FAQ and Open Access Glossary

Yes, there are facilities for authors affiliated with the University of Parma to publish in open access in the journals of publishers who have entered into Transformative Agreements with CARE-CRUI.

The transformative contracts (or Transformative Agreements) in fact stipulate that corresponding authors affiliated with the University of Parma can publish their work in open access without paying the article publication fee (APC) because it is already paid by the university by virtue of adhering to the contract.

The transformative contracts to which the University of Parma adheres are listed on the Publish in Open Access page.

The transformative contracts to which the University of Parma adheres are listed on the Publish in Open Access page where you will also find information about individual contracts.

All authors who hold the role of corresponding author and who have a formal and active relationship with the university at the time of the journal's acceptance of the contribution are eligible for the facilities provided for publishing in OA under transformative contracts.

If you are a corresponding author, you can qualify for the facilities even if your relationship with the university is a fixed-term one (contract professors, TD researchers, PhD students, research fellows, postdoctoral fellows, etc.) but you must be formally affiliated with the university at the time of article acceptance (i.e., with a current contract): be careful to take this into account when choosing your publication model and to identify a corresponding author whose affiliation can also be guaranteed in the months following submission.

If you are a UNIPR author and hold the role of correspondig author, to take advantage of the benefits you only need to:

1. declare the University of Parma as your first affiliation;
2. use the institutional email address (@unipr.it) of the type or

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Find lists of eligible journals or links to download them on the Publish in Open Access page.

Find the publisher of the journal you are interested in, open the contract tab, and look under Where to Publish.

To figure out if a journal is hybrid (a hybrid journal publishes both open access articles and articles that can be accessed only by subscription) or if it is fully open access, you can:

1. use online tools
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals): this is a database that lists only fully open access journals. If the journal is listed here, it is fully OA. If it is not, it may be hybrid or paid.

Open policy finder: (formerly Sherpa Romeo) database that provides information on copyright and access policies of several journals. Enter the name of the journal and check whether it is hybrid or OA.

2. check the journal's website
Most journals provide detailed information on content access policies. Look for sections such as:

"About" or "Aims & Scope": these often contain information about the publication model;
"For Authors" or "Instructions for Authors": if the journal is hybrid, there should be information about the possibility of publishing articles in open access by paying an Article Processing Charge (APC);
"Open Access Policy": the journal's policy on OA .

If an article has more than one corresponding author, e.g., one author from the University of Parma and one from another university or other institution, verification of affiliation, and thus of attribution of the article to the contracting university, will be made on the author who submitted the article.

If funds are exhausted when the notice of article acceptance arrives, as a corresponding author you have these options:

• if it is a hybrid journal you can:
  • pass to the subscription model which, normally, is at no cost to the author
  • confirm the OA option and pay the relevant APCs
• if it is a gold OA journal you can:
  • withdraw the manuscript and submit it to another publisher (other journal) that has funding coverage
  • confirm the OA option and pay the relevant APCs

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There are some journals that have additional extra-contractual costs that remain the responsibility of the authors, for example:

• additional costs for color images (color charge)
• additional costs if a certain number of pages are exceeded (page charge)

These costs are NOT covered by transformative contracts.

These contracts, also called Read & Publish, are called transformative agreements because they contain clauses related to the transformation of subscription (hybrid) journals into fully open access (Gold OA) journals.

The typical transformative contract model provides both access to the contents of the subscribed collection (read) and the
publication of a variable number of articles in open access for authors affiliated with the contracting institution, without having to bear the cost of APCs (publish).

Negotiations for transformative contracts are usually handled at the level of large consortium aggregates. In Italy, negotiations for these contracts are carried out by CRUI-CARE on behalf of universities and research institutions.
Individual universities decide whether or not to adhere to the contracts entered into.

The corresponding author is, among the authors of an article, the person responsible for the process of submission, review, and publication of the article; he or she is the contact person for the editor and reviewers.

The corresponding author is clearly identified in the article, often with a footnote that includes his or her e-mail address.

To take advantage of publication in OA with APC paid for by the University of Parma, corresponding authors must compulsorily:

1. be affiliated with UNIPR, i.e., have a formal and active relationship with the university at the time of the journal's acceptance of the contribution; please take this into account when choosing the publication model and identify a corresponding author whose affiliation can also be guaranteed in the months following submission;
2. declare the University of Parma as their first affiliation;
3. use the institutional e-mail address (@unipr.it) of the type or .

NB: fixed-term corresponding authors (contract professors, TD researchers, PhD students, research fellows, postgraduates, etc.) are also "eligible" as long as they are formally affiliated with the university at the time of article acceptance.

In the event that the article has more than one corresponding author, for example, one author from the University of Parma and one from another university or other institution, verification of affiliation, and therefore of the attribution of the article to the university that signed the contract, will be made on the author who submitted the article.

Creative Commons (CC) licenses allow authors to share their works with the public by determining which rights they reserve for themselves and which they grant to others.

They are in fact based on the concept of "some rights reserved," according to which the author (rights holder) decides which rights to reserve and which to grant for use.

The purpose of CC licenses is to facilitate the dissemination and reuse of works of the intellect (text, images, music, video, etc.) while respecting the author's desire to retain some rights.

Types of Creative Commons licenses:

1. CC BY (Attribution): allows anyone to copy, distribute, modify, and use the work, including for commercial purposes, provided that authorship is properly attributed to the original author.

2. CC BY-SA (Attribution-Share Alike): similar to CC BY, but requires that any derivative works be distributed under the same license as the original.

3. CC BY-ND (Attribution - No Derivative Works): allows distribution of the work, including for commercial purposes, but does not allow modification or creation of derivative works. Attribution to the author is always required.

4. CC BY-NC (Attribution-Noncommercial): allows copying, distribution, and modification of the work, as long as they are not done for commercial purposes and the author is always cited.

5. CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution - Noncommercial - Share Alike): allows use and modification of the work for non-commercial purposes, but requires that any derivative works be released under the same license and the author be attributed.

6. CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works): allows only the distribution of the work without modification and only for noncommercial purposes, with attribution required.

For more information on CC licenses please see the official site (in English) and the Creative Commons site in Italian

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Sherpa Services is a set of online tools and services designed to support authors, librarians, and institutional administrators in the management of scholarly publication policies, particularly in the context of open access.

Main services offered by Sherpa Services:

Sherpa Romeo

is an online database that provides detailed information on copyright and self-archiving policies of scholarly journals. It is particularly useful for authors who want to know the conditions of publication in terms of open access (OA) and the possibilities of depositing a copy of their work in an open repository (self-archiving in a repository).

What Sherpa Romeo does:

1. Self-archiving policies (self-archiving)
Sherpa Romeo collects and provides information on publishers' policies regarding the deposit of scholarly articles in open or institutional repositories. Each journal has its own rules about which version of the contribution/article can be deposited and when:

• Preprint: the version of the manuscript before peer review
• Postprint: the version accepted after peer review, but before editorial formatting
• Final published version: the PDF or final version published by the publisher

2. Embargoes and versions of articles
Sherpa Romeo indicates whether there are embargo periods (i.e., delays imposed by the publisher before the author can deposit their article in an open repository) and which versions of the article can be self-archived (preprint, postprint, published version).

3. Licenses and Rights
Sherpa Romeo provides information on the Creative Commons (or other) licenses that journals use for their OA articles, and specifies who owns the copyright (author or publisher).

Sherpa Romeo helps you figure out if you can freely upload your articles to open archives and under what conditions

How Sherpa Romeo works:
Just enter the name of the journal or publisher in the search field on the Sherpa Romeo site, and the database will show:

• the self-archiving policy for that journal
• any restrictions such as embargo periods
• the open access publication charges (Article Processing Charge - APC)
• the applicable licenses

Sherpa Juliet
Provides information on the open access policies of research funders. This tool is useful for researchers who need to publish their research results in accordance with the requirements of funders (e.g., funders who require results to be published in Open Access).

Also "Author's accepted manuscript"
This is the version accepted by the publisher and already refereed (peer reviewed), but still lacking the editorial layout (graphic layout, logos, editorial marks).

Also "Submitted Version" and/or "Author's original version".

This is the original manuscript sent by the author to the publisher, not yet submitted for reference.

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Also "Editorial Version"

Final version, as it appears in the publication, i.e., "paginated" in the format provided by the publisher.

Hybrid journals (hybrid journals) are those on which it is possible to publish either in open access mode, by paying APCs, or in standard mode (= subscription), generally without disbursement by the author.

From the reader's point of view, some contributions are available for free (those in open access) while others only by subscription.

Open access journals, also called gold journals, fully open access, gold open access, fully gold journals are journals in which you can publish ONLY in open access mode.

From the reader's point of view, they are completely usable for free.

Also "Final published version" means the version that has been published in a journal, in print and/or online format. This article will include any editorial improvements, such as text revision or typesetting, made after the peer review process has been completed."