This is one of the “Five tips to make 100% open access a reality” published daily during Open Access Week 2020.

MONDAY Tip 1: Make all your peer reviewed articles Open Access in the Leiden Repository

All researchers at Leiden University can make use of the Leiden Repository without any costs. The institutional repository is an easy and straightforward way to facilitate open, transparent, and sustainable access to the research output produced by Leiden academics.

Immediately after publication you can upload your peer reviewed article into the  Leiden  Repository. Upload a PDF of the article upon registration of the publication in LUCRIS. If necessary, you can apply an embargo period in LUCRIS. After the date that you set has passed, the article will become Open Access automatically. The version that may be uploaded varies depending in which journal it will be published. That can be the (i) published, (ii) accepted or (iii) submitted version.

If the article is already Open Access on the publisher’s website, you may use the published version (also called Version of Record or publisher’s pdf). You can recognize Open Access articles by a creative commons license (such as CC-BY or CC-BY-NC-ND); additionally, many publishers mark these publications with an ‘open access’ label.

If the published version is not permitted by the publisher, in almost all cases you can make the author’s manuscript of the accepted or submitted version openly accessible in the repository. The accepted version (also called post print) is your last version of the article,with all corrections applied after peer review, but without the lay-out and typesetting of the publisher. The submitted version (also called preprint) is the version of the article that you submitted to the journal for peer review. Check your publisher’s policy with the help of the Journal Browser or via Sherpa/Romeo. Please note that according to the Open Access policy of the University of Leiden a submitted version can always be made Open Access in the Leiden Repository.

The flowchart How to publish Open Access at Leiden University provides a step by step overview of all you need to do to publish Open Access.

The Leiden Repository can be used in the same way to make other types of publications Open Access as well. Academics are also encouraged to make other types of publications open access through an upload into the Repository: book chapters, reports, congress proceedings, and other publications. The main difference between these and journal articles is that publishers’ policies are often not as explicitly stated. We recommend that you contact your publisher to make an agreement on deposits in institutional repositories before you publish.

More information:

• Publish Open Access in the Leiden Repository on the Library website.
• Creative Commons Licenses