Open Access offers many other possibilities, different publishing models. And it’s not only journals, but also books, for example.
Open Access books
- Freely available scholarly books, primarily peer-reviewed, but may also be popular science, exercise books, textbooks, teaching materials, etc.
- Books are freely available to anyone, without charge, without restrictions e.g. by logging in.
- They operate on the same principle as OA journals: quality should be guaranteed by peer review, only the business model of publishing is changing.
- Copyright and licensing principles are the same as for OA journals.
- Most often OA books are published by university presses or scientific research institutions.
- Commercial OA books are expensive (e.g. Springer Open).
- A number of OA publishers are now emerging and new business models for OA books are developing.
Finding Open Access Books
- DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) Contains OA books mostly from major scholarly publishers. To be included in the DOAB database, they must be peer-reviewed and published under a CC license.
- OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks ) Contains OA books mainly in the social sciences and humanities
Open Access Book Networks
The OABN is a space for passionate conversations about OA books. Researchers, publishers, librarians, research funders, infrastructure providers — indeed, anyone who is interested — can engage in discussions, events and find helpful materials via the network.
Publishing of OA publications on CTU
The CTU Central Library offers the possibility of publishing Open Access publications in the CTU Digital Library. For more information, please visit the Central Library website under the tab Publishing OA books at CTU.
New approach to Open Access: S2O – Subscribe to Open
- S2O is an economic model used by peer-reviewed scientific journals
- Providing open access to journal content without charging additional costs (one model of transformational contracts)
- Converting journals from the traditional subscription model to open access
How it works:
- Academic libraries are informed when journal subscriptions are renewed:
- With the support of libraries, the journal will be made available to all readers
- Authors can publish at no additional cost
- If a sufficient number of libraries renew subscriptions to the journal under the following conditions – the journal is transferred to OA for 1 year (the duration of the subscription)
- If an insufficient number of libraries renew subscriptions – access to the journal will remain restricted for subscribing libraries
Open Research Europe (ORE)
- ORE is an Open Access publishing platform set up by the European Commission, mainly for the results of research funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe
- It is not a repository
- For H2020 and HE project investigators, publishing in ORE is free, for others it requires payment of APC fees
- Provides immediate access to publications licensed for content reuse – publishing under a CC BY license
- Provides all transparent publishing standards in accordance with Open Access and Open Science principles, as required by H2020 and HE
- Open Peer Review
- In the Czech Republic: limited applicability – not included in the science evaluation (new platform not yet indexed in citation databases and without the necessary metrics)
Peer Community In (PCI) & Peer Community Journal (PCJ)
Dual publishing system:
- PCI: a non-profit organization of scientists – reviewing and recommending preprints
- PCJ: general OA Diamond journal
Peer Community In (PCI)
- Authors save preprint on preprint server (e.g. arXiv, bioRxiv)
- The manuscript/preprint is submitted to the relevant PCI topic – initiation of the evaluation process
- Evaluation process – 2 reviewers – rejection, acceptance, modification
- If the paper is accepted (after one or more rounds of peer review):
- Authors must deposit the recommended version of the article on the preprint server
- The recommending person writes a short recommendation text and the preprint is assigned a DOI
- Text + DOI + review + all editorial correspondence is published on the relevant PCI website
- The preprint becomes a complete, reliable and citable article – without the need to publish in a “traditional” journal
What’s next?
- End here: the recommended article is searchable, accessible, citable in the open archive
- Publish an article directly in the Peer Community Journal – an open access article with no APC fees (Diamond OA)
- Submit an article to a PCI-friendly magazine (can be gold, diamond, hybrid, NOT predator)
- Article accepted without further review (if in scope)
- Prompt response (≤ 5 days) to query before article submission
- Option to use PCI assessment if adequate
- Submit an article to another journal
Peer Community Journal (PCJ)
- The journal is run by researchers for researchers – it is funded as a VVI
- DOAJ Seal Award
- Unique (1 journal for all PCIs), free (Diamond OA), exclusive (publishes only PCI-recommended articles), unconditional (can publish any PCI-recommended article), opt-in (publishes articles only at the request of authors), immediate (there is almost no delay between submission and publication) community-based (run by scientists for scientists)