Here we define some of the terminology you will come across throughout the scholarly communication process and publishing.
In alphabetical order:
Your accepted manuscript, also referred to as your 'author accepted manuscript' (AAM), final author version, final author manuscript, or final manuscript is the version of your work which has been accepted for publication, has been peer reviewed but has not yet been typeset or given complete layout by the publisher.
(see Publishing fees below)
If you have a FNR funded project, you can request a refund for some or all of your Open Access costs. FNR has implemented the ChronosHub system to allow researchers to request the refund for costs associated with scientific publications.
(You will need to request a login to use the site).
Creative Commons licenses are a standard way to allow authors to share their publications and define the re-use permitted, while still maintaining their rights under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question: “What can I do with this work?” There are six licenses, and the public domain dedication tool to give all creators a range of options.
To help select the best license for you and to read about them, visit the Creative Commons website.
One thing to be aware of is that some OA journals are considered ‘predatory’, meaning they charge publication fees to authors in order to increase their profits. Some of the journals also accept low-quality papers and don’t have good quality peer review in place.
There are many published articles on predatory journals that you can read, or you can read this description from the publisher IFIS Publishing.
APC (Article Processing Charges) are a financial contribution that may be requested by publishing firms from the author or their institution to cover the cost of processing their article. Some OA journals request this fee, but not all.
You may come across the term ‘unfair gold’ which refers to publishing firms that offer OA journals with high publication fees to authors. This contradicts the aim of OA in the first place, which is to make science accessible to all.
Hybrid publications are journals that are traditional paper print journals but offer you the chance to make your article OA by charging you a fee. We suggest that you avoid publishing in hybrid journals.
The University of Luxembourg collects and analyses data about the costs of subscriptions, APCs, OA charges etc. to understand the publishing behaviour of our researchers and in order to make recommendations for publishing in the future.
Transformative agreements are a temporary business model implemented by publishers together with their customers who pay for the agreements and by certain funders, e.g. cOAlition S, to enable them to transition their subscription journals to full open access. Within these agreements, customers pay an overall fee to both access to read and to publish in the journals that are part of such an agreement. This is a temporary arrangement that is likely to come to an end from 2024 onwards. They must come to an end to ensure there is no risk for these arrangements to become permanent and perpetuate hybrid Open Access.
The LLC at the University of Luxembourg has three transformative agreements in place to cover open access costs (you pay nothing!) for a fixed period of time:
Eligibility:
In order to publish research and review papers you must be a uni.lu corresponding author who is a full member of staff or PhD student and publish in select subscription and fully open access journals included in the agreement. We cannot approve articles that are 'not original in nature' (e.g. do not bring any new knowledge to the evidence base) or non peer-reviewed articles When you submit a paper, ensure that you are listed, with your uni.lu affiliation and uni.lu email address, as the corresponding author. This will enable the publisher to identify your paper as eligible to be published open access under the CC BY licence. Read how the LLC supports you in your academic publishing efforts (LLC webpages).
Version of Record (VOR), also known as the final published version, is the version that has been published in a journal, in print and/or online. This article will include any editorial improvements such as copy editing, or typesetting, made after the peer review process is complete.
This used to be called Post Print.