Scientific Publications

Publishing Your Work as Open Access

Understanding Open Access

Open access publishing is the unrestricted dissemination of the results, methods, and products of scientific research. It builds on the opportunities presented by the digital transformation to expand open access to publications and—as much as possible—to research data, source code, and methods.
In France, the 2016 Law for a Digital Republic has facilitated the sharing of scientific articles without restrictions from publishers.
Publishing in open access means: increasing the visibility of one’s work, encouraging its reuse, and strengthening scientific transparency. Researchers benefit from greater recognition, an increased citation rate, and wider dissemination to a diverse audience.
Submitting to HAL allows you to centralize your scholarly output: it automatically populates all relevant platforms (ORCID, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Repec, OpenAire, arXiv) and ensures that your work remains within the public research domain.
Use private social networks such as ResearchGate or Academia solely for their social features, and HAL for data preservation and open access.

The main routes to open access are:

• the green route: depositing the publication in an open archive, such as HAL-AMU. This free option promotes the wide and sustainable dissemination of research.
• the gold route: publication in an open-access journal, typically with article processing charges (APCs).
• The diamond route: publication in an open-access journal at no cost to authors or readers. This model is supported by AMU because it ensures the equitable and accessible dissemination of knowledge. This commitment is reflected, in particular, in the university’s leadership of the European DIAMAS project, in conjunction with the National Plan for Open Science and the S Coalition.

Submitting to HAL:

The multidisciplinary open archive of Aix-Marseille University (HAL AMU) is a tool for direct scientific communication among faculty researchers, optimizing the visibility, accessibility, speed of dissemination, and impact of deposited works.

HAL in 5 Key Points

1.  All HAL repositories are interconnected: There’s no need to deposit in multiple HAL repositories (HAL AMU, HAL CNRS, HAL INSERM, HAL SHS, HAL national, etc.)
2. A single submission to HAL feeds all sites (Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Repec, OpenAire, arXiv). HAL centralizes your scholarly output
3.  Option to automate import into HAL—so you can easily import your past scientific output
4. HAL ensures that your work remains within the public research framework. Use social media solely for its social functions, and use HAL for data preservation and open access
5. HAL automatically generates lists of your publications for inclusion on your website

Choose an open-access journal for publication

Publishing open access requires choosing your journal wisely. Certain abusive practices exist, notably:

• predatory publishers: they exploit the open access model to charge publication fees without guaranteeing scientific quality or editorial ethics.
• hybrid journals: subscription-based journals that offer to make individual articles accessible for a fee. This model is controversial because it can lead to “double payment” (subscription + APC). 

It is recommended to check the journal’s open access policy on the following websites:

• Open Policy Finder 
• Mir@bel 

Rights and Licenses

Making your work freely accessible also means specifying the conditions under which it may be reused: this is the role of open licenses. Creative Commons (CC) licenses allow you to define the terms for reusing a publication. The license most frequently required by funding agencies is CC-BY (Attribution), which permits any reuse—including commercial reuse—provided the author is properly credited. These licenses encourage the dissemination, translation, adaptation, and reuse of research works, while ensuring recognition of intellectual authorship.

Beyond choosing a license, it is also important to retain certain copyrights in order to be able to freely disseminate one’s work. amU encourages its researchers not to transfer all their rights to publishers. It promotes a strategy of retaining rights, which allowsresearchers to:

• retain the right to freely distribute their publications (particularly via HAL),
• to comply with funders’ requirements,
• to retain control over the dissemination and use of their work.