Ghent University policy

Ghent University has adopted a new policy on scholarly publishing, effective as of January 1, 2023.

View Ghent University's policy on scholary publishing

Scope

The policy applies to the scholarly publishing activities of Ghent University researchers and the resulting publications

• In which they communicate the results of their scientific research and/or the state of research in their field to fellow scientists/experts
• Which meet the prevailing criteria for quality and scientific practice
• Excluding doctoral dissertations (covered by the Education and Examination Code for Doctoral Matters)

The key parts of the institutional vision, the responsibilities for policy implementation, and specific guidelines for researchers are described below.

The University's vision for scholarly publishing

Researcher-centric

The research community and its needs should be at the heart of the scholarly publishing system.

(Post-publication) peer review

• Scholarly publishing requires adherence to the prevailing standards of scientific practice (in one's own field).
• Where peer review is applicable, validation of published findings should take place through sound, transparent procedures.
• Peer review does not necessarily (only) happen before registration and dissemination of research results.

Wide variety of formats, venues, output types

• Scholarly publishing goes beyond the classic peer-reviewed journal article.
• It involves an increasingly broad range of publishing formats and venues.
• It also includes other types of digital research output to support published results (e.g. datasets, software, protocols...)

Fostering experiment and innovation

Experimenting and innovation in scholarly publishing are important to seize new (digital) opportunities and meet evolving (domain-specific) research needs.

Scientific knowledge as a public good

Published research findings should be openly accessible by default and maximally reusable, now and in the future.

Equity, diversity and inclusivity

• Participation in scholarly publishing should be based on scientific merit alone.
• It should not be based on on financial status, career stage, institutional affiliation or other membership, region, gender, etc.

Cost-effectiveness

Scholarly publishing should be characterised by fair, transparent and cost-effective business models and pricing.

Distributed and open infrastructure

The infrastructure for scholarly publishing should be distributed and open, to avoid over-dependence on a handful of service providers and their dominant approaches.

Social justice

The actual production process of scholarly publications should be characterised by fair working conditions.

Responsibilities

Implementing the policy is a shared responsibility.

Ghent University

Is committed to helping realise the vision for scholarly publishing outlined in the policy, including through advocacy, its internal policy and practice regarding research evaluation, and the provision of support to its researchers.

Faculties

Can help disseminate, support, and make concrete the university-wide vision through their own (policy) initiatives and procedures, and can further nurture it from local and domain-specific needs and practices.

Individual researchers

• Are encouraged to act in line with the university's vision in their role as authors, peer reviewers, editors etc.
• Are responsible for their own publishing strategy
• Are expected to at least comply with external funder requirements and the policy's specific guidelines for researchers

Things to consider prior to publishing

It is important to meet any legal, regulatory and contractual obligations when publishing (or even disclosing) your research.

Do not publish

• Without complying with the GDPR. You need a legal ground (such as research participants' prior active consent) to publish non-anonymous data.

• Before reporting research results with valorisation potential, following the procedures outlined in the AUGent and/or Ghent University regulations.

• Unless you comply with the contractual conditions governing your research in collaboration with or commissioned by third parties.
• Copyright-protected materials without prior permission from the copyright holder(s), unless your use is covered by the copyright exceptions for education and scientific research.

Integrity and quality

Uphold research integrity and ethics

• Adhere to applicable policies and codes, such as
  • The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity
  • Ghent University's policy on research integrity
  • Ghent University's Code of Conduct for Conflicts of Interest
• Uphold key principles in the publishing process (e.g. accuracy, correctness, honesty, transparency, independence, impartiality...)
• Avoid potentially problematic conflicts of interest when acting as an author, peer reviewer, editor, etc.

Quality before quantity

• Publish high-quality work in the highest-quality scholarly publishing venues in your own field, or in the wider scientific field.
• These are not necessarily limited to journals, nor to journals with the highest impact factor.
• Select trustworthy scholarly publishing venues that uphold prevailing quality standards.

Preprints and open peer review

• Preprints are encouraged as a normal first step in the publishing process, to allow for rapid and free circulation of findings.
• Engaging in open peer review is encouraged. This includes, for example, publishing review reports alongside the corresponding scholarly publication, disclosing the identity of peer reviewers, allowing post-publication commentary by other researchers, etc.

Ensure verifiable and reproducible findings

• Act in accordance with Ghent University's policy framework on RDM.
• Keep research data supporting your published findings available and accessible for verification, at least for the applicable retention period.
• Preferably deposit data in a suitable data repository/archive where possible.

Proper attribution and correct affiliation

• Correctly name co-authors on your scholarly publications. More on authorship in research
• Specifying authorship contributions, especially by means of the CRediT taxonomy, is strongly encouraged.
• Use the correct Ghent University affiliation on your scholarly publications. This ensures their effective attribution to the university.

Correct affiliations

Ghent University
Universiteit Gent
UGent

Ghent University Hospital
UZ Gent

Ghent University, Campus Kortrijk
Universiteit Gent, Campus Kortrijk
UGent, Campus Kortrijk

Ghent University, Ostend Science Park
Universiteit Gent, Ostend Science Park
UGent, Ostend Science Park

Ghent University Global Campus, Songdo (a second affiliation is also required: Ghent University, Belgium + department other than KR01)

Mandatory ORCID iD

Creating an ORCID iD, linking it to your Ghent University account, and mentioning it on your publications (where possible) is mandatory.

No ORCID iD yet? Create and connect one!

Mandatory registration and deposit in Biblio

Correctly register and deposit your published research outputs in Biblio, the academic bibliography and institutional repository.
Do this as soon as possible and aim to be exhaustive.

Why?

Only published outputs effectively registered and deposited are taken into account by Ghent University, for example for interfaculty distribution keys for allocating research funds, funding applications (BOF and IOF), evaluations, personnel files, or applications for a PhD completion bonus.

Find more reasons to register and deposit in Biblio

Registration of scholarly publications and published datasets

Registration in Biblio refers to entering and/or validating the required bibliographic details ('metadata') of your published research output.

Mandatory for

Scholarly publications with at least one Ghent University author at the time of publication, and of the following types:

• journal article
• special issue in a journal as (co-)editor
• book as (co-)author
• book as (co-)editor
• book chapter
• conference paper (i.e. paper published in a conference proceeding).

Research datasets published via a data repository, with at least one Ghent University creator at the time of publication, and which support publications from 2023 or later of the types listed above.

Not mandatory (but strongly encouraged) for

• Publications of types other than those listed above
• Published research datasets not (yet) linked to a publication, or linked to a publication from before 2023

Correct and complete metadata

Provide correct and complete bibliographic details when registering outputs in Biblio, including

• An ISSN or ISBN for publications that need to be included in VABB-SHW
• Conference details for conference papers
• For registered datasets, any related publications registered in Biblio (or vice versa)
• The funded research project from which your output has resulted

Deposit of scholarly publications

Depositing in Biblio refers to uploading a digital text version of your publication, in most cases the full text.

Research data files are not to be deposited in Biblio.

Mandatory for

Scholarly publications with at least one Ghent University author at the time of publication, published since 2010, and of the following types:

• journal article (full text required)
• special issue in a journal as (co-)editor (at least table of contents, title page and colophon required)
• book as (co-)author (full text required)
• book as (co-)editor (at least table of contents, title page and colophon required)
• book chapter (full text required)
• conference paper (i.e. paper published in a conference proceeding) (full text required)

Not mandatory (but strongly encouraged) for publications of other types.

Author's Accepted Manuscript or Version of Record?

Which version of your publication you need to deposit, depends on the situation.

For scientific journal articles published in 2023 or later, deposit at least a version that is peer-reviewed and that can legally be made publicly available:

• The Version of Record (VoR) if the article was published directly in Open Access. This is the publisher's final version.
• The Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in other cases, i.e. the version accepted for publication, but not yet in the publisher's final layout

For articles published before 2023 and other publications types, deposit at least either the AAM or VoR (the choice is free).

File format for deposit

Texts uploaded in Biblio are preferably in PDF format or in an open, machine-readable file format.

Non-Ghent University publications

You can also register and deposit in Biblio your non-Ghent University publications, e.g. those dating from before your appointment at the University.

Doing so is not mandatory, but may be useful to complete the overview of your scholarly publications in Biblio.

Open Access (OA)

Ghent University expects access to publications within the university network as a minimum, and strongly encourages Open Access, with an opt-out OA policy for scientific journal articles published in 2023 or later.

Why?

Open Access truly fulfils one of the core functions of scholarly publishing: to disseminate scientific knowledge, so others can scrutinize, reuse and build on it.

Find more reasons to make your work available in OA

Free choice of OA route

• There are two main routes to OA, which are not mutually exclusive: publishing directly in OA, and making your work available via a repository such as Biblio.
• Ghent University does not mandate any specific route to OA. It does encourage OA as soon as possible and with an open licence where possible.
• The choice of OA route is yours, provided that you comply with any applicable requirements from external funders.

No central fund for OA publishing costs

• Ghent University does not provide a central fund for reimbursing OA publishing fees (such as APCs) to researchers.
• You are free to pay for OA publishing costs from any bench fees allocated to you.
• Ghent University does support diamond OA, a form of OA that does not require any author fees.

Rights retention recommended

• Preferably avoid transferring your economic rights granted by copyright to your publisher. Otherwise, it will not be up to you to decide how you and others can distribute and reuse your work (including making it available in OA).
• If possible, grant the publisher a non-exclusive licence to publish your work.
• If possible, at least retain sufficient rights to make the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version of your publication publicly available via a repository, where possible without embargo and with an open licence.

For scientific journal articles, Belgian OA legislation already ensures that Ghent University authors maintain the right to make the AAM publicly available after an embargo period, no matter what is stipulated in the publishing agreement.

Some research funders' open access requirements may require researchers to retain sufficient rights to make the AAM publicly available via a repository with zero embargo and with an open reuse licence ('rights retention').

OA via Biblio

For scholarly publications deposited in Biblio, Ghent University

• By default makes them accessible at least within the closed Ghent University network (legally possible given a copyright exception for education and scientific research). Temporary exceptions for books are possible in exceptional circumstances.
• Makes them available in OA if it has permission from the rights holder - typically the author or the publisher, depending on the situation.

In practice, a scholarly publication in Biblio will be made publicly available (if necessary after embargo):

• If it is the Version of Record of a work published directly in OA with a CC licence
• If it is the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) of a scientific journal article published before 2023, and you give permission by opting for OA (or OA after embargo)
• If it is the AAM version of a scientific journal article published in 2023 or later, and you don't opt out of OA (see below)
• Otherwise, if you opt for OA (or OA after embargo) and you are the rights holder or, if not, the publisher permits OA via an institutional repository

Opt-out OA policy for journal articles published since 2023

For scientific journal articles published in 2023 or later, Ghent University

• Assumes your permission as a (co-)author to make the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version in Biblio publicly available in accordance with the provisions in the Belgian OA legislation (i.e. after embargo).
• Assumes that you have obtained any (external) co-author's agreement with making the AAM publicly available in Biblio.
• Always allows you to opt out of OA for individual articles, by explicitly requesting Biblio staff for an opt-out when depositing your AAM.

You do not have to provide a justification for opting out, but possible reasons include:

• A co-author not responding or not agreeing
• An article containing a substantial amount of third-party copyright-protected materials

Licence information required

• Provide licence information for all digital text versions to be made publicly available in Biblio, to clarify reuse permissions.
• If you can apply a licence of your own choosing, preferably select an open licence (e.g. CC0, CC BY), especially for scientific journal articles.

Datasets

• For any datasets registered in Biblio, make sure to indicate the access level and licence under which they are available in the original data repository that holds them.
• When publishing data in a data repository, follow the principle 'as open as possible, as closed as necessary' embodied in Ghent University's policy framework on RDM. Make them publicly available, unless access restrictions are needed for legitimate reasons (e.g. privacy, ethics, IP).