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While publishing

During the publishing process, a scholarly author has to face many choices and consider numerous aspects: from the evaluation of the journal to which submit the work, to the check of the requirements foreseen by the funding bodies for the Open Access dissemination of the contents.
This page provides tools and information to make more informed decisions.

Facilitations for authors

Thanks to specific agreements stipulated with publishers, Unipd authors who wish to publish their work in Open Access can take advantage of discounts or concessions on the payment of APCs (Article Processing Charges).

The scientific publications market has entered a new phase characterized by the transition from the "pay to read" model to the "pay to publish" model.

Italian consortium CARE-CRUI is negotiating with the biggest international publishers a new type of read & publish agreement — defined as "transformative" — which provides for the authors of the institutions that adhere to these contracts the possibility of publishing Open Access at no additional costs for the author: these expenses are already included in the cost of the contract.

 

Mandates of the funding bodies

Open Access is currently the main publication method envisaged by the mandates of national and international bodies, institutions and funders of research projects.
To respond to the mandates of the funding bodies, it is necessary to ensure that the publications relating to the results of the funded projects are accessible to Open Access within the time limits provided for by the mandates themselves.
Open Access dissemination of publications is mandatory for:

  • Publications produced in the context of research projects funded by the European Commission (H2020, MSCA, Horizon Europe) and related bodies (European Research Council - ERC)
  • Publications carried out in the context of research projects funded by members of cOAlition S and adherents to Plan S
  • Publications obtained in the context of projects funded by the national program MUR PRIN 2015, PRIN 2017 and PRIN 2020
  • Publications produced as part of the UNIPD STARS 2019, 2020, and 2021 projects
  • In general, articles in scientific journals that come from research projects financed for at least 50% with public funds (Law No. 112/2013)

It is important to verify the characteristics of the coverage of publication costs (article processing charge - APC) provided by the funding bodies, about the choice of publishing in native Open Access journals (Gold Open Access), or in "hybrid" journals (journals which may contain both open access and closed access items): in the latter case they could be accepted only if included in transformative agreements.

All funding bodies require that the documents produced within the funded projects are also disseminated through self-archiving in Open Access institutional archives (Green Open Access). For authors who are part of the institutional staff of the University of Padua, the Regulations provide for the obligation to deposit in Padua Research Archive (PRA).

 

Before publishing

Using PIDs

Before submitting content to a publisher, authors should identify themselves through a persistent author identifier like ORCID, which is a no-profit register of persistent personal IDs that is used by a wide range of research services, patents databases, grant management tools or scholarly databases. Author IDs are essential in disambiguating homonyms.

The use of unique IDs, such as ORCID or DOI, ensures:

  • that publication metadata are curated effectively by authors and/or academic publishers
  • that a journal, a monograph or another place of publication offers standardized metadata for every item published. A DOI is essential for correctly and persistently identifying digital content
  • to identify an index of the publisher's managerial quality and content preservation policies

 

Check the visibility, prestige and citation impact of the journal

Before choosing a publisher or journal to submit a work for publication, it is a good idea to evaluate what opportunities for visibility in the reference scientific community the journal offers. The more disciplinary and interdisciplinary databases that index the journal, the greater the possibility of disseminating the results of research.

The Impact of Research section collects information on Web of Science and Scopus, databases that calculate the most popular citation indexes (citation count, Impact Factor, SJR, h-index and others).

It is important to verify the citation impact (Impact Factor) of the journal, as the number of citations that a publication receives is of great importance both for defining the impact potential of the research presented within it and for the attribution of scores in the publications, competitions, and the recurring ANVUR assessment exercises (e.g. VQR).

Regarding the Humanities, specialized journals might not be indexed in international databases. For this reason, ANVUR has prepared classified lists of accredited journals for some sectors, which also include titles non-indexed in large citation databases, providing them with an accreditation index. Humanities and social sciences journals can also be searched in the ERIH database (European Reference Index for the Humanities).

Among the repertoires of periodicals at an international level, Ulrichsweb allows you to check if a journal has been registered and equipped with an ISSN number, to which subject area it belongs, and, above all, if it is indexed in the main bibliographic and citation databases.

 

Beware of predatory publishing

Before submitting academic work, it is advisable to check the quality and professionalism of the publisher. It is also good to check where the contents are indexed (databases, directories, etc.) and what is declared on the journal's web pages, paying attention to false Impact Factors and misleading metrics. Another quality index is the publisher's preservation policy.

Predatory publishing and Vanity Press take advantage of the benefits of the digital environment, as one can easily simulate an editorial platform to invite researchers, even through e-mail spam, to publish their contributions in journals that lack any scientific credibility.

How to identify a predatory publisher:

  • Predatory publishers create digital platforms and enrich them with content mostly collected from the websites of other publishers
  • Often the predatory web platform boasts dozens of titles of periodicals without accessible content
  • Predatory, hijacker or fake Journals make use of names that are stolen  or similar to reputable Scholarly Journals
  • Predatory publishers claim content indexing in scholarly databases in which they are not present or in databases that are without qualitative inclusion criteria
  • Sometimes trustworthy articles (on which the publisher has no rights) find a place on the predatory publisher websites
  • Often the attribution of misleading metrics is highlighted, but they are always fake
  • Peer review is offered within a very short time (from 48 hours to 10 days)
  • There seem to be no publication charges but, soon after publication, the author is asked to pay the management fee

 

Agreements with publishers

It is important for publishing authors to be aware of the existing regulations regarding authors' rights and copyright and to know the editorial policies of individual publishers, to avoid leaving all rights, even those necessary to fulfil the mandates of the funding bodies or those useful for carrying out educational activities. or research.

Verify publishers' policies regarding self-archiving in institutional or disciplinary archives

Before publishing authors must make sure that the publisher to whom they submit the paper foresees the deposit with open access in an institutional archive. The Sherpa Romeo database is the primary source of information relating to editorial policies regarding copyright and self-archiving.
Upon acceptance of the paper by the publisher, it must be verified that the permission to deposit in the institutional or disciplinary archives is clearly stated in the contract.

If self-archiving in an institutional archive is not allowed, the author can negotiate an amendment to the contract (addendum).
If he/she fails to negotiate with the publisher, the author can submit the article to another journal that meets the requirements for Open Access dissemination, but if the article must necessarily be published in that specific journal, it is necessary to inform the contact person of the project, attaching the publisher's declaration of refusal.

SPARC addendum and Science Commons SCAE are legal tools that authors can use to safeguard their editorial rights by amending standard publisher agreements.
In the guidelines for authors, Sparc illustrates how to use the addendum to the editorial contract to guarantee authors' rights. SPARC addendum is also available in Italian.

For authors participating in EU-funded projects who need to publish in non-Open Access journals, Horizon 2020 has proposed a specific model of the publishing agreement.

In the revised editorial agreement, the author agrees with the publisher on the possibility of:

  • maintain the right to reproduce, distribute and publicly display the article, not for commercial, but for teaching and research use
  • self-archive the article on the personal or institutional website and deposit it in open archives
  • prepare works derived from the article: for example, use the contents of the publication to create didactic material.


After publishing

Once a piece of research has been published, it is a good idea to carry out the following checks:

  • make sure that the article has been correctly indexed by citation databases (Scopus or Web of Science), and that there are no errors that could lead to citations being incorrectly attributed (errors in the journal’s name, issue number, the year, splitting the ownership of the author, etc.). Keep in mind that getting an error corrected in a document registered on the main citation databases (Web of Science and Scopus) is a process that usually requires several months.
  • when there are certain deadlines (calls, evaluation procedures), researchers may be requested to provide several bibliographic indexes related to their work or to the journals in which they have been published, therefore it is good to keep up to date by consulting the citation databases.
  • after publishing, it is a good idea to consider the possibility of archiving your paper in institutional repositories. The University of Padua makes it obligatory for its researchers to deposit their work in Padua Research Archive.

Other services for authors

Each DOI is associated with a set of bibliographic information (metadata) which include, as a minimum: the author, title, publisher, and date of publication.
The DOI is a persistent identifier that does not guarantee the scientific authority of the published content or any inclusion in research assessment processes.

Non-commercial DOI attribution service

DOI assignment for research products (reserved for Unipd users)

The University of Padua has entered into an agreement with CRUI for joining the DataCite international consortium for the attribution of the non-commercial DOI to digital Open Access contents such as PhD theses, technical reports or datasets, and more.
The attribution can only be requested by the University of Padua institutional users for content that complies with the minimum quality standards.

The DOI can only be assigned to digital objects - which are not already equipped with another DOI - published with open access at the University of Padua.
To request an attribution it is necessary to use the Library System Helpline, choosing the "Supporto alla pubblicazione accademica" ("Scholarly publishing support") queue. The request must include:

  • the name of a contact person
  • the Department / Center responsible for the scientific content of the publication
  • the URL of the publication or the pdf of the publication, if not yet published online

Upon contact with the representative, the service assigns the DOI to the object; if not yet published, the URL will be provisional and will be replaced with the definitive one after publication.

 
Non-commercial DOI assignment for Datasets

The assignment takes place automatically for the Open Access datasets deposited by the authors in the Research Data Unipd institutional archive.

 

Library Helpline

If you need any further information, please contact the Library Helpline. Select:

  • "Supporto alla pubblicazione accademica" (Scholarly publishing support)
  • "Consulenza tematiche diritto d’autore" (Copyright support)
  • "Supporto Open Science (Open Access, Open Data)" (Open Science support)