Open Science Policies - Open Access Policy

It depends on the approach taken to implement the FCT's open access policy.

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 in a hybrid journal outside the scope of a transformative agreement, the version of the article deposited in a repository must bethe Author’s Accepted Manuscript, unless the publisher allows the Version of Record to be deposited.

The Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or Accepted Manuscript is the version of the article generated by the author, which includes 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 consists of not transferring copyright to the publisher. These rights are retained by the author, who can therefore continue to exercise them and allow third parties to reuse their article, permitting, in particular, its copying, distribution, adaptation, and complementary work based on their article.

Complete 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) applies to the submitted manuscript and will apply 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 Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P. (FCT, https://ror.org/00snfqn58 [1]) under 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 accepted manuscript (AAM) resulting from this submission.”

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

[2] Funding identifier (DOI, from Digital Object Identifier).

A Creative Commons license is a license based on an alternative model to traditional copyright, giving the author the possibility to define how they want their work to be used by third parties and, therefore, which rights reserved under the traditional copyright regime may be exercised by third parties.

There are several types of Creative Commons licenses ( About CC Licenses – Creative Commons), and the FCT Open Access Policy indicates that, as a rule, authors should associate their articles with a CC-BY license.

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

This license allows the article to be copied and shared, as well as reused and used to create derivative works, provided that the authorship is always acknowledged. More information can be found here.

By applying a CC-BY license to the AAM version of their article, authors are creating the conditions for the article to be accessible and reusable by anyone who is interested in it, thus fulfilling the purpose of making content resulting from FCT funding openly accessible. With the CC-BY license, the author retains their copyright or, in other words, the author does not transfer these rights to the publisher of the journal where they publish their article. In this way, the author makes it possible for the AAM version of their article to be freely used, not only by themselves, for example by depositing that version in a repository, but also by third parties, who can disseminate, adapt, etc., it, provided that the author is given due credit.

Retaining 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, despite the article already being published in open access, to prevent situations where 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, in the second case, because the quota available for open access publication in the selected hybrid journal has been exhausted. In such cases, the article may be published in closed access, and the non-retention of rights would result in their full transfer to the publisher.

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

The procedure for validating the application of an equivalent license involves submitting a request to FCT to apply a license other than CC BY. The request should be sent 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 reviewed, and a decision will be made, taking into account the context of the situation under review and the possible convenience or necessity of applying a license other than CC BY.

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