Guide to RCUK Open Access publishing and funding

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The two possible routes to RCUK Open Access (OA) are:

• Gold Open Access - publication in the online  journal as an OA article, which usually requires the author to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC)
• Green Open Access - publication in the journal with subsequent deposit in an OA repository such as Pure. 

To support the effective use of the fixed RCUK funds available in 2013/14, the University of Bristol encourages eligible researchers first to use up any APC funds in their existing RCUK grant and also to consider the Green option offered by their journal of choice.

If you decide the Gold route is the right option for your paper, you can claim for ‘Gold only’ or hybrid publisher Article Processing Charges (APCs) for as long as the fixed funds are available.

• To check whether Green OA (or failing that Gold OA) is offered by your journal of choice we recommend that you use Sherpa FACT (Funders & Authors Compliance Tool) which will help you comply with research funders' policies on open access to publications.
  Additionally you may wish to check Sherpa RoMEO for the Open Access policies of publishers and/or your journal of choice. Please be aware that the Sherpa Romeo colours indicate a level of open access and Sherpa Romeo green and yellow do not correspond with RCUK Green and Gold.
  Additional information about publisher’s Open Access policies for specific journal titles can usually be found on the publishers’ web-sites. Follow links to Information for authors.

The following 2 sections explain how to follow the Green OA and Gold OA routes to RCUK open access.

Please note that RCUK are not expecting full compliance immediately but from April 2013 the process will commence that will lead to compliance over the next five years.  See section 1 'What is Open Access in the context of RCUK funded research?' below for more background information.

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To support the effective use of the fixed RCUK funds available in 2013/14, the University of Bristol encourages eligible researchers first to use up any APC funds in their existing RCUK grant and also to consider the Green option offered by their journal of choice.

If you decide the Gold route is the right option for your paper, you can claim for ‘Gold only’ or hybrid publisher Article Processing Charges (APCs) for as long as the fixed funds are available.

The Green route to Open Access is freely and equally available to all Bristol’s academic researchers via subject-specific repositories or Bristol's own repository, PURE, which is accessible to the public through the Explore Bristol's Research website.

Green Open Access (OA) constitutes publication in the journal with subsequent deposit in an OA repository such as PURE.  More specifically, the version of the published research paper as accepted for publication in the chosen journal, including all changes resulting from peer review, but not necessarily incorporating the publisher’s formatting or layout, is archived and made accessible in an online repository (such as provided by our own PURE system) other than one run by the publisher within the time deadlines set out in the funder policy (see section 4 'What is the RCUK embargo period?' below).

• To check whether Green OA (or failing that Gold OA) is offered by your journal of choice we recommend that you use Sherpa FACT (Funders & Authors Compliance Tool) which will help you comply with research funders' policies on open access to publications. See the 'What are the options...' section above for additional suggestions.
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• For advice on 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.

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The Gold route achieves immediate online public access via your chosen publisher, usually for a fee called an Article Processing Charge (APC). If you are Bristol researcher submitting a paper for publication which is directly based on your current or past RCUK grant funding, you are eligible to use Bristol’s institutional fund for Gold Open Access charges. This fixed funding is available on a first come first serve basis with no internal peer review.

 See below for details of how to claim back APCs from the University's funds for RCUK Open Access.

Please note:

• The Library has negotiated membership of some publisher’s Open Access schemes which entitle University of Bristol staff to discounts on Open Access publication fees, and some University of Bristol journal subscriptions also entitle the author to discounts on Open Access fees. More information is available on our Publisher Open Access schemes page.
• The Library can arrange payment of the Open Access fee directly to the publisher. Details follow in 'Claiming Open Access fees (APCs) : how to apply'.
  

Claiming Open Access fees (APCs) : how to apply

This claim form is for applying for Article Processing Charge (APC) invoices to be paid by the Library out of the University's funds for RCUK Open Access (see section 5 below) . Please note that page and colour plate and other publication charges are not covered by this scheme, except for RCUK grants awarded after 1st April 2013.

The claim form may only be submitted if:

1. The paper is a direct result of research funded by the Research Councils UK.
2. The paper has been accepted for publication. Early drafts etc. are not RCUK compliant.
3. The paper is peer-reviewed. Non-peer reviewed, books and monographs are not covered by RCUK policy.
4. The lead author for the article is based at the University of Bristol.
5. The journal does not offer a Green Open Access (optional)
6. Publisher meets the RCUK funder's conditions. This can be verified at Sherpa FACT.

The following documents are required before payment can be made:

1. A completed online claim form (UoB access only). You will be asked to provide details of your publication and your grant.
2. Either, a publisher’s invoice or request for payment please email to open-access@bristol.ac.uk.
   Or, if you do not have an electronic copy, send to Open Access Administrator, Arts and Social Sciences Library, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol. BS8 1TJ

For further advice about claiming Open access fees please contact open-access@bristol.ac.uk.

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If the Wellcome Trust is your funder please refer to the Guide to Wellcome Trust Open access funding.

If your research is not funded by either RCUK or the Wellcome Trust, you may wish to check the Open Access requirements of your funder. Sherpa Juliet is a database of research funders’ Open Access policies.

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In summer 2012 RCUK issued a new Open Access policy informed by the Finch report (PDF, 1.59 MB) and the Governments response (PDF, 91 KB). The new policy will apply to all qualifying publications being submitted for publication from 1st April 2013 until further notice, and states that peer review research papers which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils UK:

• must be published in journals which are compliant with Research Council policy on Open Access, and
• must include details of the funding that supported the research, and a statement on how the underlying research materials, such as data can be accessed.

The University of Bristol will receive funds from RCUK (see section 5) to manage the transition to publishing by Open Access methods. Full compliance is not expected immediately but from April 2013 the process will commence that will lead to compliance over the next five years.

Please be assured that the onus of compliance rests with the University rather than the individual, and that choice of publication remains with the author. We will therefore look to provide support (through Library Services Research Support and RED) to the research community through this transitional phase.

Open Access can be achieved through the payment of article processing charges (often called the ‘Gold’ route, see section 2 for more details) or through researcher deposit in an appropriate subject or institutional repository (known as the ‘Green’ route, see section 3 for more details).

RCUK policy supports both Gold and Green routes to Open Access though RCUK has a preference for immediate Open Access with maximum opportunity for re-use. Where Research Council funds are used to pay Open Access fees for a paper, the paper must be made Open Access immediately at the time of on-line publication.

To support the effective use of the fixed RCUK funds available in 2013/14, the University of Bristol encourages eligible researchers first to use up any APC funds in their existing RCUK grant and also to consider the Green option offered by their journal of choice.

If you decide the Gold route is the right option for your paper, you can claim for ‘Gold only’ or hybrid publisher Article Processing Charges (APCs) for as long as the fixed funds are available.

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The Gold route achieves immediate online public access via your chosen publisher, usually for a fee called an Article Processing Charge (APC). If you are Bristol researcher submitting a paper for publication which is directly based on your current or past RCUK grant funding, you are eligible to use Bristol’s institutional fund for Gold Open Access charges. This fixed funding is available on a first come first serve basis with no internal peer review.

 There are 2 types of Gold Open Access publishing:

1. The publisher operates a subscription model for the journal but also offers an Open Access option for individual articles (usually on payment of an APC). This is often known as a hybrid journal.
2. Fully Open Access (Gold only) journal.
   This means that the publisher does not use the subscription model and all articles are published Open Access (usually requiring the payment of an APC).

The selected publisher must support the Creative Commons CC-BY licence which allows unrestricted use of manual and automated text and data mining tools, as well as unrestricted re-use of content with proper attribution. This is to maximise exposure to the research findings.

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The Green route to Open Access is freely and equally available to all Bristol’s academic researchers via subject-specific repositories or Bristol's own repository, PURE, which is accessible to the public through the Explore Bristol's Research website.

The version of the published research paper as accepted for publication in the chosen journal, including all changes resulting from peer review, but not necessarily incorporating the publisher’s formatting or layout, is archived and made accessible in an online repository – other than one run by the publisher. Again, the aim is to maximise exposure to the research findings.

Ideally, such papers should be made Open Access immediately at the time of on-line publication in the journal. However, in practice the Research Councils will accept that access may be restricted to comply with an embargo period imposed by the publisher, provided that this is no longer than the maximum period mandated by the Research Councils (see section 4 'What is the RCUK embargo period?' below). Some Research Councils, such as MRC and ESRC, have a requirement that papers must be deposited in specific repositories, such as Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) and ESRC Research Catalogue.

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1. Ideally, a research paper should become Open Access as soon as it is published on-line. However, RCUK recognises that, in the Green model of open access, embargo periods are currently used by some journals with business models that depend on generating revenue through journal subscriptions. Therefore, where a journal does not offer an immediate Open Access option, RCUK will accept a delay between online publication and a paper becoming Open Access of no more than six months, in STEM disciplines.
2. Because six-month embargo periods can be particularly difficult in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (which are mainly funded by the AHRC and the ESRC), RCUK will accept a delay of up to twelve months for such articles. RCUK wishes to work towards enabling a maximum embargo period of six months for all research papers, but recognises that the pace of change may vary by discipline. We will therefore ensure that the variable pace of change across disciplines, if any, is a key consideration in the forthcoming reviews on the basis of the evidence presented to them.
3. The choice of route to Open Access remains with the researchers and their research organisations and, where funding for APCs is unavailable during the transition period, longer embargo periods will be allowable.
   In such a case we would expect the paper to be published in a journal with maximum embargos of 12 months, for STEM disciplines, or 24 months in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (which will mainly be funded by the AHRC and the ESRC). This is consistent with the Government’s response to the Finch report.
4. Research papers in Biomedicine should be published immediately, or with an embargo period of no longer than six months, as has been the MRC’s mandated policy since 2006.
5. This flexibility for embargo periods during the transition is reflected in the RCUK decision tree for Open Access publishing (PowerPoint, 67 KB). When using the decision tree it should be noted that although our preference is for immediate, unrestricted open access (‘Gold’), we allow a mixed approach to Open Access, and the decision on which route to follow – Gold or Green – remains at the discretion of the researchers and their research organizations.

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The University of Bristol is committed to Open Access to research and supports both the ‘green’ and ‘gold’ routes. The Green route is being promoted as a research-wide approach to achieve Open Access that is freely and equally accessible to all Bristol researchers regardless of career-level or funder. Bristol has fixed funds from RCUK to support the cost of Gold Open Access for RCUK-funded researchers. 

From the 1st April 2013 the University will receive a block grant to cover the publishers APCs. Information about the distribution of block grants (PDF, 377 KB) is available.

The fund is available to academic and research staff and PhD students at the University of Bristol and will pay the Article Processing Charge (APCs) for articles published in fully Open Access journals or subscription journals that offer an Open Access option (hybrid journals) as required to comply with RCUK policy.

To support the effective use of the fixed RCUK funds available in 2013/14, the University of Bristol encourages eligible researchers first to use up any APC funds in their existing RCUK grant and also to consider the Green option offered by their journal of choice.

If you decide the Gold route is the right option for your paper, you can claim for ‘Gold only’ or hybrid publisher Article Processing Charges (APCs) for as long as the fixed funds are available.

The Library will be administering these funds on behalf of the University and its researchers and the Article Processing Charge (APC) invoices will be paid by the Library out of these funds.

Please note: In principle you are free to publish the results of your work in the most appropriate journal. However, some journals continue to have access policies which are fundamentally incompatible with RCUK policy. The RCUK policy is that results arising from their funding are published only in journals that are compliant with Research Council policy on Open Access. The 'What are the options for achieving Open Access for my publications arising out of RCUK funded research?' section above has advice on how to ascertain whether particular publishers and/or journals are compliant in this way.

RCUK state that they expect that the allocations made (to all in receipt of them) will enable around 45% of Research Council funded research papers to be published Open Access growing to 53% in the 2nd year. By the 5th year (2017/18) funding is expected to be provided to enable 75% of Open Access papers from RCUK funded research to be delivered through immediate, unrestricted, on-line access with maximum opportunities for re-use (‘gold’).

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The data.bris Research Data Service runs the University of Bristol’s leading, ‘open data’, publicly-accessible research data repository and supports its researchers in all aspects of their research data management. The current service, a Library-led collaboration with IT Services and RED, is a 2.5 year phased roll-out of the successful JISC-funded 1.5 year pilot project based in IT Services R&D/ILRT.

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RCUK state that their policy applies to peer reviewed research articles and conference proceedings that acknowledge funding from one of the UK's Research Councils.

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The APCs will be paid out of the block grant if the paper qualifies.

The RCUK policy covers all relevant publications which acknowledge funding from the UK’s Research Councils. If more than one funder is acknowledged, and one or more of them is a Research Council, then the RCUK policy applies.

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The RCUK policy covers all relevant publications which acknowledge funding from the UK’s Research Councils. If more than one funder is acknowledged, and one or more of them is a Research Council, then the RCUK policy applies.

Our recommendation is that the institution of the corresponding author will pay the APCs if applicable.

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We recommend that the corresponding author’s institution is responsible for any APCs payable.

The RCUK policy covers all relevant publications which acknowledge funding from the UK’s Research Councils. If more than one funder is acknowledged, and one or more of them is a Research Council, then the RCUK policy applies.

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We recommend that you use Sherpa FACT which combines data from Sherpa Romeo and Sherpa Juliet for the convenience of researchers.

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We recommend that you use Sherpa Romeo to check the Open Access policies of your journal or your publisher. If your preferred title or publisher is not in Sherpa Romeo then you may wish to contact open-access@bristol.ac.uk for further advice and guidance.

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We recommend that you check Sherpa Juliet for funder’s Open Access policies. If your funder is not there it means that they do not have an Open Access policy.

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RCUK policy supports both ‘Gold’ and ‘Green’ routes to Open Access, though RCUK has a preference for immediate Open Access with the maximum opportunity for re-use.

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Not necessarily. It means you should try to satisfy RCUK’s Open Access requirements by engaging with the spirit of the policy.

Taking into account that the choice of route to Open Access remains with the author and their research organisation, and in some circumstances, where funding for APCs is unavailable during the transition period, longer embargo periods may be allowable. Where an author’s preference is ‘pay-to-publish’ and their first choice of journal offers this option, but there are insufficient funds to pay for the APC, in order to meet the spirit of the RCUK policy, the Councils prefer the author to seek an alternative journal with an affordable ‘pay-to-publish’ option or with an option with embargo periods of six or twelve months.

To support the effective use of the fixed RCUK funds available in 2013/14, the University of Bristol encourages eligible researchers first to use up any APC funds in their existing RCUK grant and also to consider the Green option offered by their journal of choice.

If you decide the Gold route is the right option for your paper, you can claim for ‘Gold only’ or hybrid publisher Article Processing Charges (APCs) for as long as the fixed funds are available.

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It has been argued that Gold is the best method for delivering sustainable Open Access. Green relies on the existing publishing model and doesn’t provide immediate access.

It has also been suggested that papers will be more highly cited if published Gold. In fact there is no evidence to suggest that this is true. There is evidence to suggest that Open Access itself results in more citations.

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Ideally, a research paper should become Open Access as soon as it is published on‐line. However, RCUK recognises that, in the Green model of Open Access, embargo periods are currently used by some journals.

RCUK wishes to work towards enabling a maximum embargo period of six months for all research papers, but recognises that the pace of change may vary by discipline:

• Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths (STEM) disciplines - In general RCUK will accept a delay between online publication and a paper becoming Open Access of no more than six months.
• Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (mainly funded by AHRC and ESRC) - RCUK will accept a delay of up to twelve months for such articles but RCUK wishes to work towards enabling a maximum embargo period of six months.
• Biomedicine - Research papers in biomedicine should be published immediately, or with an embargo period of no longer than six months, as has been the MRC’s mandated policy since 2006.

Please note: During the 5 year transition period, where funding for APCs is unavailable, longer embargo periods will be allowable:

• STEM disciplines - During transition we would expect the paper to be published in a journal with maximum embargo of 12 months.
• Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences - During the transition period - 24 months.

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RCUK recognises a journal as being compliant with this policy if:

• The journal provides, via its own website, immediate and unrestricted access to the final published version of the paper, which should be made available using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This may involve payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) to the publisher.

Or:

• The journal consents to deposit of the final Accepted Manuscript in any repository, without restriction on non-commercial re-use and within a defined period. No APC will be payable to the publisher. In this latter case, RCUK will accept a delay of no more than six months between on-line publication and the final Accepted Manuscript becoming Open Access.

In the case of papers in the arts, humanities and social sciences (which will mainly be funded by the AHRC and the ESRC), the maximum embargo period will be twelve months. In some circumstances, where funding for APCs is unavailable during the transition period, longer embargo periods may be allowable.

RCUK recognises that copyright in the manuscript itself normally remains with the author, as reflected in the historical right and tradition of authors to publish online manuscript versions of their papers even before submission, and this will continue.

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The data contained in both University of Bristol systems and systems of external suppliers, such as publishers, is often unstructured and incompatible with other systems. The data provided by the claim form enables the Library to monitor spending on APCs, collect appropriate data for RCUK reporting and check that invoices are correct and any discounts have been applied. RED and Library Services Open Access team will be working on ways in which existing systems can be used to provide the data required by RCUK to monitor Open Access.

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If your article has been accepted for publication and the publisher asks you to pay an up front APC we would ask you to contact open-access@bristol.ac.uk so that we may contact the publisher and ask for an invoice.

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No, but research grant and fellowship applications with start dates on or after 1st April 2013 are no longer permitted to include provision for Open Access publication or other publication charges in respect of peer-reviewed journal articles and peer-reviewed conference papers. This does not affect grants already awarded. Any funds specified for APCs within already awarded grants should be used before using the RCUK Open Access block grant.

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Research grant and fellowship applications, with start dates on or after 1st April 2013 are no longer permitted to include provision for Open Access publication or other publication charges in respect of peer-reviewed research papers.

It remains permissible for grant proposals to request publication costs associated with the production of other types of research outputs that are not covered currently by the RCUK OA policy. Publication costs for outputs such as monographs, books, critical editions, volumes and catalogues may be requested but, as with any cost, they will still need to be fully justified within the application.

From 1st April 2013 the payment of APCs and other publication charges related to Research Council-funded research are supported through RCUK OA block grants provided to eligible research organisations.

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RCUK has top-sliced their research budget to provide Open Access block grants, as they consider communicating the results of research is a core part of the research process.

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It is planned that the funding provided by Research Councils to support open access will be increased over the next five years until all published peer-reviewed papers, which derive from Research Council funding, are Open Access. This increase in funding during transition is a reflection of the time that will be needed for researchers, institutions and publishers to transition to an Open Access model. It will also allow publication funding already provided through direct and indirect costs on current grants to be fully utilised.

The amount of funding provided by the RCUK to support Open Access in years 1 and 2 is still only an estimate of the likely cost. RCUK will be monitoring how institutions use this money. Only with evidence can RCUK properly understand how its Open Access policy is working, and, for example, set the block grants at a level appropriate for the achievement of the compliance required.

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RCUK anticipates that the transition to full implementation of the policy may be around five years in duration but that this will depend on how the Open Access landscape evolves. During the transition they expect researchers and their institutions to follow the spirit of the policy and strive to achieve full compliance. As the available funding for Open Access increases during the transition, so will RCUK expectations of the extent of compliance. At the end of the transition period they expect researchers and institutions to be fully compliant with the policy, and for 100% of research papers arising from the research they fund to be published in journals that are compliant with their policy on Open Access.

The choice of route to Open Access remains with the author and their research organisation, and in some circumstances, where funding for APCs is unavailable during the transition period, longer embargo periods may be allowable. Where an author’s preference is ‘pay-to-publish’ and their first choice of journal offers this option, but there are insufficient funds to pay for the APC, in order to meet the spirit of the RCUK policy, the Research Councils prefer the author to seek an alternative journal with an affordable ‘pay-to-publish’ option or with an option with embargo periods of six or twelve months.

Bristol is committed to Open Access to research and supports both the ‘Green’ and ‘Gold’ routes. The Green route is being promoted as a research-wide approach to achieve Open Access that is freely and equally accessible to all Bristol researchers regardless of career-level or funder. Bristol has fixed funds from RCUK to support the cost of Gold Open Access for RCUK-funded researchers.

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We will be collecting data of APCs paid to publishers we hope that this will place us in a strong negotiating position when we come to renew our subscriptions. RCUK are committed to examining the overall costs of the publication of research keeping in mind that publishers’ subscription charges will continue to be paid in many cases.

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It is estimated that the block grant will pay for approximately 351 papers in the first year and 413 in the 2nd.

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At the moment there is no additional money. The only funds available are the block grant.

To support the effective use of the fixed RCUK funds available in 2013/14, the University of Bristol encourages eligible researchers first to use up any APC funds in their existing RCUK grant and also to consider the Green option offered by their journal of choice.

If you decide the Gold route is the right option for your paper, you can claim for ‘Gold only’ or hybrid publisher Article Processing Charges (APCs) for as long as the fixed funds are available.

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No, the block grant will be managed as a single ‘pot’.

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There are no plans to prioritise payments. The fund will be operated on a first come first served basis.

To support the effective use of the fixed RCUK funds available in 2013/14, the University of Bristol encourages eligible researchers first to use up any APC funds in their existing RCUK grant and also to consider the Green option offered by their journal of choice.

If you decide the Gold route is the right option for your paper, you can claim for ‘Gold only’ or hybrid publisher Article Processing Charges (APCs) for as long as the fixed funds are available.

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RCUK has stated that the transition to 100% Open Access is a five year journey and that they expect about 45% of publications to be either Gold or Green Open Access in 2013/14 rising to 100% in year 5, with 75% being gold in year 5.

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Staff who have left are no longer Personal Users so no longer have a staff 'profile' on Explore Bristol Research (EBR), but all their outputs and full text records remain. If you search for a past member of staff on the EBR homepage, it will return a list of their publications with any associated full text.

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Most reputable publishers have a no double–dipping policy. This means that they will not charge twice for the same article i.e. by paying for access via a subscription and by an APC. The Library will collect data of APCs paid to publishers so that when we come to re-negotiate our subscriptions we will have data to aid our negotiation.

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In the short term until our Open Access processes and systems are in place there may be an additional burden on the researcher because we will need to collect bibliographic and financial data of articles published and APCs paid. In the long term systems will be developed that will reduce this burden.

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Yes, provided that any such re-use is subject to full and proper attribution and does not infringe any copyrights to third-party material included in the paper.

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EU Commission has also announced new policies (PDF, 49.1 KB) both for open access to publications and for access to data arising from research funded under Horizon 2020, the successor to Framework Programme 7 which will come into effect in 2014. In the United States the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) (PDF, 46 KB) was introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. FASTR requires federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to the research articles stemming from that funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

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Although one of the aims of Open Access is to challenge the existing subscription model of publishing, RCUK are clear in their statement, that the block grant is intended principally to support the payment of APCs.

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