Reuse

Publishing

You can publish your data immediately after the project ends, upon publication of the research results, after an embargo period, or when agreements (i.e. with other researchers) upon data sharing are made. Mind that the Open Science movement insists on publishing data as soon as they are available.

Be aware also that, in principle, UAntwerpen owns all research data generated by its researchers and that these data should remain at the disposal of the institution in the case of a departure.

Be aware of predatory journals/publishers. Many publishers ask for a fee (article processing charges) to make a publication open access available on their website. Some publishers abuse this model. They charge for publication without having the necessary quality assurance in place. For instance, these ‘predatory’ publishers and journals do not organize or carry out the peer review, suddenly ask for higher fees than what was originally agreed upon, or do not publish some articles at all despite payment. Researchers are spammed daily with emails from predatory publishers that are using subtle misleading techniques. For example, journal titles are mentioned that are, except for a few words, exactly the same as those from well-known and high-profile journals.

  • Check this informative video on predatory publishing!

Luckily there is a way to avoid predatory publishers.
It is important to be careful when choosing a journal. The following tools can help to decide whether a journal is reliable or not:

Open Access publications

The general definition of Open Access publication is that scientific publications should be freely available online for everyone without financial, technical or legal barriers. Open Access can increase the visibility of research output, supports innovation and knowledge economy, and helps to close the knowledge gap between the Global North and the Global South.

Open Access Policies

1. The Open Access policy of the UA

The open access policy entails the obligation that all UAntwerp authors must add the pdf of the final author version* or an open access publisher version when they register a peer-reviewed journal article for inclusion in the Institutional Repository.

Submitted final author’s versions of journal articles will be made open access available according to the publisher's copyright policy and/or the Belgian Open Access regulation.

* The term ‘final author version’ means the last submitted peer-reviewed manuscript. Also referred to as author accepted manuscript (AAM) or post-print.

2. Belgian Open Access Legislation

The Belgian Open Access regulation allows that the final author version* of scientific peer-reviewed publications (A1 publications) can freely be made available as long as the embargo periods are respected (6 months for STEM and 12 months for SSH) and the publications stem from at least 50% public funding. The Institutional Repository supports heavily this regulation.

* The term ‘final author version’ means the last submitted peer-reviewed manuscript. Also referred to as author accepted manuscript (AAM) or post-print.

Types of Open Access

1. Green Open Access

Under this model, a researcher makes his work open access available by self-archiving the last submitted peer-reviewed manuscript in an institutional repository. Self-archived manuscripts are often made accessible after an embargo period. Since 2018 this model is supported by the Belgian Open Acccess regulation  (Art. XI.196, §2/1 Wetboek Economisch recht). The Belgian open access regulation gives authors the right to make the manuscript of a scholarly article available in open access if the publication is a result of research funded by public funds for at least 50%, with a maximum embargo period of 12 months for the social sciences and humanities and 6 months for the other sciences.

2. Full Gold and Hybrid Open Access

Here the author pays the publisher a fee (author processing charge or APC) to make the final version of the work immediately open access available on the publisher’s platform. Very often these publications are made available under one of the creative commons licenses.  In this model, users don’t need a subscription to a journal or have to pay an access fee. The distinction between Full Gold and Hybrid is made based on whether the journal is fully Open Access (Full Gold) or closed by default (Hybrid).

3. Diamond Open Access

Here the journal is fully Open Access, but the author does not have to pay a fee for Open Access publication. These journals are usually dependent on funding and Societies and involve a lot of volunteering work. Therefore, Diamond journals are often smaller in scale.