Updated Guidelines for Publication with Open Access
As of 1 October, a new version of Forte’s Guidelines for Publication with Open Access comes into force. The intention is that the changes will make the guidelines clearer and easier to follow.
It is the objective of both the Swedish government and the EU that publications resulting from publicly funded research must be published with open access as of 2020. It is a question of democracy. The government also emphasises that there continues to be a 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.
The revision of Forte’s guidelines for open access makes it clearer that the requirement for immediate open access applies to all research that is granted funds as of 2021, regardless of when the results are published.
One addition to the guidelines also stipulates that all publication must be undertaken with an open licence (CC-BY). This must be stated in all versions of manuscripts submitted for publication. This means that copyright remains with the author, and is not assigned to publishers who can then restrict the use or dissemination of the published article.
A review conducted by the National Library of Sweden shows that progress is being made towards an openly accessible publishing system, although much work still remains to be done. Between 2017 and 2020, the proportion of directly openly accessible articles has increased from 33 percent to 52 percent (provisional figures).
Forte continues to strive to achieve the government’s objective of the transition to an openly accessible publishing system. We are doing this together with higher education institutions and other funding bodies by making demands, putting pressure on publishers and by contributing to the joint funding of open access journals, which are currently financed only by processing charges.
