Open Access (OA)

• Citation advantage: Studies have shown that Open Access publications have a higher chance to get cited.
• Access to research for the general public: Research finananced by public institutions becomes accessible to all.
• Solidarity: Your research becomes available to colleagues in low-income countries, whose institutions often cannot afford expensive subscriptions.
• Lowering of costs: Even though publication fees often apply when publishing in Open Access journals, these are in sum lower than what institutions pay for subscriptions. 
• Demans from funders and governments: The Research Council of Norway and Horizon Europe, but also the Norwegian government and EU, require that research they are financing is made openly accessible to all. Furthermore, having previously published OA is an advantage when submitting applications for research funding, as open science is an evaluation criteria actively applied by the Research Council of Norway and Horizon Europe.

Gold Open Access: Publishing in genuine Open Access journals, where all articles are openly accessible, without subscription, on the journal's website. Some OA journals require that you pay a publication fee after your article has been accepted. You may apply HVL for coverage of your publication costs (see above). 

Green Open Access: Publishing in traditional subscription journals while self-archiving the accepted version of your article in your institution's repository, in this case NVA. "Accepted version" means the final version that you submit to the journal, after the peer-review process and subsequent revisions. The content of this version is identical with the published one, but it has not been copy-edited by the publisher. Here is an example of a published version versus a self-archived version. Upload your article in a manuscript version when registering it in NVA. The library will make sure that you have uploaded the correct version and that it is publishable in NVA. 

"Publish and read": Agreements between Norwegian academic institutions, HVL included, and a number of international publishers make articles credited to these institutions by its corresponding author openly accessible. Note that not all of these publishers' journals are included in the agreement, and that there is a quota as to how many articles pr. year each institution may publish openly. Agreements are also renegotiated after a given period. For details, see the website Openscience.no.  

Hybrid Open Access: Publishing in a traditional subscription journal while making your article openly accessible by paying a publication fee. This fee is normally higher than the publication fee charged by Open Access journals (Gold). Note that neither HVL nor the Research Council of Norway cover the costs for hybrid publication, since Norwegian institutions in most cases already subscribe to the journal. If in doubt whether a journal is Open Access or hybrid, contact the library. 

Publish and read

Since 2019, HVL and other Norwegian institutions have agreements with the publishers Elsevier, Springer, Sage, Taylor & Francis, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, ACM and Wiley. These agreements cover both journal subscriptions and open access publishing for journal articles by affiliated researchers.

In order for the agreement to apply, the corresponding author must credit a Norwegian institution that takes part in the agreement as his or her affiliation. Please note that some journals are excluded from the agreements.

Discounts

HVL has agreements for discounts with Frontiers and MDPI that also allow the publishers to send invoices to HVL directly. The Open Access fund will pay, under its normal conditions.

The agreements with Taylor & Francis, Springer and Elsevier also include a discount for pure Open Access journals, with central invoicing.

Under all the agreements, the publisher will check with HVL whether an article qualifies for funding, so the author does not need to apply to the OA fund separately.

HVL's Open Access Policy aims to ensure that research results produced by our staff are made openly accessible as far as possible. The main principles of our policy are the following: 

• HVL researchers have full academic freedom to publish where they wish.
• They are at the same time encouraged to examine the possibility of publishing in Open Access journals.
• In cases where two or more journals can be considered equal in terms of academic standing, and at least one of them is an Open Access journal, the researcher should choose the Open Access journal.
• All peer-reviewed academic articles published by HVL researchers should be deposited in HVL Open, regardless of whether they are published in Open Access journals or not. When the article is published without Open Access, the Accepted Manuscript version of the article should be deposited. HVL's retention rights policy allows HVL to make the manuscript available immediately under a Creative Commons licence. Authors can make reservations against this if needed.
• For further details, see HVL's Open Access Policy. 

In the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, you can search for journals within your scientific field that are either DOAJ-registered (Gold OA) or have a publisher agreement.

When a publication (article) is published Open Access, it is supplied with a licence that permits open use and sharing. As its author, you retain copyright. The most common licences are Creative Commons licences, which have international distribution. There are different Creative Commons licences, and you can read more about them on the organization's website.

The most open licence is CC-BY, which requires attribution (of creators/authors), but which otherwise imposes no restrictions on sharing and adaptation of content. It also allows for commercial use. This type is commonly used in Open Access publishing and external funders normally require that you choose this licence. If you do not have external funding, serveral journals allow you to choose a more restrictive licence if you wish. Journals may likewise operate with specific requirements in this regard. Manuscript versions in NVA are supplied with a Creative Commons licence, as a rule CC-BY.