Green Open Access
Even if you cannot publish in open access through a publisher, you can still publish a preprint or postprint version of your manuscript in the Radboud repository or other repositories, such as Zenodo. This option is free for authors.
Radboud Repository
Anyone can search the repository via the Radboud repository or the Netherlands Research Portal. All publications can also be found and downloaded on Google Scholar.
Option 1: via Taverne Amendment
Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, also known as the Taverne Amendment, gives the author of a short scientific work that has been funded wholly or partly by Dutch public funds the right to share their work after a ‘reasonable period of time’ following its initial publication. Since the Copyright Act is mandatory law, it takes precedence over contract law. This is why Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act takes precedence over any agreement between the author and the publisher.
For more information, see Taverne.
Option 2: Archiving Pre- or Postprints
Use this option if Taverne is not possible e.g. for longer works (e.g. books) or non-publicly funded works.
Many publishers allow self-archiving but with restrictions. For example, they may impose an embargo period or only allow sharing a preprint or postprint version of the article. The Open policy finder website provides specific information about the embargo period that applies for each journal.
There are two ways to upload your publication to the Radboud Repository:
- Via Research Information Services (RIS)
- Directly to the Radboud Repository
After uploading, a check is performed to ensure that the publication can be made public according to copyright law.
Option 3: via the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS)
With the Rights Retention Strategy, you can share the Author-Accepted-Manuscript (AAM) version of your work under a CC-BY license, even if the publisher restricts this right.
This strategy allows you to comply with your funder’s requirements to publish directly in open access, even if your article is not open access with the publisher.
When submitting your publication to the publisher, you must include a Rights Retention statement indicating your previous contract with a funder.
You can find such a statement on your research funder’s website or in the Rights Retention FAQ.
Sharing Preprints
A preprint is a scientific article uploaded to a preprint server before it has been reviewed by experts in the field.
Advantages of preprints
- Research results are immediately visible, whereas publication in a journal can take several months
- You can receive additional peer and/or community feedback to improve your publication
- It increases your visibility, allowing others to see what you are working on.
- Others can cite your work immediately
For more information about preprints, check out this guide to publishing preprints.
Please note that funders do not recognize preprint articles as full open access publications.
Preprint archives
There are various preprint servers where you can share your work. Most of these servers focus on a specific field, such as science (arXiv), Medicine (medRxiv), Biology (bioRxiv), and sociology (SocArXiv). ASAPbio provides an overview of preprint servers for different fields.
There are also preprint servers that cover all fields, such as Zenodo and the Open Science Framework.