If you find an interesting publication in VBN which does not have an article attached, feel free to contact the VBN Team who will assist you in acquiring the article.

What is Open Access?

Open Access means free access to academic literature. With Open Access, research results are no longer just for the few people who are paying subscription or license fees for the journals; they are available to everyone. The trend is that an increasing number of research publications are published under Open Access conditions.

Open Access is possible when researchers parallel publish their publications with an attached full text in an open archive, a repository. VBN is Aalborg University's repository. There are also Open Access journals whose purpose is to make free publications available to the general public. Open Access journals are usually academic, peer-reviewed journals.

Green Open Access and Gold Open Access

Green Open Access (parallel publishing, e.g. in VBN) means that researchers are free to upload a version of their peer-reviewed scientific article in a repository. This allows a researcher to publish both pre- and post print and/or the Publisher's version of the individual publication in VBN.

With Gold Open Access, magazines charge a lump sum for publishing an article which is then made available in the journal free of charge. These journals are of the same quality as regular journals; however, access to the journal requires no subscription fee to be paid. The cost of Gold Open Access journals is paid by the author or the author's institution. When researchers publish in a Gold Open Access journal, they can link directly to the full text version of the journal by registering in VBN.

Find Open Access journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals’ website.