Open Access publications are available online free of charge. They make use of a licence which safeguards the author's rights without hindering the use of the text for academic and teaching purposes.
Suber, Peter (2012): Open Access. MIT Press.
How does Open Access work?
There are a number of ways to provide Open Access.
Green Open Access refers to self-archiving or republishing previously published articles on a publicly accessible document server (institutional or subject-specific repository). In contrast to storing articles on websites, repositories are easier to search through, bring the research outputs of a particular institution together in one place, and preserve the content in a stable way over the long term. In many cases, the accepted manuscript (post-print, author's manuscript after peer review) or the pre-print version (author's manuscript before peer review) must be used when republishing an article. Depending on the publisher, some post-prints may not be made available until after a certain embargo period.
An overview of the republication policies of various publishers and journals may be found at Sherpa/Romeo.
The Gold route is a way of publishing research immediately in Open Access. The publication is freely accessible immediately, ideally with a Creative Commons licence, which allows it to be re-used and disseminated. In some cases, publication fees, known as APCs (Article Processing Charges) are payable.
A list of Open Access journals may be found in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
The Diamond route is a sub-category of Gold Open Access. Diamond Open Access refers to Open Access publications for which no publication fees are charged.
The Hybrid route refers to initial publication with Open Access in subscription-based journals. Publication of the article is often "paid for" by means of article processing charges (APCs) that are often very high. The University of Bern is wary of this model, because it leads to fees being paid twice – once through a subscription to the journal, and once through the APCs. This procedure is known as "double dipping".
More and more funding agencies and institutions require free access to publications and research data.
The SNSF supports the principle of Open Access and expects its grant recipients to make their research results publicly available for re-use, promptly and in electronic form.
Since 1 April 2018, published books have to be freely accessible after 12 months.
You can find detailed information about the SNSF regulations here.
Under Horizon2020, all beneficiaries must make their peer-reviewed scientific publications available through Open Access. They are free to choose either the Green or the Gold route.
Publications in the STEM subjects must be available through Open Access no later than six months after publication. There is a deadline of 12 months for the social sciences and humanities.
You can find detailed information about the H2020 regulations here.
At the end of 2015, the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) commissioned swissuniversities and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) to devise a national strategy for Open Access publications. The Open Access Strategy envisions that all publicly funded publications will be freely accessible by 2024.
The University of Bern requires its researchers to deposit a full version of all peer-reviewed and published academic work and the corresponding bibliographical information in the institutional repository of the University of Bern. This makes the academic work publicly available through Open Access, provided that there are no legal obstacles.
The University of Bern encourages its researchers to publish their research results in Open Access journals, where appropriate journals exist.
As of the 2014 reporting year, research evaluation and academic reports at the University of Bern are supported by the institutional repository of the University of Bern.
The University of Bern supports the implementation of these guidelines by operating an institutional repository which allows the University's researchers to deposit their publications and the corresponding metadata.
In relation to publishers, researchers retain the right to make their publications publicly accessible via the University of Bern repository – after the expiry of any applicable embargo period.
If this option is not available, the bibliographical information of the publications is deposited together with a full version of the text, which is protected from public access in the repository.