Open access to scholarly publications

Types of Open Access (OA)

Several main forms of open access to scholarly publications have been established, commonly referred to as green, gold, and diamond. The Swedish Parliament has decided that publications resulting from publicly funded research must be made immediately available with open access.

Three main forms of open access

• Green (also called self-archiving): The author deposits a version of their manuscript—most often the accepted version (postprint)—in an open repository or on their institution’s website. This may take place with some delay, after an embargo period set by the publisher. Although not the final published version, it is usually sufficiently close to be cited.
• Gold: Publications are made immediately available to all through the publishing platform. This often, though not always, involves a publication fee (Article Processing Charge, APC, or Book Processing Charge, BPC) to cover the journal's or publisher's publishing costs. The fee may be covered by universities, research funders, or consortia.
• Diamond (sometimes called platinum): A variant of gold in which publications are made immediately available, but without any fees for publishing or reading. Instead, the publishing costs are covered by a third party, such as a scholarly society, a university or consortium, through public funding, or through voluntary work. A Swedish node for Diamond Open is being developed to coordinate resources and efforts to promote diamond open access. Read more at https://diamondoasweden.org/.

Hybrid journals are subscription-based journals in which individual articles can be made open access through payment of a fee. Swedish researchers publish extensively in such journals  (see the National Library's Open access in numbers). Edited volumes can also be published in hybrid form, with selected chapters made open access.