Open Access to research

On April 1, 2013 the new Research Councils UK (RCUK) policy on Open Access will take effect whereby RCUK-funded authors must publish in RCUK-compliant journals. A journal is RCUK-compliant if it offers a suitable gold option (author/institution pays to publish) or a suitable green option (self-archiving in a repository). It need not offer both. 

To offer a suitable gold option, a journal must provide immediate (unembargoed) OA to the version of record from its own web site, under a CC-BY license, and must allow immediate deposit of the version of record in an OA repository, also under a CC-BY license. It may but need not levy an Article Processing Charge (APC). 

To offer a suitable green option, a journal must allow deposit of the peer-reviewed manuscript (with or without subsequent copy editing and formatting) in an OA repository not operated by the publisher. It must allow non-commercial reuse. It may require an embargo of up to 12 months for work funded by the AHRC and the ESRC, and up to six months for work funded by any other Research Council. The journal must not charge a fee for this option.

The RCUK will give block grants to universities to pay APCs on behalf of faculty who publish RCUK-funded research in journals offering a suitable gold option and charging an APC. 

Articles arising from RCUK-funded research must also include "a statement on how the underlying research materials - such as data, samples or models - can be accessed." 

The policy applies to authors whose research is "wholly or partially funded" by the RCUK.

The majority of publishers support the right of authors to make their own work available online and the repository team will be happy to check journal copyright conditions on your behalf.

The process is as follows:

• Prepare your paper and submit to the journal of your choice for peer review
• Make any changes required as a result of the peer review process.
• Submit final version to the journal
• Pass on that same final version to the repository team
• A bibliographic record of your research output will then be added to the repository
• If permitted under copyright, the full text that you have supplied will be added to the record and made live in accordance with any publisher restrictions (e.g. embargo)

• Disseminate your work to a wider audience and increase the impact of your research
  Instead of being locked away behind subscription barriers, research made openly accessible in the Repository can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. This means research is accessed, read and built upon by people outside traditional UK Higher Education (UK HE) including researchers in the developing world as well as those within UK HE whose institutions are not able to subscribe to all relevant journals.
• Increase visibility
  Papers placed in the repository have high rankings in search engines such as Google, Bing and Google Scholar, meaning your work gets found more often and more easily.
  Monthly data on repository use is available here.
• To increase its citation count
  Studies have shown that research made openly accessible gets read, and hence cited more, than research that remains closed.
• Meet funder requirements
  Increasingly, funders are mandating that the research they fund is made openly available. For more information see the Research Councils UK website - http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx