Open Science Policies - Open Access Policy

It depends on how FCT's open access policy is implemented.

If the article is published in an open access journal or platform or in a hybrid journal under a transformative agreement, the version published in open access in the journal must be the final version of the article (Version of Record). This version must also be deposited in a repository.

If the article is published in a closed-access journal or hybrid journal outside the scope of a transformative agreement, the version of the article deposited in a repository must be theAuthor's Accepted Manuscript, unless the publisher allows the Version of Record to be deposited.

The Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is the version of the article generated by the author, which includes the changes resulting frompeer review, before being edited and formatted by the editor.

The Version of Record (VoR) is the final version of the article, as published in the journal, after it has been edited and formatted by the editor.

Retention of rights means that copyright is not transferred to the publisher. These are retained by the author, who can then continue to exercise them and can allow his article to be reused by third parties, in particular by allowing it to be copied, distributed, adapted, as well as complementary work done on the basis of his article.

Full information on the retention of rights can be found at this link.

Implementing the rights retention strategy involves notifying the publisher that an open public license (usually a Creative Commons CC-BY license) is applied to the submitted manuscript and will be applied to all subsequent versions until the manuscript is accepted for publication after peer review.

This notification must be made in the following terms:

"This research was funded in whole or in part by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT, https://ror.org/00snfqn58[ 1]) under the Grant (Funder Grant number and/or Grant DOI [2]). For the purpose of Open Access, the author applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission."

"This research was funded in whole or in part by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT, https://ror.org/00snfqn58 [1]) under the Funding (Funding identification - Funding reference and/or DOI [2]). For Open Access purposes, the author has applied a Creative Commons CC-BY license to any version of the accepted manuscript (AAM) resulting from this submission."

[1] Identifier of the FCT funder in the Research Organization Registry (ROR).

[2] Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

A Creative Commons license is a license based on an alternative model to traditional copyright, giving the author the possibility to define how he wants his work to be used by third parties and, therefore, which rights reserved for him by the traditional copyright regime are allowed to be exercised by third parties.

There are several types of Creative Commons license(About CC Licenses - Creative Commons), and the one indicated in FCT's Open Access Policy states that, as a rule, the author must associate a CC-BY license with their article.

The CC-BY license is the one that FCT's Open Access Policy indicates should preferably be associated by the author with their article.

This license allows the copying and sharing of the article, as well as its reuse and the creation of derivative works, and authorship must always be acknowledged. More information can be found here.

By applying a CC-BY license to the AAM version of their article, the author is creating the conditions for the article to be accessible and reusable by anyone who has an interest in it, thus fulfilling the purpose of making content resulting from FCT funding open access. With the CC-BY license, the author retains his or her copyright or, in other words, the author does not cede these rights to the publisher of the journal in which he or she publishes his or her article. In this way, the author makes it possible for the AAM version of his article to be used freely, not only by himself, for example by depositing this version in a repository, but also by third parties, who can disseminate it, adapt it, etc., by crediting the author.

The retention of rights in cases where the author submits their article for publication in an open access journal or platform or in a hybrid journal under a transformative agreement is justified, even though the article is already published in open access, to prevent situations in which the intention to publish in an open access platform or journal or in a hybrid journal under a transformative agreement does not materialize, either because the article is not accepted for publication or because, in the second case, the quota available for publication in open access in the selected hybrid journal is exhausted. In these cases, the article may be published in closed access and the non-retention of rights would result in them being transferred in full to the publisher.

There is an obligation for the author to retain rights, which is achieved by affixing a license to the article that has this effect. The CC-BY license is the license indicated in the first line by the Open Access Policy as the applicable license, in line with what is established in Plan S. This is the most commonly used license and the one that allows the greatest latitude in the possibilities of use of the work by third parties, since it only requires attribution of authorship. It is therefore a type of license that is particularly suitable for fulfilling the purposes of open access. However, other licenses, such as CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND and CC-BY-SA, can be applied to the article.

The procedure for validating the application of an equivalent license involves submitting a request to FCT for the application of a license other than CC BY. The request must be addressed to politica-publicacoes@fct.pt and identify the publication in question, the alternative license to be applied and the justification for its use. The request will be analyzed and a decision made, taking into account the context of the situation under analysis and the possible convenience or necessity of applying a license other than CC BY.

It is a license that meets the objectives of ensuring open access to the article, taking into account the context of the situation under analysis.