Since 2011 KTH has a policy on Scientific publishing saying that KTH researchers should make their research as open as possible and that all theses and reports from KTH must be published openly in the KTH institutional repository DiVA. Since then the movement towards an Open Research society has been even more implemented and it is therefore interesting to follow up the share of Open Access publications at KTH. The first OA report was published in 2016 and covered the years 2011-2014. Since then KTH library has produced OA reports on the KTH publishing every year. This new version is made in another form, allowing the KTH schools to see their specific OA-output.
This report is aimed towards all interested in publishing practices at KTH. For those interested in a more in-depth analysis or discussion around Open Access, we are always happy to discuss the subject or give a presentation. Please contact the KTH Library at biblioteket@kth.se.
Some Open Access information down to department level is also available in the KTH Annual Bibliometric Monitoring (ABM) and in KTH Research Information (needs KTH login).
OA refers to the unrestricted online access (i.e. free to read and reuse) to journal articles and other related publications, but Open Access (OA) can be achieved in different ways. In this report we use OA definitions reminiscent of those provided by the online service Unpaywall.
Open access to research publications has more and more become the default worldwide in the aim to spread research results and impact of research. OA is allowing authors, readers, funders and other stakeholders to benefit from the latest research and also take part and contribute to research. The purpose is generally to increase equity within research publishing but also to keep costs down.
From the start of Open Access movement there were two major ways to publish open. The first route is known as ‘green OA’ or selfarchiving, and includes papers that are published in a traditional subscription based way, but which are also deposited in a public repository, either an institutional repository or a subject based archive (e.g. DiVA, a publication database/repository used by several Swedish institutions of higher-learning, including KTH). The other route is generally called ‘gold OA’ and refers to articles published in an all-OA journal (i.e. a journal with no subscription barriers and free for all to read). A hybrid form of Gold OA is when only a few articles are OA in an otherwise closed subscription based journal. Those two forms of OA includes the payment of a fee, an APC (Article Processing Charge) and may cost from 0 to 100 000 SEK depending on which journal.
More recently a form called Diamond OA has evolved. This form means it is free to read and also free to publish. Diamond OA is mainly funded by an institution, by membership and/or by an external funder.
Assessment of OA publishing at KTH rely on data sourced via Unpaywall — a database of OA status for scientific publications with links to full-text articles. In Unpaywall, OA status is determined by identifying online locations and then assigning an OA subtype based on a ‘better-than-rule’. For example, a publication is considered gold OA if both gold and green are available. Unpaywall considers a publication ‘closed’ if it cannot detect an openly available online location. Diamond OA (also known as platinum OA) is non-APC based (i.e. entirely free to read and to publish). Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) was used to collect journal APC data in order to differentiate between gold and diamond. Unpaywall also report a category referred to as ‘bronze OA’, publications free to read online with ambiguous license policies. These publications can be withdrawn by the publisher at any time. In this report, bronze is treated as non-OA.
To conclude, diamond, gold, hybrid, and green are treated as ‘Total OA’, while bronze and closed are treated as ‘Not OA’.
Below is a list of the latest reports on Open Access at KTH. Earlier reports can be found in DiVA.
The Share of OA publications at KTH all in all has had a steady increase since 2011 and is now reaching over 75 %. The increase is even bigger for certain publication types as journal articles and doctoral/licentiate theses. Journal articles has had an increase of 50% compared to conference papers with an increase of only 25-30%. This is most probably due to the fact that the KTH library cover the cost for journal articles, either by publishing agreements, or by APC:s (Article Processing Charges). Costs for other publications types are generally not covered by the library.
We have studied the OA share of journal articles, conference papers and book chapters. It is clear and not surprising, that journal articles represent the biggest increase of OA. OA of Conference papers is also increasing but at a much slower rate. The option for paying for conference papers OA is not as obvious as for journal publishing. On the other hand, many conferences are more generous to allow parallel publishing. The share of OA to book chapters is very small, and the increase is very slight. Although KTH has a small amount of book chapters so the curve varies a lot due to this. The KTH library does not cover the cost for BPC:S (book processing charges) and the publishers are generally not so generous towards parallel publishing of books or chapter in books. For book chapters the option for OA is not as common as for other publications types, like article in journals or conference papers. Of all KTH schools, the ABE school has the largest share of OA to book chapters.
Even though the majority of journals are hybrid, most of the articles are OA, obviously due to the agreement the library has with the publishers.
A study of the different types of OA shows of course a dramatic increase of hybrid OA since 2014, and the increase is still going on. The share of Gold OA shows a much slighter increase, although steady since 2011. At 2018 the hybrid form of OA gets more common than Gold OA. Clearly the agreements the library have with publishers has an impact on the road towards OA, and help increase the hybrid form. The first read and publish agreement was made in 2017 with Springer. Since then the number of such agreements have steadily increased and today there are read and publish agreements with most publishers.
The share of green OA is consequently decreasing since 2017/18, probably because at that time libraries started cover the cost for gold and hybrid OA and as these two ways are more easy and the author doesn’t need to do anything more than accept. For green OA, the author needs to know about the publishers conditions on parallel publishing and also needs to upload the article in DiVA, or any other repository. When studying the different schools share of OA, it is even more clear that green OA is decreasing at the same rate that hybrid OA is increasing. Probably this is due to the fact that green OA for the researcher is more complicated than gold or hybrid OA. Of all KTH schools, the EECS school has the biggest share of green OA. Traditionally, the SCI school has had the biggest share of Green OA but this form of OA has dramatically decreased since 2018. The SCI has the biggest decrease of green OS compared to the other KTH schools.
The diamond form of OA has been steady since 2014 when it first appeared. A very slight increase though the last year. We expect this form to increase in future since stake holders are beginning to favor this form of OA as the most equitable and also economically sustainable form of OA. Of all KTH schools the SCI school has the biggest share of Diamond OA. That ought to be due to the big amount of articles within physics, in which area it has been the tradition for a long time to publish openly.
The KTH policy on scientific publishing mandates that doctoral theses, licentiate theses and student theses are published in fulltext in DiVA. Doctoral theses and licentiate theses must be registered in DiVA at the latest three weeks before defence date. These are registered by the authors themselves. Student theses must be registered at the latest the second semester after examination and administrators at the respective schools handles these. Doctoral theses as well as licentiate theses are now reaching more or less 100% in fulltext. Note that fulltext here means only the summary part, if a comprehensive summary thesis. Only monographs are actually in fulltext. However, as more and more journal articles are actually OA, so more and more doctoral theses are completely OA, including the added papers. The share of fulltext of student theses vary significantly between schools and therefore we show the results of every school separately.
Since 2017 the library has started to sign agreements on Read and Publish, that means that access to articles and the fee for publishing OA (the APC) is included in one deal. The KTH libray also cover the APC for single publications, in both cases on the condition that the corresponding author is afilliated to KTH. If there is more than one corresponding author, all of them must be affiliated to KTH for the cost to be covered.
Also the KTH centralized the budgeting for OA costs to the library. Hence the dramatic drop for costs APC KTH-schools and the following increase of costs APC-KTH library. The total cost for paid OA has dropped dramatically since 2020 but a very slight increase can be seen again.
The School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE) is comprised of six departments and the research is focused on society - how cities, buildings and infrastructure will be designed and built, how institutions and regulatory systems should be developed to produce a good living environment, and how to provide good development conditions for business.
Compared to the other KTH schools, the research results are in a larger degree presented in book chapters and books as well as in journal articles. For book chapters the option for OA is not as common as for other publications types, like article in journals or conference papers.
At the school of The School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry (CBH), Biotechnology and Health, research within health, environment, energy and materials are conducted.
The CBH school has had an active approach for making article OA. And when all KTH schools were funded centrally for APC:s to a certain degree, the management at CBH school added further to that sum, to make as much OA as possible.
The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), conduct research and education in electrical engineering, computer science, intelligent systems and human centered technology, and in these areas, research is generally presented at conferences and in conference proceedings. This is shown clearly in the list below of top 20 publication sources at this school.
Research at the School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM) are performed in areas of industrial design and innovation, product and production development, materials development, energy technology, learning in engineering sciences as well as industrial economics, organisation and management.
Research at the School of Engineering Sciences (SCI) include physics, mathematics and engineering mechanics.