Open science evolved from the open publishing of scientific research data as researchers and funders of public research resisted the increasingly expensive processes of traditional publishing. Traditional publishers also did not provide access to the entire content to users with limited financial resources. Open publication of scientific research results is the handling of results in a way that allows verification and reuse of data in accordance with FAIR principles.

FAIR Principles:

• Findable: ensuring easy findability for users and computers through the use of permanent identifiers of digital objects, clear description of metadata and entry in bibliographic indexes.
• Accessible: ensuring the accessibility of scientific research data, including the authentification and authorization process using trusted repositories.
• Interoperable: analyzing, storing, and processing data using appropriate metadata and integration with other data and work processes.
• Reusable: optimizing data reuse, which requires that data and metadata are well described so that they can be reused in further research.

Important Elements of Open Publishing:

• Persistent Identifiers (PID) represent unique and permanent links to digital objects, which are crucial in ensuring findability and permanent access to scientific research results.
• Trustworthy repositories are part of the digital infrastructure that supports open science. We divide them into certified, regional, general and institutional.
• Open licenses according to the principles of open science allow users to freely use, modify or share results under the same conditions. Most often they are marked with Creative Commons licenses (CC).
• Sharing exceptions mostly refer to scientific research data that could threaten the security, legitimate interests of the beneficiary, including commercial exploitation (e.g. patent protection).

 
Different Types of Open Access Publishing

1. Green Open Access: indicates the storage of the author’s final, peer-reviewed version of the article, which has been accepted for publication in a subscription scientific journal, in an institutional repository. In the event that the author has transferred the copyright to the publisher, the latter must allow him to save the peer-reviewed or non-peer-reviewed version of the article in the repository. On the Open Policy Finder portal publishers’ open access policies with license summaries are collected and analysed.

2. Gold Open Access: refers to publication in open access journals or monographs that allow access to research results without subscription. The author retains the copyright and allows further use, usually marked with CC licenses. Publishing in Gold Open Access usually requires payment of a publication processing charge (APC).

3. Diamond Open Access: non-profit open access model that does not charge a subscription for access or publication. The author retains the copyright and allows the sharing and reuse of the scientific work. Publication for commercial purposes is usually not permitted. Publishers provide operating funds through public service payments, sponsorships, donations, crowdfunding and fundraisers within the framework of various initiatives.

Unfair Publishing Practices

When searching for information about the suitability of an individual scientific journal or publisher, we must pay special attention to unfair publishing practices:

• Predatory journals represent virtual journals that do not have a properly regulated review process. They often cite false and misleading metrics about their influence.
• Predatory publishers are those publishers who publish predatory journals.
• Misleading metrics are often made-up metrics with a catchy name and often with a name that resembles authentic metrics.
• Predator scientific conferences are conferences prepared without standard procedures (e.g. without an editorial board, peer reviews of papers, etc.).
• Hijacked journals are misleading and fake websites that look like a copy of an original scientific journal.
  

Tools and portals that can help verify the credibility of journals and publishers:

• Think Check Submit: helps to identify trusted journals and publishers;
• Think Check Attend: helps to detect untrusted conferences;
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): an open database that allows you to search in journals with gold access;
• Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): an open database that enables the search of open access scientific monographs;
• Web of Science (Clarivate): multidisciplinary database with citation indexes Science Citation Index Expanded® (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index® (SSCI) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index® (A&HCI);
• Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR): a tool for checking the credibility of scientific journals.

Subpage Open Science at UP UK is funded by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation within the framework of the Action Plan for the Open Science (Objective 6.2 ReZrIS30).