The results of publicly funded research should be accessible to all. This is why Forte requires that all researchers we fund must publish their results with open access. On this page you can read about which terms and conditions apply. The guidelines apply as of 1 October 2020.

All peer-reviewed conference and journal publications stemming from research financed fully or in part by Forte must be published with full access for all. In its 2019 Budget Bill, the government stated that scientific publications produced with public funds as of 2020 at the latest must be openly accessible immediately after they have been published. The government also emphasises the need for higher education institutions and research funding bodies to assume a shared responsibility for striving to ensure that the national objective for open access is achieved.

For funds granted by Forte up and including 2020, results of research conducted using funds from Forte must be published with open access with a delay of no more than six months. This is done either by archiving a version of an already published article in an open, searchable archive no later than six months after publication, or by making the publication available immediately in a journal that applies open access (pure open access or hybrid).

For funds granted by Forte as of 2021, results of research conducted using funds from Forte must be published with open access immediately upon publication. This must be done by publication in one of the following ways:

  • in openly accessible journals and on openly accessible platforms;
  • in transformative journals1or in journals under transformative agreements, or
  • in subscription journals, provided that the final published version of the article or a peer-reviewed, author-approved version of the article is deposited simultaneously, and without delay, in an openly accessible archive (repository).

Publication must take place with an open licence (CC-BY), which must be stated in all versions of manuscripts submitted for publication. This means that copyright remains with the author(s). The following text must be included in the manuscript:

This research was funded in whole or in part by Forte [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.

Creative Commons licence CC BY is an open licence that means that the author permits others to share and make changes to the article for any purpose. This licence requires that the author be stated in connection with dissemination and that any changes made to the original article be specified.

Publication with Creative Commons CC BY-ND may be accepted in exceptional cases on the condition that the beneficiary expressly requests this and provides acceptable reasons for this. In short, this licence provides the same terms of use as CC BY, but changes may not be made without the author’s permission, i.e. the person reusing the article may otherwise only re-publish exactly the same version of the article.

Content owned by a third party, such as images and illustrations, is not subject to open licence requirements.

Monographs and anthologies are currently exempt from requirements for open access.

Publishing costs

Forte does not usually cover publishing costs within the framework of individual research grants, so such publishing costs cannot be applied for. As far as Sweden is concerned, there are numerous agreements for publication in transformative journals or in journals under transformative agreements, primarily through Bibsam, the national library consortium. Publication in journals with such agreements does not involve any additional cost for the project if the organisation to which the author of the article belongs is party to the agreement. Such publication is prepaid by the organisations covered by these agreements. In cases where publication takes place in pure open access journals and joint payment is not made via the Bibsam consortium or the individual higher education institution, the cost may be covered by the research grant. In the first instance, however, jointly paid open access channels should be used. The libraries at higher education institutions will normally provide support on these matters.

Follow-up

In connection with the final scientific reporting of research projects granted as of 2021, Forte will enquire whether the results of the project have been published with open access in accordance with these instructions.

Publication support

For journals seeking publication support from Forte, only those journals that are openly accessible and do not apply embargo periods will be considered for publication grants. Contributions to hybrid journals may only be granted if these are included in transformative agreements.