Contact Elin Hecker at the library if you have any questions regarding publishing and open access.
Choice of journal
The journal must be approved at level 1 or 2, so that NIH receives payment for the article. Search HKDir's register of scientific publishing channels to find out if a journal is approved.
Open access
Open access means that the article is freely and freely available to everyone. This usually means that the authors must pay an author fee (Article Processing Charges).
- Gold open access journals only contain open access articles
- Hybrid journals contain both open access articles and articles behind a paywall
The authorities want as many research publications as possible (from 2024: all) that are the result of publicly funded research, to be made openly available immediately at the time of publication. NIH has had an open access policy since 2014.
The options for open access are described below.
Gold open access journals
To check if a journal is gold open access, you can search the title in DOAJ or in HKDir's register of scientific publishing channels.
You can get funds for the article processing charges / author fee from NIH's open access fund.
More about the fund and application form
Discount on the author processing charges:
- Elsevier: 15 % discount
- Frontiers: 10% discount
- MDPI: 20% discount (note that a 20% discount is not granted if you use another discount voucher)
- SAGE: 20% discount
- Springer: 10% discount
- Taylor & Francis: 10% discount
Hybrid journals
NIH has Publish- and read-agreements with several publishers. It involves open access publishing without article processing charges in most of their hybrid journals:
- Elsevier - included titles
- SAGE - included titles
- Springer - included titles
- Taylor & Francis - included titles
If you publish in a hybrid journal that is not part of the above-mentioned agreements, there is no arrangement to get funds for the article processing charges if you choose open access. We can then make the article openly available in our institutional archive Brage - see the next section.
Brage - institutional repository
Brage is our institutional repository, and everything in the repository is freely available for all. Almost all scientific articles by NIH authors are made available in Brage, both open access articles and articles behind pay walls. For the latter, it is mostly the latest text version (after peer review) of the article we are allowed to use.
Click here to read more about the contents in Brage.
Funder's requirements
- The Research Council of Norway
All scholarly publications based on the result(s) from research funded by the Research Council, must be made open access immediately from the time of publication. Check out The Research Council of Norway's page about open access for more information.
How can you check that you comply with the Research Council's demand? Search the Journal Checker Tool (remember to ensure that the journal is approved at level 1 or 2). Type in the journal name or ISSN, the funders name and your institutional affiliation.
- The government
In 2017, the Government launched the National goals and
guidelines for open access to research articles [pdf] with the aim of making all publicly funded Norwegian research articles openly available by 2024.
- Horizon Europe (EU)
All scholarly publications based on the result(s) from research funded by Horizon Europe, must be made open access immediately from the time of publication.