Open Access to publications

Open Access means that scientific publications are made freely available for anyone to read, download, and share.

This can be achieved by publishing in open access journals, on open publishing platforms, or by self-archiving an accepted version in an open repository. The Swedish Government’s national objective is that publicly funded publications should be made immediately openly available and preferably published under open licenses.

Why publish research results Open Access?

Open Access to research accelerates the dissemination of research and increases its impact. It facilitates interdisciplinary research, increases the visibility and use of research, and enables groups who would otherwise not have access to published research to benefit from it.

The Bibsam Consortium's national agreements

The Bibsam Consortium negotiates national agreements for scholarly publishing and access to research on behalf of Swedish higher education institutions. Through its action plan, Bibsam seeks to accelerate the transition to a more open, sustainable, and cost-effective publishing system in which publicly funded research is freely available to everyone.

We have interviewed Wilhelm Widmark, Library Director at Stockholm University and Vice Chair of the Bibsam Consortium, about how Bibsam’s action plan will affect Swedish higher education institutions and researchers.

Time for the Next Step in the Transition to Open Access

How to do this in your research

MDU encourages employees to publish Open Access. Open Access publishing is not limited to research articles; for example, book chapters and conference contributions may also be published open access.

Publisher agreements for Open Access publishing

The University Library has several publisher agreements that include funding for open access publishing. If no agreement is available for publishing in a specific publication, funding may be applied for from the University Library.

Open Access, External link. Internal portal

If there is no Open Access publishing option for your research, self-archiving in the digital scholarly repository DiVA may be an alternative.

Green Open Access - parallel publishing in DiVA, Internal portal External link.

Publish under an open license

For a publication to be considered openly available, it needs to have an open licence that clarifies how the material may be used. A Creative Commons licence (CC licence) makes it easy for readers to understand what is permitted, such as sharing, distributing or reusing the text.

Creative Commons for researchers, National Library of Sweden External link.

Use the SciFree tool to check whether an individual journal is included in one of MDU’s agreements and which CC licences are available.

SciFree External link.

Other ways to publish Open Access

Start an openly available scholarly journal on the national publishing platform “Publicera”.

Help to start an OA journal, Internal Portal External link.

We have interviewed Eva Ärlemalm-Hagsér, Professor Emeritus at MDU, and Editor-in-Chief for the journal Childhood in the Anthropocene (CiA), about her experiences in launching an Open Access Journal.

Three questions about launching an Open Access Journal

Publish your research as an openly available and peer-reviewed scholarly book through the Kriterium platform.

Kriterium – quality review and publication of scholarly books Open Access (in Swedish) External link.

Publish through Open Research Europe (ORE) – an open publishing platform with transparent peer review for researchers.

Open Research Europe External link.

Would you like to learn more about Open Access and what it means?

Open Access, National Library of Sweden External link.

Open Access to scholarly publications, Open Science.se External link.