National Repository

Uploading and Making Articles Available in the National Knowledge Archive (NVA)

Authors who have a user account in the National Knowledge Archive (NVA) and are affiliated with a healthcare institution or another Norwegian institution can upload an article published in an Open Access (OA) journal as a file in NVA. The same applies to articles that are openly available through a publish-and-read agreement or have been made open by the authors themselves. A file curator at the healthcare institution will then approve the file for “publication” in NVA so that the file/article becomes openly accessible to anyone who finds the article via NVA. It is sufficient that one of the authors/institutions does this in NVA, usually the corresponding author if they are affiliated with a Norwegian institution. 

If the authors have not retained the rights to the final version of the article (VoR – Version of Record), the last version of the manuscript (AAM – Author Accepted Manuscript) must be uploaded and published – also called green open access. Such publication via NVA requires that the rights for this have been clarified with the journal in advance for the specific article or through an institutional rights strategy.

Securing Rights for Open Access – Retention Rights Strategy

Several institutions in the higher education sector, including UiO, have an institutional rights strategy. This means that the institution has undertaken the task of informing journals that the institution reserves the right to make a version of research articles, etc., available in an open archive, regardless of what the journal initially states about rights and embargo periods on its websites or in various manuscript submission portals. The institution also assumes responsibility for handling any conflicts legally and financially.

Some healthcare institutions, including OUS, do not have such an institutional rights strategy but instead require that authors in each case retain the rights to the accepted manuscript (AAM) and that the healthcare institution has a non-exclusive right to place this in an open knowledge archive such as NVA. For OUS, refer to the provisions on intellectual property in the guideline Commercial Exploitation of Innovations (Norwegian).

Corresponding authors in healthcare institutions who also list UiO or another institution with an institutional rights strategy can follow that strategy and need only upload the article. (UiO’s rights strategy: Institutional Rights Policy: Retain Rights to Accepted Version – University Library).

Securing Rights When Submitting Manuscripts

When the journal is not OA, does not have a publish-and-read agreement, or there is no individual agreement for open access, the rights for open publishing of the manuscript must be based on declarations or agreements linked to each manuscript submission. The following options apply:

• Selecting open access for the Author Accepted Manuscript with reference to the funding source or institutional policy, if this is an option in the journal’s portal.
• Securing the right to open access by referring to the Research Council’s conditions when submitting the manuscript:
  “This research was funded, in whole or in part, by [Norwegian Research Council, Grant #]. A CC BY or equivalent licence is applied to [the AAM/ the VoR] arising from this submission, in accordance with the grant’s open access conditions.”
  Similar wording may apply for EU projects and others with open access requirements.
• Securing the right to open access by attaching an addendum/agreement ensuring that the AAM can be archived in the National Knowledge Archive and possibly copied for non-commercial purposes.
• If a journal actively opposes the use of such declarations or addenda, the corresponding author/project leader must contact the Research Council or other entities with open access requirements in the contract and/or send a message to NVA-administrator@ous-hf.no (or equivalent at other healthcare institutions).

Open Policy Finder is a tool to find out embargo periods for various publishers and journals.

Use of Addendum for OUS and Choice of License for Sharing

Template for addendum is available here: Addendum Copyright OUS (Word file).

The template stipulates that only non-commercial use is permitted, which corresponds to the following license:

CC BY-NC – The original work and any adaptations may not be used commercially.

There are other license variants that can be used, but they must comply with the agreements set by the funding source or the journal. A complete overview and explanation of licenses can be found here: CC Licenses – University Library.

The text was translated from Norwegian using Copilot and reviewed by Pål Bakke.