Good to know

Before signing a publishing contract, you should carefully check whether the publication is reputable and your rights are protected.

With the emergence of various open access publishing models and new open access journals, dubious journals are also entering the publication market. So-called "predatory journals" or "predatory publishers" demand publication fees for editorial services that they do not provide or provide in inferior quality. These dubious business practices harm not only the authors, but the entire scientific publishing landscape.

Criteria for assessing the quality of OA journals can be found in the checklist Think. Check. Submit. 

A comparison with the following sources can also provide certainty:

• OA-Finder 
• DOAJ 
• DOAB 
• BASE 

Clarify your rights before signing a contract with a publisher. Make sure that you do not assign the rights to your texts to the publisher exclusively and for an unlimited period of time and insist on a license that allows you to meet the specifications of your funding institution and university.

We will be happy to advise you if you have any questions about signing a contract: openness@fhnw.ch

As the author of scientific and artistic works, you can use Creative Commons licenses (CC licences for short) to determine the legal conditions under which your works may be published, redistributed, and used. This is subject to the condition that you, as the author, have not yet transferred the exclusive rights of use to anyone else. The CC licences are a global and uniform system that is available in many languages. Various symbols are used to visualise and explain which conditions must be observed for further use. They are therefore easy for users to understand even without legal knowledge.
The CC licences work like a modular system. The licence conditions can be combined with each other, resulting in a total of six different licence types. Depending on the combination, open or restrictive use of the content can be permitted.

Research funders and universities recommend using a licence that is as open as possible, such as CC BY (author must be named).