Monographs
Check with your funder what requirements they set for making your book open access, and if you are allowed to pay any publication costs from your research budget.
If you wish to publish open access, you can follow these routes:
- Diamond open access
- Gold open access
- Green open access
Diamond open access
What is Diamond open access?
- Publication is immediately open access.
- This route is free of charge for authors.
- Publication has an open licence (CC BY, if necessary CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND). Check whether your funder mandates a specific licence.
How does the funding work?
In Diamond open access the author does not have to pay publication costs. The publishers are funded by the academic community. Some publishers ask for a voluntary contribution. Some faculties have a fund available for this purpose (see Faculty policy).
Where do I find publishers and more information?
- Open Book Collective: a collective of diamond book publishers that are financially supported by Utrecht University Library.
- Netherlands University Presses (NUPs): some of these are also accessible for UU authors.
- OA Books Toolkit | OAPEN: this toolkit can support you in making choices around the open access publishing of your book.
Gold open access
What is Gold open access?
- Publication is immediately open access.
- Involves publication costs (BPCs).
- Publication has an open licence, preferably CC BY. Check whether your funder mandates a specific licence.
How does the funding work?
At the moment, Utrecht University does not cover BPC’s from its central open access budget. Your faculty may be able to (partially) reimburse your BPC (see Faculty policy). Check your funder’s requirements to see whether you can use your research budget to pay the BPCs .
Please note: Some publishers also offer a ‘delayed open access’ option. This means that a book will be made open access after an embargo period at lower BPCs. We advise against this option due to the risk of ‘double dipping’.
Where can I check if a publisher publishes open access?
In the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) you can find a list of publishers who have experience publishing open access books (gold or diamond).
Green open access
What is green open access?
- You publish closed access with the publisher, but open access via the UU Repository.
- This route is free of charge for authors.
- Negotiate with the publisher regarding the licence for the open access version (preferably CC BY).
Please read your funder’s open access policies carefully. You will not be able to use the green route if your funder mandates publication under an open licence, and/or requires output to be immediately open access.
How does the funding work?
This route of open access publishing is free of charge.
How do I follow this route?
Green open access for books is always part of negotiations with the publisher. Many publishers allow you to share one or some chapters via a repository. Sometimes you may share the entire book after an embargo period. You also negotiate about the version that may be shared (AAM or VoR) and the licence the open access version gets. You then Upload the book Pure if it isn’t already there and indicate which part en when it may be made open access. The university library takes care of the rest.