Open Science for Arts, Design and Music/Guidelines/Articles

Articles

Publishing in an open access scientific journal gives everyone free and immediate access to your article. In order to publish your article in open access, you might incur in publication costs, that is Article Processing Charges (APCs). The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indicates whether a journal requires APCs to be paid and, if so, how much.

Formats of academic journal articles

There are four formats of academic journal articles:

1. Preprint
2. Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) - also known as Postprint
3. Proof
4. Version of Record (VoR)

Preprint

Even if not published yet or even if the preprint version as such will never be published, it is protected by copyright (considering that it has an individual character). Besides copyright, according to art. 382 of the Swiss CO, the author must avoid from making "other arrangements regarding the work or parts thereof to the publisher's detriment", thus by publishing a different version, such as the preprint or the AAM, which may lead to a competition with the VoR edition if done without the publisher's consent. In fact, in order to avoid unfair competition, often the agreement between the author(s) and the VoR's publisher establishes a ban for the author on publishing and sharing the preprint version. However, the risk of being rivalled by a different version should be vetted on a case by case basis, as in certain circumstances the preprint version might not compete with the VoR (e.g. a version without number of pages, which can hardly be quoted, according to the doctrine, especially Hilty). This matter can be negotiated by the author-researcher with the publisher and a specific agreement on the possibility of publishing the preprint version can be found.

Version of Record (VoR)

The law provides the author(s) and the publisher a wide array of options on the transfer of copyright, from granting a mere authorisation to use the work to a partial or even total assignment of rights. In the first case, the author only grants the publisher the right to publish and disseminate the VoR, either with an exclusive or with a non-exclusive (such as a Creative Commons) license, and by doing so the author remains the right holder of their work. In the second case, the publishing contract transfers to the publisher all or part of copyrights, so that it becomes the right holder of the work and is then the only one entitled to decide how many times and where to publish the work, being also the one to whom anyone interested in reusing the VoR should address the request for permission. The Swiss code of obligations (CO) regulates the publishing contract in arts. 380 ss. More specifically, art. 381 CO lays down the assignment to the publisher of rights necessary for the purpose of publication (the so-called principle of the purpose), with the consequence that (according to part of the Swiss doctrine) the author is allowed to transfer to a further publisher the right e.g. to translate and disseminate the translation if this right cannot be considered included in the rights needed to perform the contract with the first publisher. Moreover, art. 382/3 CO foresees a period of 3 months of time (embargo) from publication of a contribution to collections or anthologies and relatively lengthy magazine articles during which the author must refrain from publishing elsewhere the work. No second publication right for other kind of works is set forth by the Swiss law. However, since the provisions laid down in arts. 380, 381 and 382 CO are not mandatory law, the parties' contractual freedom prevails. Thus, the author(s) and the publisher are free to negotiate and agree on what exact copyrights are granted (through a license) or assigned, what rights remain to the author, as well as the length of the embargo period.