Open Access publishing

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Open access to the outputs of publicly funded research has benefits for research, higher education and the UK economy, particularly at a time of public finance restraint.

If a journal is available online this does not mean it is freely available: universities pay large subscriptions to allow their members access to journal materials online. In recent years, large rises in journal prices, often many times the rate of inflation, mean that most university libraries can no longer afford subscriptions to all of the journals that their academics and researchers need for their work.

The potential readership and impact of open access articles, and other research outputs, is greater than that for articles where access to the full-text is restricted to subscribers only, and researchers may find their work is more widely read and cited. Institutions may also gain an enhanced reputation as their research becomes more visible. Open access benefits the UK economy by enabling innovation, policy and practice to draw more readily from rigorous academic research.

SCONUL and RLUK have published a briefing paper (PDF, 1 MB) on the impact of open access that sets out the evidence on increased impact for researchers, greater profile for institutions and economic benefits for society.

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There are two main routes to open access publishing:

• making copies of material available in open access repositories
• publishing materials in open access journals, or as open access articles in traditional journals

It is important to note that open access does not affect peer-review; articles are peer-reviewed and published in open access journals in the traditional way. There is no suggestion that authors should use repositories instead of journals. Open access repositories supplement and do not replace journals.

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Open access repositories contain digital collections of research material that have been deposited by their authors, a process also known as self-archiving. A repository is a mechanism for storing, preserving and disseminating digital material, and at the institutional level are used to help capture and manage intellectual assets. Many digital repositories exist to serve research disciplines, such as physics or economics and can contain a variety of content types and formats.

Please note: a new University research information system (RIS) called Pure has been implemented that replaces the University's former repository, ROSE. Pure provides an option for making your published research open access via the University's Explore Bristol Research website . Metadata of each full-text item in Pure will also be exposed and harvested for indexing by other systems, thus ensuring that the items are easily found by Google and other Internet search engines with no need for the searcher to visit Pure directly.

By placing the full-text of your paper in Pure you can potentially reach a much wider audience and may increase the impact of your work. In 2001, Steve Lawrence published a letter in Nature demonstrating that free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact. Since then there has been increasing evidence that papers available in open access repositories are cited more often than ones that are only available through subscription services. The bibliography of studies maintained by the Open Citation Project refers to much other research into the effect of open access on citation impact.

• Go to Steve Lawrence’s article
• Go to the Open Citation Project bibliography

Pure also provides a safe and reliable long term storage and retrieval mechanism for your research output and makes use of persistent URLs (or "Handles") which you can reliably use to reference your papers.

For more information about depositing / self-archiving in Pure please see the Add a full text document section of the user guide on the Pure website. Many publishers / journals impose an embargo period from the date of publication of an article, after which the author can self-archive a specified version of the article in an open access repository. When adding a full-text article to Pure it is possible to enter this embargo date. This has the effect that the document will not be displayed on the University’s Explore Bristol Research web pages until the embargo date has passed.

For more open access repositories see the Directory of Open Access Repositories (openDOAR) which lists known repositories worldwide.

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Open access journals are scholarly journals published electronically and available freely. Open access journals follow the same publication process and peer-review system. The difference to the traditional published journal is the business model: Open access publishing is funded at the beginning of the process charging the author (or someone on their behalf) a one-off fee for publication rather than generating income at the end of the process from readers via subscriptions. Typically charges levied towards the author at publication lie between £250 - £2500 and are often financed by a research grant or institutional funds. Examples of exclusively OA publishers are BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science.

A Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is being maintained by the University of Lund.

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Many research funders now insist that the written-up results of their research are placed in open access repositories. The Sherpa Juliet database provides a summary of the policies adopted by the major UK research funders as part of their grant awards procedures. Additionally, Sherpa FACT (Funders & Authors Compliance Tool) enables you to check how your journal of choice complies with research funders' policies on open access to publications.

RCUK has introduced open access requirements for research that it funds and has provided the University with a block grant to meet open access charges. For more information see our Guide to RCUK open access publishing and funding.

The Wellcome Trust has provided the University with a special grant to meet open access charges. For more information see our Guide to Wellcome Trust open access funding.

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Most publishers will accept the deposit in open access repositories of papers published in their journals, subject to certain conditions. The Sherpa Romeo database provides a summary of the policies adopted by the major publishers. Additionally, Sherpa FACT (Funders & Authors Compliance Tool) enables you to check how your journal of choice complies with research funders' policies on open access to publications.

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Papers that have already been published: in many cases you will have signed an agreement transferring copyright to the publisher (but there are alternatives, as described in the 'Must I sign copyright agreements as they stand, or can I make changes?' FAQ below).

Papers not yet submitted to a journal: as the author, you retain copyright unless you have made some other arrangement with a funder or sponsor. The University does not assert copyright in respect of research-related materials.

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The JISC-funded Romeo Project carried out a series of studies on IPR issues. The fourth in the series, An analysis of journal publishers' copyright agreements, found that publishers gave a variety of reasons for asking authors to assign copyright.

Some publishers (particularly "open access" publishers) do not require authors to sign a copyright assignment form. Instead they ask authors to sign a non-exclusive "licence to publish" and allow authors to retain copyright. This shows that it is possible for publishers to operate commercially without insisting upon a transfer of copyright. Some examples of such licences may be seen in the  'Must I sign copyright agreements as they stand, or can I make changes?' FAQ below.

Some funders now insist that authors retain the right to place their papers in an open access repository. The Wellcome Trust is an example, and some Research Councils are now following suit.

• Guide to research funders open access policies (Sherpa Juliet)
• An analysis of journal publishers' copyright agreements [Romeo Studies, 4] (PDF, 220 KB)

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Each publisher has its own agreement, and so the rights that you have to give up will vary. You may be forbidden to:

• Re-use a paper as a chapter in a book.
• Revise or adapt a paper.
• Distribute a paper to colleagues.
• Reproduce copies of a paper for teaching purposes.
• Place a paper in an online open access repository.

If a publisher does not permit you to retain these rights then as an author you may not do any of these things automatically. However, you may be able to seek permission to do them from the publisher.

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Check whether you have a copy of the agreement you signed. This may indicate whether or not you are permitted to make your paper available in a repository (although some agreements do not explicitly cover this issue.) If the agreement appears to forbid deposit in a repository, bear in mind that the publisher's policy may have changed since it was drawn up and that the change may be retrospective.

If you do not have a copy of the agreement:

• Establish who is the publisher of your paper.
• Check the Sherpa Romeo publisher policies list (but note that it is not comprehensive)
• If the publisher is not listed you may be able to find details of the copyright agreement you signed on the publisher's web site (often within the section on guidelines or instructions for authors and contributors.)
• Alternatively, contact the publisher directly, and ask them.

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It may not be immediately obvious from a copyright agreement, or from information on a publisher's web site, whether authors are permitted to place their papers in repositories or not. These are some terms to look out for:

Pre-prints: this is usually defined as the author's final draft of a paper before peer-review. Many publishers allow authors to place the pre-print in a repository.

Post-print: this is the version of the paper as published, following peer review. As author, you will probably have your own version of this final draft in the composition and editing format which you normally use (such as Microsoft Word.) Some publishers allow authors to place the post-print in a repository but some do not.

Publisher PDF: whilst allowing authors to place a post-print in a repository, some publishers do not permit the use of the formatted PDF file that appears in the journal. If this is the case, you are only allowed to deposit an earlier version of the paper. However, some publishers actually prefer the final PDF version to be used, as this is a clear indication that an article in a repository is the final version and may also promote their role in its publication.

Personal or departmental web sites: some publishers will only allow authors to make their articles available on a personal web site or on a departmental site. By permitting this they are making a clear distinction between this type of web page and institutional repositories. The fact that the full text of the article can easily by found using search engines, regardless of whether it is available in Pure or on a personal web site within the bristol.ac.uk domain, is immaterial.

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If you are keen to avoid signing your rights away as an author you may wish to consider the following options suggested by the Romeo Project:

• Choose journals with a non-exclusive licence (those which do not require you to transfer copyright to the publisher)
• Choose journals with self-archiving-friendly copyright transfer agreements (those which permit the deposit of your article in a repository)
• Negotiate with your publisher
• Amend the existing agreement
• Use an alternative agreement

Most publishers are willing to discuss copyright agreements with authors. Some may simply refuse to publish a paper if an author is unwilling to sign a copyright agreement as it stands, but many are willing to accept a licence that you have amended. They may also be willing to accept an alternative agreement.

A number of publishers are now starting to offer "licence to publish" agreements as an alternative to "copyright transfer" agreements, and often these are more liberal and may permit authors to deposit their papers in institutional repositories.

A number of organisations have been working on developing model licences. Authors are free to use and adapt these. JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee of the higher education funding councils) and its Dutch counterpart (SURF) have produced such a model, which aims to establish a balance of rights and interests in the emerging scholarly communications environment.

The overarching principle of the JISC model is that the results of publicly funded research should be made freely and openly available, and as quickly as possible, to all who want to access them. Its main features are that:

• copyright in the published work remains with the author.
• the author grants the publisher a licence to publish the work.
• the licence takes effect as soon as the publisher has indicated that it wishes to publish the work.
• once the article has been published, the author can make it publicly accessible - in the form in which it was published by the publisher - by making it available as part of a repository.
• if the publisher so requests, the start of such public accessibility can be delayed for a maximum of six months.

JISC has published a handbook on Copyright matters for UK researchers, teachers and learners (Word, 55 KB).

Examples of model licences to publish may be seen at:

• The JISC/SURF model agreement and related advice:
• Create Change web site
• SPARC web site: Author rights

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This varies from publisher to publisher. For some it is a condition of publication that they will not consider any papers which have already been made publicly available. Some specify that making a paper available in a repository constitutes "prior publication". If in doubt, check with the publisher directly.

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Some publishers have changed their policies and extended the new rights to all authors regardless of when their papers were published. If it is unclear whether new rights are to be applied retrospectively it may be necessary to contact the publisher to check if this is the case.

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