AAU OPEN’s mission is to contribute to the development of open scientific publishing and publication formats and to provide researchers at AAU with a transparent and free or cost-effective way to make their work freely available to a global audience.

The mission is guided by an Open Science agenda, where alternative publishing models and ensuring free access to research are at the core.

AAU OPEN's ambition is to make as much of AAU's research and knowledge as possible openly available to a large audience; thereby contributing to greater societal impact. To achieve this goal, AAU OPEN offers Open Access guidance and publishes academic work of a high standard on topics relevant to AAU's research areas. At the same time, this meets increasing Open Access requirements from grant providers and research communities.

AAU's researchers are our primary focus and through dialogue with researchers, research groups, and management, we ensure that AAU OPEN's services are targeted our researchers' needs for guidance on Open Access and publishing. In AAU OPEN, we therefore also explore new forms of scientific communication and offer a home for e.g. open journals, books, and textbooks.

Aalborg University has been a member of the EU initiative Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) since March 2023 and is also a signatory to the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA). AAU thus works actively to develop research evaluations that comply with the principles of CoARA, where particularly responsible metrics, diversity in research publications, openness, collaboration, visibility, and societal impact are essential. Precisely for this reason, it is part of AAU OPEN’s vision to offer easily accessible Open Access guidance and publish open peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed publications.

Peer review is an essential part of ensuring good research practice, relevance, and innovation of research publications and of preventing scientific misconduct. A clear, distinct, and thorough practice for peer review is therefore an important part of ensuring the quality of the publications from AAU Open Publishing. When a manuscript has undergone peer review and has been assessed as suitable for publication, this is clearly indicated on the publication with a label.

Below you will find a description of AAU OPEN's process for peer review of various publications from AAU Open Publishing, including the division of responsibility in the review process.

All PhD theses from AAU undergo the necessary peer review as a prerequisite for awarding the PhD degree. This process is overseen by AAU PHD and the Academic Councils at AAU.

All journals at journals.aau.dk, which are indexed in DOAJ, have described a clear process for peer review on their websites, which can be accessed here.

The AAU OPEN team makes an initial assessment of the submitted manuscript. This involves a check of:

• Whether the publication fits AAU OPEN's scope regarding the Open Access criteria 
• Whether the manuscript meets basic requirements for good scientific practice, including references, author instructions, etc.

If the manuscript proposal complies with these criteria, the AAU OPEN team sends the manuscript to the publication committee, which assess the academic content based on a description of theory, methods, data, etc.

If the publication committee assesses that the publication meets good scientific practice and contains a new scientific contribution, the AAU OPEN team sends the manuscript to two peer reviewers. As a general rule, the review process is double blind. If the author wishes for an open review process, this must be agreed upon with AAU OPEN.

Authors who already have a manuscript that has undergone peer review, but not been published by another publisher, are welcome to contact AAU OPEN to inquire the possibility of publishing with AAU OPEN. To use this option, the authors must be able to attach documentation for peer review, which entails a written description of the process. AAU OPEN will review the manuscript and the written description of the peer review and make an overall assessment of whether the publication can be published under AAU Open Publishing as a peer reviewed publication.

• The reviewer assesses the manuscript and answers in writing to AAU OPEN a series of standardized questions, which must ensure the scientific quality, relevance, and novelty of the publication.
• The reviewer must inform the AAU OPEN team in writing whether the publication can be published as is, with minor revisions, with major revisions, or whether the publication should be rejected.
• If, in the review of the publication, the reviewer suspects scientific misconduct, the reviewer must contact the AAU OPEN team in writing, who will review the suspicion and assess the further process for the publication.

• When submitting a manuscript to AAU OPEN, authors are asked to enclose the names of at least 3 external persons as potential reviewers.
• The authors are obliged to revisit the manuscript and answer and possibly implement suggestions from the reviewers. If the authors do not agree with the review, this must be stated in the answer.

• AAU OPEN finds and contacts peer reviewers
• AAU OPEN assesses the reviewers' comments and provides the collected reviews to the authors.
• If there is disagreement between reviewers 1 and 2 as to whether a publication can be published (this does not imply a difference in major or minor revisions, but only when a reviewer does not believe that the publication can be published), the AAU OPEN team and the publication committee will assess the publication and the two reviews and make an overall decision for the publication’s potential, possibly in collaboration with the AAU Practice Committee.
• When the evaluation process has been completed, the AAU OPEN team will contact the authors again regarding the further process for publication including contract, layout, and publishing procedures.

You as the author are the sole owner of the copyright to the published content. The author is also responsible for any omissions or infringements of copyright in the publication. AAU OPEN's responsibility is limited to the removal of the publication if such a request is raised with documentation to support the claim. However, metadata will continue to be visible along with a reason for the removal. This is to ensure transparency and accountability in research and publication processes.

It is the author's responsibility to seek written permission from the legal owners when using illustrations in the publication. As an author, you must also ensure that you credit the correct copyright holders. AAU OPEN is not responsible for any copyright infringement.

AAU Open Publishing publishes exclusively Open Access and uses Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 as a default license. If you as an author wish to use a different CC license, this must be agreed with AAU OPEN.

AAU Open Publishing checks submitted manuscripts in the iThenticate plagiarism tool. As an author, you can therefore expect your manuscript to undergo a plagiarism check as part of the publishing process.

If iThenticate finds similarities, AAU OPEN will review the analysis and decide on the further process. In cases of careless or poor citation, the authors will be referred to a guide on criteria for citation and asked to introduce the changes in the manuscript.

In other cases, the authors will be asked to provide an explanation and revise the manuscript to reduce the similarity. After revision, the manuscript will again undergo a similarity check. If the similarities are still unacceptable, the manuscript may be rejected depending on an assessment by AAU OPEN and the Publication Committee.

All co-authors must agree to submit the work as a publication under AAU Open Publishing. This also implies that all co-authors must agree to add new (co-)authors to the publication and that changes in the author list or sequence must be sent to the AAU OPEN team with justification for adding or removing authorship.

AAU Open Publishing is a not-for-profit Diamond publisher, which means that publishing is free for authors from AAU: It is a requirement to have at least one AAU employee on the publication.

If the authors have very specific requests, such as personal design for a book cover, which will require extra time in terms of layout and set-up, there may be a small cost involved. The author will be responsible for covering these expenses, which will be done with their approval.

AAU OPEN is a not-for-profit publisher and therefore we refrain from any kind of royalties to authors. Hence, there are no royalties for authors who publish via AAU OPEN. In return, the authors' work is made available to a global audience.. 

Each publication is assigned a DOI (digital object identifier) ​​that refers to the publication's location and makes it easy to find, share, and cite.

We recommend that all editors and authors use an ORCID. With an ORCID, you get a unique and permanent digital identifier that helps ensure that the correct author is credited for their work. One's ORCID is permanent and remains the same despite e.g. change of name, affiliation or research area. It is also possible to link an ORCID directly to one's researcher profile in VBN.

All publications from AAU OPEN are indexed with Crossref and have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). All metadata on our publications is openly available in the VBN portal.

AAU Open Publishing works for future indexation in:

• OASPA
• DOAB
• DOAJ
• SCOPUS
• The Norwegian Register (Kanalregistret)

AAU OPEN uses Pure (VBN) as a research registration system. Pure/VBN is AAU's institutional repository. All publications published under the auspices of AAU OPEN are published and available via the VBN portal. This ensures future digital access to the work and its metadata. Furthermore, the Royal Danish Library harvests the VBN portal, so that publications registered in the VBN are archived in accordance with the Danish legislation regarding archiving obligations.

Views expressed in works published under AAU Open Publishing are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of AAU OPEN.

Responsibility for the content of AAU Open Publishing's publications lies exclusively with the author(s) concerned. AAU OPEN, the editors of the journals at journals.aau.dk, and the series editors are not responsible for errors in the content or any consequences resulting from the use of information contained therein.

The Open Access Committee at Aalborg University sets the overall strategic framework for Open Access for the university's research publications. The committee is responsible for the university's Open Access policy and its development. Any major strategic changes to the scope of AAU OPEN will be discussed with the Open Access Committee. 

Read more about the Open Access Committee at AAU here.

The publishing committee's main task is to advise the AAU OPEN team on the scientific contribution of submitted publication proposals to AAU Open Publishing. This involves an overall scientific assessment of the manuscripts’ theory, methods, data and subject area. In addition to advising on the scientific level of submitted manuscripts, the publishing committee provides guidance on general issues and can propose changes to the overall purpose and scope of AAU OPEN.

The Publishing Committee holds two annual meetings with the AAU OPEN team. In addition, the committee members are contacted to assess incoming manuscript proposals.

If you would like to be part of the publication committee, you are welcome to contact us at aauopen@aau.dk