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Communication and Dissemination

The author has the delicate task to make the most appropriate choice regarding the editorial placement of the product ("where to publish"). Several individual considerations may influence this choice, related to each person's disciplinary fields, the scientific contexts considered most appropriate in relation to the research, but also to one's institutional profile and personal expectations regarding the best possible dissemination of one's contributions to the national and international scientific community. 

Open Access dissemination of publications and research data is an opportunity for all researchers to increase their visibility and impact.

There are two methods for Open Access publishing:

GREEN ROAD - self-archiving of publications in open-access repositories: the author provides for the archiving of his products in his institution's open repository (for Unifi authors, FLORE) or in a disciplinary open repository. Many publishers provide an embargo period. Editorial policies can be accessed in Sherpa/RoMEO, which is integrated into Flore. This allows the author to upload his contribution and immediately check what format (preprint, postprint, editorial version) they can put in open access, without contravening the terms of the contract signed with the publisher. Self-archiving does not preclude the author from publishing in commercial journals as well.

GOLD ROAD - open access publishing: the author immediately publishes their contribution in open access (all content is completely open access). Gold road can be of two types: open access journals or monographs that are free to the public but with a co-payment of editorial and publication costs (the journal is completely open access); or commercial journals for a fee (subscription with subscription), with closed access, but in which some articles are open access at the author's request, with a payment (APC) by the author from the institution to which he or she belongs.

Open Access provides for and actively supports self-archiving practices of research products.

Authors of books, volume essays, and journal essays should be able to deposit their publications (the published version, as well as the preprint) in institutional repositories or any other repository valid for the purpose of knowledge preservation and dissemination (green road).

The institutional repository of the University of Florence is FLORE.

For a list of open access repositories see ROAR and OpenDOAR.

Publishers' self-archiving policies are verifiable on the online resource Sherpa Romeo, which aggregates and presents the open access policies of publishers and journals from around the world.

Zenodo is a multidisciplinary, open-access repository. Zenodo and most data archives are free up to a certain dataset size, beyond which a fee is charged.

 There are also disciplinary archives. A list is available Re3data.

FLORE portal ROAR Open DOAR Sherpa Romeo Zenodo Re3data

A pre-print is a scientific article that has not yet been submitted for refereeing and is uploaded by the authors to a public server. The pre-print circulates among scholars primarily to expedite the communication of research results and later will presumably be replaced by a properly reviewed and published version.

Advantages of publishing a pre-print

  • clear attribution of intellectual authorship on a new idea
  • visibility, rapid dissemination and sharing of research results
  • no cost of publication for the author nor of reading the article for the reader
  • usually authors retain copyright of work published on pre-print servers
  • pre-print articles can be commented on by scholars thus offering valuable input for publication improvement
  • subsequent revised versions are usually always retained in the server

Preprint repositories and search engines

Since 1991, physicists have disseminated their research through preprints archived in the ArXiv repository; in more recent times, repositories have sprung up for other disciplines as well, such as BiorXiv for Biology, PsyArXiv for Psychology, AgriXiv for Agriculture, and latest in 2020 MedRxiv for Medicine.

OSF Preprint is a preprint search engine that allows you to query numerous preprint repositories simultaneously, as well as locate individual repositories organized by discipline.

Submitted version

Version of an article that has been submitted to a journal for the peer review process. 

Synonyms: Author's Original Manuscript (AOM), Original manuscript, Pre-print.

Accepted Version

The final version of an article that includes referee comments and has been accepted for publication.

Synonyms: Authors Accepted Manuscript (AAM), Authors accepted version, Final Author version, Post-print.

Published Version

The published version of the article following the peer review process and the editorial process of editing, layout, and creation of publication formats.

Synonyms: Final Published Version, Version of Record.

Arxiv Biorxiv PsyArXiv MedRxiv OSF Preprint

In order to maximize the dissemination of research products through indexes and aggregators, as well as the development of machine learning and information retrieval (IR) processes, it is important that metadata also be released under a user license that authorizes the copying, modification, distribution, and use of metadata, even for commercial purposes, without requiring any permission.

Usually the metadata of a work is released under the Public Domain Dedication license (CC0 1.0 Universal - CC0 1.0).

Public Domain Dedication license (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

To increase the dissemination and sharing of research products, Open Access best practices support ongoing indexing in online platforms dedicated to hosting, dissemination, research, and preservation of knowledge.

Open Access supports and encourages libraries, commercial and nonprofit distributors, to catalog collections of open access products among available electronic resources.

Metadata and fulltext of publications should be made available for download to any indexing service and in various formats according to interoperable standards.