Open access (OA) means making published research materials available to the general public free of charge, thereby promoting a wider circulation of research results.

It is not necessarily free of charge to publish articles in OA journals. The journal’s infrastructure, editorial and referee procedures involve certain expenses. These costs can be covered in various ways, often by charging universities or individual researchers a fee for publishing in the OA journal.

There are three options available within OA publishing:

• Publishing in a peer-reviewed OA journal not funded by subscription. International journals of this kind are found in DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals. Finnish journals here.
• Publishing in a commercial OA journal for a fee. Most major journal publishers have such hybrid journals.
• Parallel publishing in a commercial non-OA journal and in an OA repository. The SHERPA/RoMEO and SHERPA/JULIET databases provide information about publishers’ and research funders’ policies on parallel publishing. Parallel publishing in the ÅAU publications repository mainly concerns research articles that already are published in scientific journals, conference proceedings or anthologies. But also previously published popular articles, reports etc. can be added to the publications repository.