Open Access (OA) refers to the practice of making the full text of published research outputs publicly available to read, download, and redistribute online.
There are two common routes to OA:
The Green OA route
Publishing scholarly research outputs under a paywalled subscription, and self-archiving the peer-reviewed accepted manuscript into the University’s repository (Pure), ensuring compliance with publisher copyright policies. Publishing this route is typically cost-free for authors to publisher, although it involves copyright transfer of the work to the publisher.
The Gold OA route
Publishing scholarly research outputs OA directly on the journal website. OA publishing typically incurs a cost for authors, referred to as an Article Processing Charge (APC). Payment of the APC should apply an open licence to the published version of record, thereby returning copyright to authors and enabling the online redistribution of the published PDF.
OA is an eligibility requirement of submitting in scope research outputs to the next REF. To comply with the REF OA Policy, please ensure that accepted manuscripts are deposited into Pure once you have received formal acceptance for publication, after the manuscript has been peer-reviewed.
The University is also signed up to large-scale OA deals with a number of publishers (called Read & Publish Agreements), through which corresponding authors from the University can publish Gold OA at no further cost.
Please see the University’s Open Access pages for further information.