Detailed information on Open Access Grants for FBM researchers

The producer of the PubMed database NLM is recently offering by way of the LinkOut project, the possibility to link PubMed to articles available in Green Open Access on institutional servers. However, to be eligible, each server must contain at least 1000 Open Access articles not already in PubMed Central. Our faculty does not have access to this opportunity yet as after a determined count, we found almost 800 articles put into Open Access correctly on Serval by our services.

To encourage you to put your publications without cost into open access on Serval and thereby increase their visibility via the integration of Serval into PubMed (LinkOut project), the Faculty of Biology and Medicine has decided to provide eight Open Access FBM grants for research groups, each of a value of 3,000 francs.

Conditions for participation:

– Head a research group affiliated to the Faculty of Biology and Medicine (UNIL or CHUV) since 1 January 2015, at least.

– Have your publications with UNIL or CHUV affiliation referenced in the MyUnil Publication-Serval application.

– Have your articles published in 2015 and 2016 put into Open Access following either the Gold road (hence having a type (hence having a type CC BY license) or, the Green road after deposition of the Authorized Accepted Manuscript on Serval (see explanation below). We do not consider free access, meaning access of the PDF form of the article on the journal’s website or in PMC, as Open Access since the researcher does not own the copyright of the document. In free access, the researcher cannot himself distribute the publisher’s PDF, as the document does not have a CC BY type license.

– This applies to articles: i) corresponding to original studies referenced in PubMed, ii) signed with a UNIL or CHUV affiliation and iii) for which a group member or group leader is first (co-first) or last (co-last) author.

Two main routes for Open Access of scientific publications:

– Pure Gold Road: the author publishes the article in an OA journal. To publish articles in Open Access following this route, the author usually has to pay Journal publication fees, called “Article Processing Charges”. The latter range from 50 to 6,000 francs, usually 2,500 francs on average for an article in the biomedical field.

– Green Road: the accepted author manuscript is deposited by the researcher – or a representative –in Open Access via an institutional server (Serval for UNIL and CHUV), in parallel with its commercial publication.

– Hybrid model: A distinction should be made between “Pure Gold Open Access” journals (such as PLoS and BMC) that receive revenue only from Article Processing Charges (APCs) paid by the authors, and the so-called “hybrid” journals that collect revenue from both institutional subscriptions and APCs, paid by the authors of the same institution if they choose the Open Access option. This so-called “double dipping” situation forces institutions to pay twice for the same service, and is therefore not acceptable. The FBM, like the SNSF, exclude funding for the Open Access option offered by hybrid journals.

How to deposit and provide Open Access to your publications via the UNIL/CHUV institutional repository Serval 

– Authors have the possibility until January 30, 2018, to send their Author Accepted Manuscripts 2015-2016 for Open Access on Serval to Cecile Lebrand (Lebrand@chuv.ch). Our unit offers to help you provide Open Access to your publications on Serval in compliance with publishers’ legal agreements and the funding agencies’ directives (FNS et H2020) following the Sherpa/Romeo guidelines.

– The Author Accepted Manuscript (post-print) is the manuscript version having passed peer-review and whose scientific content is accepted for publication by the publisher (before proofs; see details).

– You can send us your Accepted Author Manuscript including the text and figures (following the text) in PDF format.

Eligibility and registration of participants:

Dr. Cecile Lebrand, FBM Open Science Manager (Cecile.Lebrand@chuv.ch) must first validate your eligibility and registration to the Open Access FBM grant application.

Selection of the eight winning participants;

A draw will take place at the end of March 2018 to select the eight winning research groups who will each receive 3000 francs towards APCs for publishing in Pure Gold Open Access.

Terms of use of the Open Access FBM grant:

– Grants must be used to finance the Article Processing Charges (APCs) of articles to be published in 2018 in Pure Gold Open Access Journals registered in the DOAJ[1] (note, therefore excluding Open Access options from hybrid journals).

– Cecile Lebrand, FBM Open Science Manager (Cecile.Lebrand@chuv.ch) must first validate Open Access journal choices and reimbursements for APCs.

[1] The DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open-access, peer-reviewed journals. Launched in 2003 at Lund University in Sweden, the DOAJ contains, as of today, a list of more than 10’000 OA journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and humanities. This directory is very helpful for researchers within the biomedical field to search for a suitable OA journal for publication and for OA articles.