Open access

Open Access possibilities

Open Access is a model of scientific communication, which provides durable, immediate, independent and free online full text disclosure of published scientific results (most often articles) without restrictions for anybody (source: https://openaccess.cz/).

Publishing of articles in the Open Access mode is presently required by a number of research funding grant agencies (for example Horizon 2020).

Advantages of Open Access publishing for authors are:

better publication visibility and thus more readers
easier transfer of results into practice
higher citation response

There are three most frequent versions of open access:

Green way

Storing of the selected form of the article (preprint, postprint) in a professional or institutional repository

+ Quick, simple way

- If the article is simultaneously published in a journal, it is necessary to adapt to the conditions of the publisher.

Open access policies of particular publishers it is possible to find in the database Sherpa/Romeo.

Golden way

Publishing in a journal, which provides open access. It is necessary to pay the publication fee APC (Article Processing Charge), from which the operation of the publisher is being financed. Besides purely open journals there are also hybrid journals, which offer to authors a possibility to choose publishing in open or closed access.

+ Ordinary review procedure

+ Availability on the publisher’s server

- Necessity to obtain financial funds for the APC (inclusion in the grant application, use of special funds, …)

- Risk of predatory journals

Platinum (sometimes also Diamaond) way

Publishing in a journal, which provides open access. It is not necessary to pay publication fees, the operation of the publisher is being financed for example by any institution.

+ Ordinary review procedure

+ Availability on the publisher’s server

+ Without necessity to pay the APC

Journals for open access publishing are equal to ordinary journals regarding its quality. They have impact factor and they are traceable in databases like Web of Science or Scopus. Open access absolutely does not influence the course or the quality of the review procedure.

Licence Creative commons

Articles published by any way of open access can be further used by anyone. Determination of conditions for further use of the work is allowed to the author or to the publisher thanks to the licence Creative Commons (CC).

The licence CC offers to authors certain flexibility and informs the public, how the work can be handled.

There are six different CC licence types, of which the most freedom in further distribution are provided by the CC-BY licence..

CC-BY allows anyone to distribute and also edit the work freely, with necessity to mention the author’s name. The work can be used also commercially.

CC-BY-SA allows anyone to distribute and also edit the work freely, with necessity to mention the author’s name. The work can be used also commercially. The work, which was created by editing of the original work, must be distributed under the same conditions as the original work.

CC-BY-NC allows anyone to distribute and also edit the work freely, with necessity to mention the author’s name. The work CANNOT BE used for commercial purposes.

CC-BY-NC-SA allows anyone to distribute and also edit the work freely, with necessity to mention the author’s name. The work CANNOT BE used for commercial purposes. The work, which was created by editing of the original work, must be distributed under the same conditions as the original work.

CC-BY-ND allows anyone to distribute and also edit the work freely, with necessity to mention the author’s name. The work CANNOT BE modified in any way. The work can be used also commercially.

CC-BY-NC-ND allows anyone to distribute and also edit the work freely, with necessity to mention the author’s name. The work CANNOT BE modified in any way. The work CANNOT BE used for commercial purposes.

In light of the Open Science principles, the most supported licence is the CC-BY. More information about the CC licences you can find on the Creative Commons web.