To celebrate International Open Access Week, we are highlighting some routes to achieve open access that are available to University of Reading researchers.
![](https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/open-research/files/2017/10/Emese-Lazar-400x400-e1508860408635.jpg)
Dr Emese Lazar
Dr Emese Lazar, ICMA Centre at University of Reading, published one of her recent papers using a fully open access journal via the gold open access route. Here, she explains why she chose this route and how she applied for funding.
When you were choosing where to publish, were you thinking about submitting to journals that would be able to make your article open access?
Yes, publishing in a fully open access journal was an active choice. Fully open access journals have a reputation for quick publication (as they are usually online only) and I wanted to make my work accessible to the public.
Were you aware of the University’s gold open access fund when you submitted to the journal?
No I wasn’t aware. I filled in the form requesting open access via the University Library website. I didn’t have any external funding for this piece of research.
How easy was the process to apply for and get open access funding?
Applying was very quick and easy. I had help from the open access team in the library and I got the funding approved on the same day that I applied! It took a bit longer to sort out payment with the publisher (almost a month), but this was handled by the Library team.
Has your article received much attention since it was published?
As our article can be accessed from several places, it is difficult to track the full number of reads and downloads. From the journal website, it looks as if the article has been viewed 981 times and downloaded 793 times since 16 May 2017.
![Altmetric attention score](https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/open-research/files/2017/10/Lazar-altmetric.jpg)
Altmetric attention score for Emese’s article
We also uploaded the paper to CentAUR and it has been downloaded 17 times up until the end of September 2017.
The Altmetric score for the paper is above average compared to outputs of the same age and it is ranked number 10 of 112 papers published in the journal at the same time.
I also made and uploaded a video about the paper to YouTube and that has had 60 views.
Will you try and make your next output open access?
I would definitely consider fully open access journals in the future since this publishing route can increase the visibility of my research.
Do you have any advice for others thinking about applying for open access funding?
You might not have thought about publishing as gold open access before but it is quite easy to apply for funding. Publishing this way can get your research published quickly and accessible by the public.
Emese’s article was published in Entropy, a fully open access journal (pure gold).
Pele, D., E. Lazar and A. Dufour (2017). Information Entropy and Measures of Market Risk. Entropy 19(5): 226. DOI: 10.3390/e19050226