Paral­lel publish­ing promotes open-access publish­ing culture in Karelia UAS

The Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences is commit­ted to the Decla­ra­tion for Open Science and Research 2020-2025, made by the Finnish research commu­nity. As part of this commit­ment, one of the areas that Karelia UAS is promot­ing is open access publish­ing. This means that all publi­ca­tions produced by the staff of Karelia are openly avail­able to the research commu­nity and the general public. One effec­tive way to promote open publish­ing is through paral­lel publishing.

What does paral­lel publish­ing mean?

Paral­lel publish­ing (also known as green open access or self-archiv­ing) makes research arti­cles freely avail­able through an open access repository.

Research and publi­ca­tions produced and funded by public money should be acces­si­ble to the general public. However, research arti­cles funded by public money often end up being avail­able only through the paid services of scien­tific publish­ers or confer­ence orga­niz­ers. Repub­lish­ing such arti­cles in the open digital repos­i­tory of the researcher’s home orga­ni­za­tion makes those arti­cles openly available.

For several years now, Finnish univer­si­ties of applied sciences have been paral­lel publish­ing their research in the Theseus online service. Theseus is an open repos­i­tory where works are stored as open access publi­ca­tions. Theseus func­tions as the publi­ca­tion repos­i­tory also for Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences.

A paral­lel published article receives a perma­nent address (URN), making it easy to share with others who are inter­ested in it. In Theseus the article will remain openly avail­able even if the orig­i­nal publish­ing channel quits operation.

Paral­lel publish­ing in Karelia UAS

At Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences, the oblig­a­tion for paral­lel publish­ing primar­ily concerns arti­cles published in scien­tific jour­nals or confer­ence publi­ca­tions. It is also recom­mended to paral­lel publish arti­cles intended for profes­sional commu­ni­ties, espe­cially if they are not openly available.

Before paral­lel publish­ing, it must be ensured that all authors as well as the publisher have given their permis­sion for paral­lel publish­ing. Most scien­tific publish­ers allow the final (peer-reviewed) manu­script version (Final draft / Post print) to be paral­lel-published in the author’s home institution’s open digital repos­i­tory. However, publish­ers may impose a publi­ca­tion embargo period, usually lasting for one year from the date of publi­ca­tion, during which the author cannot publish a open access copy of the publi­ca­tion. In many cases scien­tific publish­ers’ paral­lel publish­ing poli­cies can be checked from the Sherpa Romeo service. The other commonly used option is to request permis­sion directly from the publisher by email.

When the permis­sions have been obtained, a cover page (see example) will be added to the article. The cover page displays the article’s title, authors, and which version is being used (final draft or publisher’s PDF). The cover page includes the cita­tion of the orig­i­nal article to which the article reader is supposed to cite. Finally, the library staff saves the article in PDF format in the Theseus depository.

Paral­lel publish­ing improves discov­er­abil­ity and usage

From the perspec­tive of an article author, the best benefit of paral­lel publish­ing is related to the improve­ment of the discov­er­abil­ity and usage of the article. There­fore, paral­lel publish­ing can have a posi­tive impact on the number of cita­tions and the impact of the article when it is freely avail­able online and easily discov­er­able by search engines.

As an example, let’s examine the discov­er­abil­ity of Tero Mustonen’s and Tarmo Tossavainen’s article from 2018, ‘Brook lampreys of life: towards Holis­tic moni­tor­ing of Boreal Aquatic habi­tats using ‘subtle signs’ and oral histo­ries’. This article is paral­lel-published in the Theseus online repository.

Google Scholar finds the article’s paral­lel-published version among its first search results, if the user uses search terms that describe the article’s topic, such as ‘brook lamprey’ AND ‘ecolog­i­cal restora­tion’. The same paral­lel version can also be found in the Finnish services Finna.fi and Resarch.fi , from which the Finnish research commu­nity usually searches for domes­tic research (see the video below).

As we can see, paral­lel publish­ing has signif­i­cantly improved the acces­si­bil­ity and the discov­er­abil­ity of the article compared to if the article was avail­able only through the paid services of the publisher.

---

Author:

Pekka Malvela, Head of library and infor­ma­tion services, Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences

Image by Freepik