Open Access

Open Access means free access to scientific publications via the Internet. Open Access is supported by scientific organisations, academic institutions and libraries around the world.  The aims of efforts are:

  • rapid, worldwide dissemination of scientific information
  • free access to the results of publicly funded research
  • increased visibility and citation frequency of documents
  • simplified use for further research
  • promotion of interdisciplinary and international cooperation
  • long-term availability of documents

Are you an academic at the University of Basel and would like to make the results of your research visible?

We support you with various options in order to make your publications openly accessible.

Contact and Support

In practice, a distinction is made between two Open Access strategies:

  • Green Road: Self-archiving or secondary publication of conventionally published contributions on subject-specific or institutional servers (repositories). At the University of Basel, the edoc document server is available for this purpose.
  • Gold Road: Primary publication of academic articles in quality-assured (peer reviewed) Open Access journals.

Open Access at the University of Basel and in Switzerland

The University of Basel is a cosignatory of the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" and has had an Open Access policy since 2013.

In 2006, the most important scientific institutions in Switzerland signed the Berlin Declaration. Since 2007, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has required recipients of its funding to publish their research results in the form of digital publications that are freely available on the Internet (Open Access publications).

In 2017 and 2018, swissuniversities and the Schweizerische Hochschulkonferenz adopted a national Open Access strategy for Switzerland and a corresponding action plan, with the goal that by 2024 all scientific publications financed with public funds must be freely accessible on the Internet.

 

Open Access journals cover the same quality spectrum as conventional publications. Special features are:

  • The digital publication has priority over the printed format.
  • The articles are freely accessible on the Internet from the time of their publication (no embargo period for the latest issues).
  • Instead of subscription or license fees, publication costs are covered by alternative funding models.
  • Around a quarter of Open Access journals require that publication fees are paid (pre-financing model).

Financing of Open Access publication costs, extended until 2024

University of Base has made a complimentary fund available for Open Access publications, for which the Article Processing Charge (APC) or Book Chapter Processing Charge is not covered by third-party funding.

Please note: The awards are available to the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Philosophy and History, the Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Psychology.

Members of the University of Basel can apply for funding if their publications meet the following criteria:

  • Main authors or corresponding authors belong to the University of Basel (unibas email address).
  • The publication is a journal article or a book contribution.
  • The contribution appears in a purely Open Access publication.
  • The journal has a peer-review process or fulfils equivalent evaluation criteria as established for that subject.
  • There is no third-party funding that also cover the costs for Open Access publications.
  • Funding is limited to a maximum of two contributions per person per calendar year.

Funding of up to CHF 2500 is possible.

Hybrid Open Access publications and entire Open Access books are not funded.

Please check in time the financing possibility for your contribution.

Please submit your application via https://www.oa-fund.unibas.ch

Applicants will be informed promptly, whether the publication will be funded or not. Applications will be processed in the order in which they are received. The date of receipt will be used for consideration, should the funds be used up ahead of schedule. For this reason, we recommend to check preliminary the funding possibilities.

All major research sponsors support Open Access publications. Information about the application options may be found on the sponsors’ websites:

If you have questions, please contact openaccess@clutterunibas.ch

General

University of Basel authors receive discounts on publication fees from the following publishers or the publication costs are covered in full by agreements with the publishers.  Before submitting a manuscript, please find out about the financing of publication fees for your journals. If you have any questions, please contact openaccess@clutterunibas.ch.

The affiliation with the University of Basel is usually recognised by the @unibas email address, via the IP range of the university, or the University of Basel must be selected during the submission process.

Explanation of the Article Quota Status column

For some publishers, the number of articles supported is limited. Once the quota has been exhausted, funding must be organised independently, or the green open access route (at https://universe-intern.unibas.ch/) should be followed instead of the publisher’s open access option. For most publishers, the acceptance date is the authoritative date for verification.

  • unlimited: there is no limit to the number of articles that can be published open access by University of Basel authors.
  • open: the number of articles that can be published open access by University of Basel authors is limited. As soon as the quota is reached, "closed" will be displayed here. If possible, a time estimate (in brackets) will be made as to when the article quota will be sufficient.
  • closed: the limited article quota has been reached. As a rule, a new quota will be available the following year.

Publisher

Article Quota Status

Discount

Author Workflow

Title List

Additional Information

AAAS - Science Advances

unlimited

15%

Workflow

Science Advances

AAAS Members receive an additional  4% discount..
 

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

unlimited

100%

Workflow

Title list

 

American Chemical Society (ACS)

closed

40-100%

Workflow

Title list

Update October 2024: article quota used up since October 23.
For articles whose research is funded by the SNSF, the reduced APC of $ 3'000 must be self-financed when publishing in a "transformative journal" (hybrid open access).
After the quota expires, a reduced APC of $ 3'000 applies.

American Institute of Physics

open
(for publication year 2024)

100%

Workflow

Title list

 

Biochemical Society/Portland Press

unlimited

15%

Workflow

all journals

 

BioMed Central (BMC)

open

15%

Information

all journals

The University of Basel is a member of BMC. With this membership, authors receive a 15% discount on the APC list price.

British Medical Journal (BMJ)

closed

25-100%

Workflow

Title list
only applies to titles under "Available to authors from institutions participating in the Read & Publish agreement"

For gold OA journals and BMJ Case Reports, University of Basel authors receive a 25% discount on the APC.
For BMJ Case Reports, an individual or institutional fellowship is required. The University of Basel has an institutional fellowship and the fellowship ID can be requested via openaccess@clutterunibas.ch
. More information on BMJ Case Reports.

Cambridge University Press

unlimited

100%

Workflow

Title list

 

Cogitatio Press

unlimited

100%

Information

Title list

 

The Company of Biologists

unlimited

100%

Workflow

all journals

Not valid for review articles

De Gruyter

unlimited

90%

Workflow

Title list

 

Elsevier

unlimited

100%

 Workflow

 Title list

 

Frontiers

The University of Basel is not taking part in the Swiss Consortium agreement with Frontiers. There is therefore no central funding for APCs by the university.

IEEE

closed

100%

Workflow

Title list

Agreement covers Gold Open Access Journals only

Institute of Physics

unlimited

100%

Workflow

Title list

 

Karger

unlimited

100%

Workflow

Title list

 

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW)

open
(for publication year 2024)

100%

Workflow

Title list

 

MDPI

unlimited

20%

Workflow

all journals

 

Nature Research Journals

closed

100%

Workflow

Title list
Not included in agreement: Gold Open Access Journals from Nature Journal Portfolio, e. g. Scientific Reports)

Update May 2024: article quota used up since May 13. Authors now will pay an APC or choose to not publishing open access and use the green open access route. For green open access please upload your accepted manuscipt in UNIverse.

Nucleic Acids Research (NAR)

unlimited

10%

Workflow

 

 

Oxford University Press

open
(for approx. 90% of articles)

100%

Workflow

Title list

10% discount on APC in "fully open access journals".

PLOS Journals

The University of Basel is not taking part in the Swiss Consortium agreement with Public Library of Science. There is therefore no central funding for APCs by the university.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS)

 

USD 4'995 instead of USD 5'495

Workflow

 

Please indicate University of Basel for invoicing.

Royal Society

unlimited

25%

Workflow

all journals

 

Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)

unlimited

100%

Workflow

Title list

 

SAGE

unlimited

100%

Workflow

Title list

 

SCOAP3

unlimited

100%

Information

Title list

Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics.

Springer

open
(for publication year 2024)

15-100%

Workflow

Title list

15% discount for gold open access journals under the  SpringerOpen name.

Taylor & Francis

open
(for publication year 2024)

100%

Workflow

Title list

New contract from February 2024 includes the gold open access journals from Dove Press and the F1000 Research platform.

Wiley

closed

100%

Workflow

Title list

Gold Open Access journals: currently no discount.
Update on ongoing negotiations with Wiley (October 2024)

 

The SNSF adapted its Open Access guidelines in 2023. All articles must now be made freely accessible immediately. These changes are relevant for all research projects approved from 2023 onwards.

cOAlition S is an association of research funders who are committed to free and unrestricted access to academic publications. In 2022, the SNSF joined cOAlition S and has adapted its funding conditions accordingly since 2023:

All publications resulting from SNSF projects submitted after January 1, 2023, must be published Open Access without an embargo and under a CC-BY licence (a 12-month embargo is accepted for books). The Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) is a mechanism for fulfilling these requirements.

The Open Access requirements can still be met in three ways: Publication in an Open Access journal (gold route), in a hybrid journal, or as a manuscript version (Author Accepted Manuscript) in a digital archive (secondary publication or green Open Access route).

Researchers who make their publication freely accessible by means of secondary publication via the green Open Access route can use the following standard wording and include it in all manuscript versions (Submitted to Author Accepted Manuscript):

“This research was funded in whole or in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, a CC BY public copyright licence is applied to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.”

If researchers receive a negative decision regarding the Rights Retention Strategy from the publisher during the publication process and still have to comply with a blocking or embargo period, then the written correspondence with the publisher should be retained. In this way, efforts to comply with the funding requirements can be demonstrated to the SNSF.

Those who wish to publish their paper in an academic Open Access journal often pay publication fees, so-called Article Processing Charges, to cover the costs of editorial processes, marketing and quality control. With the emergence of Open Access publication models, dubious journals are also entering the publication market. So-called "predatory journals" demand publication fees for editorial services that are not provided or are provided with low quality. These unethical business practices not only damage the academic publication landscape and Open Access, but are also not without consequences for the reputation of the authors.

When looking for a suitable journal in which to publish, it is worth paying more attention, particularly when journals are not known and the following aspects are noticed:

Correspondence

  • Request for submission by email when contact details are unclear and a submission system is missing
  • Email exchanges with generalised salutation and automatically-generated emails

Journal

  • Title begins with International, Global, World, American, European, Advanced Journal of… and/or is very similar to a well-known journal
  • The website and articles contain advertisements and are poorly laid out
  • Misleading or non-existent reference numbers: ISSN (link ISSN: portal.issn.org) is not entered, own impact factor, founding date and number of issues are unknown
  • No archiving of previously-published issues
  • The editorial board is not related to the subject, is not listed or its members cannot be found or can be found with different affiliations

Publishing

  • A quick publication process could indicate deficient quality control and a lack of peer review procedures
  • Missing licences and user agreements
  • Non-transparent publication costs

If in doubt, it should be checked if the journal

  • is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  • is referenced in relevant specialist databases
  • publisher is a member of the "Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association" (OASPA) or the "Committee on Publication Ethics" (COPE)
  • has had a complaint made against it in Cabells Predatory Reports (only within the computer network of the University of Basel)

If you have any questions, please contact openaccess@unibas.ch

The University Library offers researchers of the University of Basel guidance and infrastructures to enable them to publish their work Open Access on the "Gold Road" (primary publication) as well as on the "Green Road" (secondary publication).

  • edoc: You would like to make your previously published publications available Open Access? Here you will find information about secondary publication on the edoc institutional repository of the University of Basel.
  • eterna: You are the editor of a journal and would like to publish it Open Access? The University Library Basel’s eterna periodicals portal is available to you and we would be happy to advise you further.

emono: You would like to publish a book or a series Open Access from the outset? The University Library Basel’s emono publication platform is available to members of the university and we would be happy to advise you about additional options.

What to do, if a full-text article is not accessible?

The University Library Basel recommends the following steps to researchers and students: a search for the full-text article using academic search engines, a search using browser extensions for Open Access, requesting information from researchers. You can find further information here.

If you have any questions, please contact openaccess@clutterunibas.ch

On 8 October 2019, the Rectorate of the University of Basel adopted the revised Open Access Policy.

Your contacts for Open Access at the University Library