Gustav Westberg: "I only have positive experiences"
Gustav Westberg.
Anna Westerlund, who works with scholarly publishing at Örebro University Library, has talked to Gustav Westberg about his experiences with publishing open access articles.
About Gustav Westberg
Associate Senior Lecturer in the Swedish Language at the School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences.
His research is anchored in multimodal critical discourse analysis and revolves around the material and affective prerequisites of discourses.
Article published with Open Access in the journal Social Semiotics as per the publication agreement between the University Library and Taylor & Francis.
Gustav Westberg is one of several researchers at Örebro University who have chosen to publish their research open access:
- The benefits are, of course, that my research and the results it generates become more accessible. Hopefully it also contributes to my work being read more widely. I don’t see any direct difficulties with open access, says Gustav Westberg.
When it comes to choosing a journal to publish in, there is a lot to consider. Gustav believes that the possibility to publish open access is an important parameter:
- Many research funders require research results to be published in open access journals, which means that I already think about and plan my publications with this in mind when writing applications, says Gustav Westberg.
Gustav has published several articles with open access:
- I only have positive experiences. The only difficulty that has arisen concerns understanding the agreement that applies between a publisher and Örebro University, but I have always received great help from the University Library with this. In a case where an article was first published without open access, I also subsequently received help in making it open access, says Gustav Westberg.
Some funders offer peer review and Open Access publication on a platform provided by the funder (for example, the European Commission’s Open Research Europe). Such open platforms allow you to publish Open Access free of charge and with peer review, but on a platform instead of in a journal. Open Research Europe also explicitly states that they will not apply for an impact factor (with reference to the DORA principles).
Gustav has not yet published anything on open platforms and is quite sceptical:
- An obvious advantage of publishing in journals is that you can communicate with a niche research community. Publishing outside the channels where theory and method development in one’s own research field takes place is more difficult than one might think, because the view of basic things such as knowledge interests, research objects and methods can differ significantly. So I don’t think I would prioritise publishing on that type of platform. On the other hand, as I’ve said, I don’t have any experience and maybe it works great, but I guess it depends a lot on the composition of the editorial board and the review procedure, says Gustav Westberg.
Finally, Gustav has a tip for other researchers who have not yet published open access articles, but are interested in doing so:
- Get in touch with e-publicering at the University Library. They are up to speed and can give you the best possible help!