In the Netherlands, 95% of all scientific articles were made available in Open Access last year. Unfortunately, achieving open and transparent science can be complex at times, and it takes place within a publication system that is under pressure.
Researchers face enormous publication pressure; costs are rising, and researchers’ influence over the publication process is often limited. Moreover, there are growing concerns about the quality and sustainability of the current system.
As work continues on a new National Open Access Strategy and the conversation around publication culture is increasingly taking place within universities, this is a great moment to critically reflect on the choices you make as a researcher. This week, we’ll highlight one route to Open Access publishing each day and what it means for you as a researcher. Today we will start with an introduction.
Gold, Green, Diamond… What’s the difference again?
To publish your work openly, you can follow different “routes.” These are often referred to as gold, green, and diamond.
- Gold: Your publication is made Open Access immediately after payment of a fee by you as the author, by VU, or by your research funder.
- Green: Your publication is published Closed Access by a publisher, but the final author version of the article is made available in an Open Access repository after six months.
- Diamond: Your publication is made Open Access immediately without any cost to you as the author. Instead, institutions like VU, professional associations, or funders support these non-profit diamond publishers/platforms.
Outside of these routes, it’s also possible to share your work openly at an early stage through pre-registrations and preprints.
Each of these Open Access routes has its own advantages and disadvantages. When selecting a journal or publisher, various considerations come into play. For every publication outlet, you as an author should assess which Open Access routes are available and whether they suit your preferences and circumstances. Different values may influence your decision, such as:
- Quality: How do you assess the quality of your journal/publisher? How important is prestige/reputation to you?
- Openness: How open and reusable do you want your work to be?
- Affordability: What are the costs, and are they covered by a VU agreement with a publisher or by a research funder?
- Equity: Does your choice contribute to equal access to knowledge? And does it promote equal opportunities in academic publishing?
- Sovereignty: Do you retain ownership of your work? How important is it for you to maintain control over your publication?
- Ease-of-use: How important is it that the process of publishing your work openly is automatic/does not require much effort from you?
The numbers: are we currently following a gold, green, or diamond path at VU Amsterdam?
In 2024, 97% of all peer-reviewed articles at VU were published Open Access.
About 81% of these were published directly Open Access by the publisher (Gold or Diamond Open Access). It’s estimated that only around 2% of this 81% was Diamond Open Access. So, the majority of VU publications are made Open Access by paying a fee (APC) to the publisher or because VU authors publish in journals covered by a publisher agreement that VU has signed.
16% of all articles were initially published behind a paywall by the publisher but were later made openly available. Almost all of these articles were automatically made Open Access after a six-month embargo via the VU Research Portal/PURE (Green Open Access).
We don’t have concrete figures on the number of Open Access books and other publication outlets, although it’s expected that the Open Access percentage there is significantly lower.
To help you get started with Open Access publishing, we’ll highlight one of the routes to Open Access each day this week. Tomorrow, we’ll focus on Gold Open Access!
