Step 6: Share your research
When sharing your research it is important to consider which are your target groups and the best method for reaching them. While researchers can be reached through publications and conference presentations, you also need to reflect on other target groups and avenues for communication.
- Are there professional organisations or subject associations that could help you with dissemination?
- Could you reach groups outside universities through articles in the general media?
- How can you best accommodate the different levels of understanding and interest among different audiences?
Successful communication depends on how well you know your target groups and are able to adjust your communication to different audiences.
Publication and open access
An important part of grant applications is to clearly and convincingly explain for funders what the outcomes of the project will be. Included in this are publications. Requirements for your publication information might differ between funders. It is therefore important to check funders’ instructions thoroughly and make sure you answer their specific questions. This part of the handbook describes one aspect of publications which is important to most research funders, open access.
Open access can be defined as:
1) Free and permanent access to published research
2) Clear guidelines for readers to share and use the content. Below is explained how researchers can comply with funders’ open access requirements.
Applying for open access publication funding from the research funder
Publishing open access comes generally with a cost for the author, a so called article or book processing charge (APC or BPC). It is therefore important to check whether you need to include those extra costs in your proposal. In some cases you are asked to provide a sum that you think will cover the publication charges in potential journals, but in other cases a fixed amount of money is already included by the funder.
If you have to provide a sum, make sure that you do not underestimate the costs. APCs and BPCs often amount to several thousand US dollars. It is therefore important that you check the APC/BPC for the journals or publishers that you aim to publish in/with. They can be found on journals’ or publishers’ homepages. Add those anticipated publication costs to your budget where they apply.
Financial support from Karlstad University
If it is not possible to receive sufficient funding for open access via your funder it is worth to notice that you can also receive some financial support from Karlstad University. For many journals the library has pre-paid the article processing charge or has negotiated discounts via a national consortium called Bibsam.
Free open access publishing
If your journal of choice does not offer an open access option - or if you lack funding to pay the APC - the solution can be parallel publishing, or the green road to open access: When the article is published, or – depending on funders’ and publishers’ rules – after an embargo period, you can make a copy of your accepted manuscript public via our publication database DiVA. It is the accepted version of the manuscript that shall be added to the repository, not the submitted version nor the publisher’s version. Information about embargo times and other rules on parallel publishing for different journals can be found here or on the publishers’ websites. Important to note is that the green road to open access means that the journal/publisher retains copyright to your publication.
If you have questions, please contact publiceringsstod@kau.se.