all, as their licence provides them exclusive rights.
Open Access Support
For advice, please turn to Max Bergmann:
Tel. +43-1-71155-8122
General questions
bergmann-max@mdw.ac.at
mdwPress
mdwpress@mdw.ac.at
pub.mdw
pub@mdw.ac.at