University Library

Open Access literature

OA journals

  • journals with immediate open access
  • journals with a time embargo = full texts of articles are only accessible after a certain period of time, usually 6–12 months
  • hybrid model journals = the publisher gives the author a choice whether to make his/her article available in the form of a subscription (free for the author, paid for the reader) or in the form of an APC payment (paid for the author, free for the reader). More information about APC.

Basic features:

  • the full texts of these journals are openly and freely available to all users
  • the standard and quality of OA journals is assured by the peer review process
  • copyright remains with the authors

The list of open access journals is provided by the DOAJ database, the National Library of the Czech Republic and the aggregator Paperity.

Some publishers publish a list of periodicals they publish in OA mode:

Subscription journals that have switched to the OA model.

Digitized journals and newspapers:

UWB OA journals:

Full texts of the articles can be found in the Digital Library.

Czech OA journals

Publishers' open access policies can be found in the SHERPA/ROMEO, ROAR, ROARMAP and OpenDOAR databases. Whether a journal is Plan S compliant can be traced at https://journalcheckertool.org/.

How to start an Open Access journal?

If you want to start a new open access journal, or if your editorial office is thinking about making your journal open access, you can use the Open Journal Systems editorial system. This is an open source software where you can manage and publish electronic journals. With OJS, you can publish full-text articles, effectively present the journal on the web, and facilitate editorial processes. More information about OJS in the presentation.

Do you want your journal to be included in one of the prestigious databases? Find out the conditions for inclusion.

Beware of the so-called predatory journals.

OA books

Some peer-reviewed science books are also published in open access mode. The books go through the classic peer review process.

You can find specialized Open Access books in these directories:

You can find freely available electronic versions of specialized books in these directories:

Popular and educational literature and fiction is included in:

Digitized books from libraries around the world (including the National Library of the Czech Republic) are provided by Google Books and the Guttenberg project.

OA repositories and websites

Electronic collections of scientific and academic papers by authors from a single institution or discipline, freely available via the Internet.

  • institutional repositories
  • disciplinary repositories
  • authors' personal websites
  • author profile within the ResearchGate science network
  • generation of personal pages within the institutional repository
  • a repository for researchers funded by the Gates Foundation Gates Open Research
  • Scopus and Web of Science databases disclose open access information for articles using the orange Open Access (Scopus) and Free Full Text from Publisher (WoS)

OA data

Storing research data in open access maximizes its use and ensures the quality of research results. By sharing research data, it can be verified, validated or used in new contexts. Open data can help increase transparency and efficiency of work, where the same research will not be conducted again, even in the case of negative research results.

Open data can include non-textual material such as maps, genomes, chemical compounds, mathematical formulas, medical data, etc. In a broader sense, primary data in the form of facts, observations, images, results of computer programs, records, measurements and experiences, secondary analyses, visualizations, models, analytical tools, collections of objects or products. Data may be in numerical, textual, pictorial or tangible form. Data may be processed, cleaned or in its raw state and stored in any format and on any medium. Open data is part of the broader concept of open science. The European Union has funded a two-year project called FOSTER to help scientists move towards open access. FOSTER is developing teaching materials and courses on open access.

However, not all research data can be made publicly available. It is therefore necessary to secure sensitive data, copyrights, patents, etc. Data creators often do not know that it is appropriate to set conditions for ownership, licensing and reuse of data, which often leads to the data being unusable for other purposes. One method for managing and protecting data is the so-called Data Management Plan.  This plan on how research data will be generated, organized, shared and secured is also required by Horizon Europe. More information on open research data storage in Horizon Europe. 

An example of open data in science:

Publication of data is required by some journals (e.g., Nature, The American Naturalist) or publishers (Public Library of Science). The data policy of journals can be monitored through the Nature portfolio. 

Data publication should be in line with the FAIR principles, i.e., data should be searchable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

  1. Field-specific https://www.re3data.org/browse/by-subject/
  2. General http://www.zenodo.org/
  3. http://www.re3data.org/