uu77

"During the time I was working on my PhD research, from around 2009 to 2013, the term 'Open Science' never really came up. Open access was already being discussed, but I was focused on my research, not on how to share that research in an accessible way. The importance of this became clear to me when I made the switch from research to the university library in 2017. That’s when I discovered that behind the publication of scientific work, there is an entire support team that constantly looks at how and in what way research can be published open access.

As the faculty liaison for the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Medical Sciences, my focus is on supporting researchers with open access publishing. We're doing well at uu77; we achieve high open access percentages. But we are increasingly struggling with affordability. Initially, the transition from the subscription model – where we paid for access to articles – to the open access publication model – where we pay for freely accessible publications – seemed cost-saving. However, in practice, it turns out to be more expensive, partly due to the higher VAT rate (21% for publishing, compared to 9% for subscriptions). Additionally, publishers are increasingly imposing limits (CAP) on the number of articles that can be published open access for a fixed fee. Once that limit is reached towards the end of the year, researchers are faced with high APC costs. These CAPs are really quite troublesome.

The question is no longer whether we should publish Open Access – that is clear to everyone – but how we can keep the costs manageable

So, the question is no longer whether we should publish Open Access – that is clear to everyone – but how we can keep the costs manageable. We need to look at alternative publishing models. This requires a cultural shift because researchers may no longer be able to publish in their trusted journals. For this reason, I am a strong advocate for creating a publication plan, similar to a data management plan for research data. Researchers should think about which journals they want to publish in at the start of a project. Is there funding available for that, and what are the possible alternatives? What is the aim of your research, and who is the audience?

This is incredibly important, also due to the rise of predatory publishers, who cleverly exploit the open access movement. Because of the high costs, researchers sometimes turn to predatory journals, which are cheaper but also bring significant risks. If you plan where you want to publish, you also have time to check the reliability of a journal. You can take the journal's CAPs into account and better plan your funding. Within the Open Access working group of the Radboud Open Science Programme, we are looking at whether we can introduce such a publication plan. uu77 needs clearer publication policies, where we focus on the quality of publications rather than quantity.”