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Publish your research Open Access

Making your publications freely available through Open Access publishing helps spread your research while complying with policies from funders and universities.

What does Open Access mean?

Open access publishing means that publications are freely available so that they can be read, downloaded, printed and shared by anyone.

The Government’s objective is that all publicly funded research should be openly accessible upon publication. This is set out in the National Guidelines for Open Science External link.. Swedish and international research funding bodies require open access publishing; examples include Östersjöstiftelsen External link, opens in new window. (The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies), Vetenskapsrådet External link, opens in new window. (The Swedish Research Council), Forte External link, opens in new window. (The Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare) and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond External link, opens in new window..

Södertörn University has guidelines for open access publishing. The guidelines describe how the university's own publications, as well as the researchers' publications, should be published with open access.

There are various ways to publish via open access

Publish your work in an open-access journal, anthology or monograph.
Publish a copy of your publication in full text in an open access repository such as DiVA External link..

As a researcher, you can publish your text directly in an OA journal, anthology or as an OA monograph.

Articles in scholarly journals

Södertörn University is a party to publication agreements covering approximately 14,000 journals from academic publishers. Under most of these agreements, the publication fee has already been paid. In the SciFree database External link., you can find out which journals are included by searching for the journal title.

When using the agreements, please note that:

You must be affiliated to Södertörn University.
The agreements only apply when you are a Corresponding Author.
You must use your SH email address when submitting your article.

There are more scholarly journals that publish articles open access. A collection of OA-journals can be found in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) External link, opens in new window.. The national journal platform Publicera External link. offers a number of Swedish open-access journals for publication free of charge.

Anthologies and monographs

The options for publishing scholarly books openly and free of charge are more limited than for articles. Here are some options that enable the publication of open-access books:

Among the publishing agreements that Södertörn University participates in, there is one that partially covers the cost of publication. Read more about the publishing agreements on the Employee web External link..
Apply for a grant to cover publication costs from the Publications Committee or your research funding body. Find out more about publishing research on the Employee web External link..
Publish a book in one of Södertörn University’s publication series, with open access and at no cost to the author.
Kriterium External link. publishes open-access academic books. They charge a fee for publication.
The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) External link. lists openly accessible books. Find out more about the participating publishers’ publication policies and any associated publication costs on the DOAB website.

If you choose to publish in a subscription journal you can still make your text freely available through a repository, without extra charge. This is called Parallel publishing or self-archiving. If you are a researcher at Södertörn University or the Red Cross University College and wish to open-access publish your work, you can do so via the DiVA publication database . Contributions to anthologies and monographs can also be open-access published.

Please bear this in mind before uploading your text to DiVA:

Your work must already be published and affiliated to Södertörn University or the Swedish Red Cross University.
Check which version of your work you are permitted to make freely available (often the final, peer-reviewed manuscript). Sometimes there is an embargo period of 6, 12 or 48 months before you are allowed to parallel publish a text. You can find many publishers copyright transfer agreements for journals in Open policy finder. External link, opens in new window.
You must hold the rights to any maps, tables, figures and images.
The text must be a pdf-file which can be made accessible.

Watch out for predatory publishers

New publishers often contact researchers with publishing offers, demanding article processing charges. It is a good idea double check the quality of a publisher before accepting any deal.

Think, check, submit External link. has checklists that are helpful for identifying trusted publishers and journals.

FAIR principles

It has become increasingly common for funding bodies to require researchers to take FAIR principles into account when applying for research funding. The concept of FAIR stands for data to be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

The overall message of the FAIR principles is that the research that is funded by public funds should be as accessible and useful as possible for both humans and machines. The principles have so far mainly been applied to research data when writing data management plans but are also applicable for scientific publications.

If you would like to read more, see the GO FAIR's more detailed description of the FAIR principles External link, opens in new window..

Creative Commons

Creative Commons External link, opens in new window. is a type of license that you as an author can use to show others how they may use your work. You can take advantage of National Library of Sweden’s guide External link. to find a Creative Commons license that suits your publication.

Sidinformation

Page last updated: 2026-06-30