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Open science

Open access options and opportunities at Hanken

            open access logo       Picture: Open access logo.

Open access (OA) to scholarly publications means that research publications are made freely accessible on the internet in a digital form. Open access promotes the dissemination of research results both within the scientific community and to the public at large. Readers can read, use, copy, print, and link to the OA publications, all free of charge.

There are three main types of open access publishing:

  • Gold open access: An article is published and made freely accessible on the publisher’s website immediately upon publication, in a journal that does not receive subscription fees from the readers, which means that all the articles in the journal are freely available immediately upon publication. Often a publishing fee (article processing charge, APC) is charged to cover the administrative costs of the journal. Gold open access publishing may also be free of charge.
  • Hybrid open access: The article is published and made openly available immediately upon publication after the payment of an article processing charge (APC), in a subscription-based journal where some articles are published freely available and other contents are available after the payment of a subscription fee.
  • Green open access (also called self-archiving): A version of the article is self-archived in a repository, usually an institutional repository or a subject-based repository, before, after or alongside the publication of the article. Green open access publishing is free of charge, but access to this article can be delayed by an embargo period.

When self-archiving, it is important to check the publisher’s policy for open access, which version may be archived, and if there is an embargo for self-archiving. The self-archived versions may be:

  • pre-print: submitted manuscript, author’s non peer-reviewed draft.
  • post-print: author’s accepted manuscript (AAM), final draft, post-review, the refereed manuscript, the author’s final version of the peer-reviewed article accepted for publication but not yet laid out for publication by the publisher.
  • Proof: often (partly) with the layout of the journal.
  • Version of Record (VoR): the publisher’s final PDF, the final published version with the layout of the journal.

Hanken researchers are entitled to different open access opportunities, for example:

Information on OA is available in Hanken's LibGuide on Open access.

Hanken's guidelines on open access to scholarly publications

Hanken promotes open access to scholarly publications, attends to the quality and societal impact of research, and offers training, instructions, and support for open access publishing, as well as for the responsible conduct of research.

Hanken is desirous of increasing open access publications for its societal impact and tries to ensure that all the new annually reported peer-reviewed scientific articles are made available open access at time of publication, and that the archivable part of a thesis is openly accessible directly or upon request.

Researchers are encouraged to consider open access options and outlets when they commence their research. The options available in order of preference are gold open access, hybrid open access with discounts on article processing charges (APCs), and non-embargoed self-archiving/green open access. The choice of publication venue is up to the researcher. Hanken urges researchers to evaluate the integrity and reputation of the publication channel to which they submit manuscripts and refrain from submitting to predatory or pseudo journals.

Hanken’s institutional repository DHanken is integrated with the research database Haris which is used for the registration and administration of research qualifications. The openness of Hanken’s publications is managed and overseen systematically and relevant information is reported to research.fi.

Researchers upload a legitimate copy of articles to the research database Haris. This is called green open access publishing or self-archiving. The uploaded copy is preferably a version of record (VoR) or a post-print version. Hanken urges researchers to investigate the conditions of the publishing agreements and publishers’ copyright guidelines, author sharing and reusing permissions, as well as research data policies. Hanken does not recommend publishing in a publication channel in which the publisher refuses to give authors reuse and self-archiving permissions despite negotiations.[1] Researchers who opt for green open access publishing should note if there is an embargo period that is imposed by the target publisher and hinders immediate open access to the self-archived copy in Haris.

Hybrid publishing is an alternative when it expedites the transition to fully open publishing as part of a transformative agreement which changes the contract between a subscriber (e.g., a university library) and a publisher from a subscription model to an open access one. As a member of the FinELib consortium, Hanken aims to secure open access agreements or discounts on article processing charges (APCs) with publishers. Most of FinElib’s agreements with publishers are Plan S compliant transformative agreements. Hanken Library updates the information on Discounts on APCs to publish open access in the LibGuide on Open access.

Since 2020, Hanken has allocated a central fund for open access publishing fees for researchers and defined criteria for fund granting when a researcher’s target journal is not included in the journal lists covered by the FinElib agreements with publishers. Financial support for book processing charges (BPCs) can also be provided for publishing monographs open access. See Hanken’s central fund for open access publishing fees in the LibGuide on Open access.

Final theses (master’s and licentiate theses and doctoral dissertations) written at Hanken are public documents (Constitution of Finland 12.2 §; Open­ness Act 1 §). Hanken aims to ensure that the metadata of a thesis are available, and the archivable part of the thesis is openly accessible free of charge directly or upon request.

Openness and the degree of openness of a thesis are the thesis author’s choice, while the author and thesis supervisor are provided guidance and support from Hanken to open the thesis responsibly. If the research material of a thesis contains con­fidential information, it is placed in the background/annex material, not in the publicly accessible part of the thesis. For article-based theses, it is advisable to avoid a publisher who imposes an embargo period.

If research data included in the thesis are opened, it is handled in accordance with the Guidelines on open and FAIR research data below. 

When researchers choose licence terms, it is recommended to make sure that the further use of scholarly publications and theses is not unnecessarily limited, and that the terms of use shall be clearly indicated. Hanken suggests using the standard, machine-readable CC BY licence, one of six Creative Commons licences, for published scientific articles. The licence recommendation also applies to the archiv­able part of a thesis. The metadata of scholarly publications and theses are recommended to be openly published under a CC0 licence.

[1] Researchers can check publishers’ copyright policies and approaches to self-archiving in Open policy finder. If it is not allowed to publish a self-archived copy in an institutional repository such as DHanken according to a publisher’s copyright policies, researchers propose an amendment. The Library and legal advisers can give advice.