Open access can be achieved in several ways:

The Open Science Support Centre outlines the steps for those interested in green and gold publishing, which includes diamond publishing as a specific type under the gold category

• the costs of the green route align with the operation of repositories, which a university, other research organizations, international consortia, or grant titles can fund

• the gold route is financed by APCs, usually paid by authors and their institutions

• the diamond route is funded by academic societies, government grants, and publishers, particularly university presses

Open Access (OA) fees are typically considered eligible costs in project budgets and should be included in the draft budget of the project proposal. Within the CzechELib national consortium, significant discounts or tokens for OA publishing are available based on specific transformation agreements. The conditions are as follows:

• only corresponding authors from Charles University are eligible to apply, provided they indicate their institutional affiliation in the manuscript and use their faculty email when communicating with the journal

• tokens can only be requested after a publisher accepts the article; they cannot be reserved in advance

• some publishers, such as Taylor & Francis, allocate a limited number of tokens each year and may run out several months before the year's end. Certain additional conditions must be met for these publishers to allocate tokens

The Open Science Support Centre records the current status of the number of available tokens and all conditions. It can also be contacted with requests

The regulatory framework for open science in the Czech Republic, as outlined by the National Open Science Platform, is based on European legislative acts and documents. The European Commission's recommendations have been integrated into the government-approved strategic document National Research, Development and Innovation Policy of the Czech Republic 2021+.

The primary legal mechanism ensuring open access is the public license. These licenses allow anyone to use a work under specific conditions, negating the need for an individual license agreement with the author.

Various participants in the publication process can determine the application of a specific license:

• author: the author retains the moral rights associated with their work, which pertain to their personal connection to the creation, including the right to be recognized as the author. In some instances, the author may also hold economic rights, which grant them the ability to use the work and to license its use to others

• co-author: in cases of co-authorship, all relevant authors must consent to the use and licensing of the work, based on the principle of unanimity

• employer: if an employee creates work during their employment, the employer exercises the economic copyrights and decides on licensing, while the author retains the moral rights

• publisher: The publisher may also assert economic copyright if granted an exclusive license, which can restrict even the author from using the work

• funding provider: The provider may be required to publish the outputs under a specific license as part of the project conditions

• the legal support team at the Centre for Open Science handles the application of all these principles to Czech law, especially the more complex transfers of rights in relation to the publisher

The collection of public licenses is known as Creative Commons (CC). These licenses allow authors or creators to grant certain rights to their work while reserving others.

A CC license includes several key elements of licensing:

• the right to distribute the work (shared by all CC licenses)

• the right to adapt the work (the ability to create derivative works, such as translations or sequels)

• attribute the work (shared by all CC licenses)

• retain the license (when you reuse, remix, or adapt a work, you must keep the original license attached and not change it)

• not use the work commercially (the work can be shared and adapted, but not for commercial purposes like making a profit)

• not to derive (the work cannot be changed, remixed, or adapted in any way)

• CC BY: allows others to share, adapt, and build upon a work for any purpose, including commercial, if they give attribution to the original author

• CC BY-SA: Attribution – ShareAlike

• CC BY-ND: Attribution – No Derivative Works

• CC BY-NC: Attribution – No Commercial Use

• CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution – Non-commercial – ShareAlike

• CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution – No Commercial Use – No Derivative Works (restrictive variant, authorizes free sharing, but excludes derivative works and commercial use)

With the rise of open access publishing, numerous questionable publishers have surfaced. These so-called predatory publishers profit from Article Processing Charges (APCs) while not following established publishing standards:

• poor quality and disproportionately short review process

• non-transparent editorial board

• misleading metrics or falsified quality indicators

After 2010, predatory publishing practices began to be exposed, yet they also significantly spread, affecting journals, monographs, and conferences. This proliferation has led to various reputational issues for particular academics. In the Czech Republic, the Stop Predatory Practices initiative was launched, and several manuals and recommendations have been developed to help identify predatory publishers and their practices.

Due to the seriousness of the issue, it is highly recommended that you contact your faculty and university contacts if you have any questions.

FHS UK:

• Miriam Vojtíšková: Open Science Coordinator,

• Martin Mišúr: Publication Officer, Research Administration Office,

• Kateřina Kovaříková: editorial assistant, Research Administration Office,

UK:

• Open Science Support Centre,

• copyright issues,

National Research, Development and Innovation Policy of the Czech Republic 2021+

Commission Recommendation (EU) 2018/790 of 25 April 2018 on access to and preservation of scientific information

Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on open data and the re-use of public sector information (recast)

Národní strategie otevřeného přístupu k vědeckým informacím na léta 2017–2020

Národní platforma Open Science (in Czech)

Open Science Support Centre

Stop Predatory Practices

Center for Open Science

Publication Fees Discounts