Articles
ERC mandates the immediate open access publication of research articles. You can follow these routes:
- Diamond open access
- Gold open access
- Hybrid open access, via open access deals
- Green open access, via the Rights Retention Strategy
We recommend you share your article first as a preprint on a preprint server. As a result, your research results are immediately available. It could lead to extra feedback from your peers or your community and contribute to your visibility.
Diamond open access
What is Diamond open access?
- Publication in a full open access journal.
- Publication is immediately open access.
- Free of charge for authors.
- Publication has an open licence (CC BY).
How does the funding work?
In Diamond open access the author does not have to pay publication costs. The journals are funded by the academic community.
Where do I find the journals?
- In the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) use the filter ‘Without fees’.
- In the European Diamond Discovery Hub (DDH).
- In A curated list of Diamond OA journals in the Netherlands.
- ERC-funded authors also have the option of publishing on the Open Research Europe platform. Articles submitted to this platform are published right away as a preprint and undergo an open peer review procedure.
Gold Open Access
What is Gold open access?
- Publication in a full open access journal.
- Publication is immediately open access.
- Involves publication costs (APCs).
- Publication has an open licence. ERC mandates the use of CC BY or an equivalent open licence.
How does the funding work?
You can pay the charges from your research budget. Alternatively, the journal might be part of an open access deal, which will result in up to a 100% discount on the APCs.
Where do I find the journals?
- In the UU Journal Browser you can check if a gold open access journal is part of an open access deal.
- The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) contains both gold and diamond journals, as well as information about APCs.
Please note: a deal between the UU and a particular publisher does not necessarily guarantee the scientific quality of all included journals. Always keep a critical eye. Read more about reliable publishers and predatory publishers.
Hybrid open access
What is hybrid open access, via open access deals?
- Publication in a subscription journal that makes individual articles open access on request.
- Publication is immediately open access.
- Involves publication costs (APCs).
- Publication has an open licence. ERC mandates the use of CC BY or an equivalent open licence.
How does the funding work?
You cannot use your research budget for paying APCs to hybrid journals. However, you can make use of open access deals. This may result in up to a 100% discount on the APCs.
Please note: some open access deals reach their maximum (the cap) at the end of the year. When the cap is reached, you can no longer publish open access at a discount. Read more about publisher deals and when their cap is reached. If you submit to a journal that is part of a capped deal, use the Rights Retention Strategy (see Green open access) as backup.
Where do I find the journals?
- In the UU Journal Browser hybrid journals are indicated as ‘open request journals’. Here you can also check if the journals are part of a deal.
Green open access
What is green open access, via the Rights Retention Strategy?
- You publish closed access at the publisher, but the author’s version (AAM) becomes open access through the UU Repository.
- The AAM is immediately open access.
- Free of charge for authors.
- The publication gets a CC BY licence in the UU Repository.
How does the funding work?
This route of open access publishing is free of charge.
How do I follow this route?
Please include a Rights Retention Statement in your article when you submit it to the journal. You can find the statement in the step-by-step guides for UU and UMC Utrecht authors. Upload the author’s version (AAM) of your article to Pure and tick the ‘Rights Retention Statement’ box. The author’s version will then be made available via the UU repository no later than the article’s publication date.