Open Access Publishing

University of Aberdeen Open Access Fund

• Article Processing Charges Form
• Paying Article Processing Charges

From 1^st April 2013 the University receives a block grant to help fund APCs (Article Processing Charges) for the open access publishing of RCUK funded research; the University also receives money from the Wellcome Trust to pay APCs for publishing refereed journal articles arising from Wellcome Trust funded research grants.

Together these block grants constitute the University of Aberdeen Open Access Fund.

If your research is funded by either of these grant awarding bodies and needs to be published using the Gold route for open access (i.e. immediate open access availability on publication) you may obtain funding for your APCs by completing the Article Processing Charges form below.

Please read the accompanying guide "Paying Article Processing Charges" before completing and submitting the form.

Automatic Open Access

Some publishers will automatically place your article on open access from the publisher’s own website after a set period (the embargo period) following the publication of your article. They may also deposit it in a subject based repository such as UK PubMed Central. There are no charges for this. An embargo period may be 6 or 12 months or some other period of time.

If you rely on this OA route and your research has been funded by a funding body which has a strict OA policy on how and when your research output must be made available, then you should ensure that the publisher’s policy complies with your research funder’s mandate. This is dealt with further under Gold OA below.

top

Gold and Green Open Access

Automatic OA, however, is still limited. But you can make your own research open access now. There are two ways to do so, and they are known as Green and Gold OA. The University's preferred route is to make research outputs Green OA wherever possible.

top

Green Open Access

As indicated, this is the University's preferred approach for making your research outputs open access. Also known as self-archiving it involves no costs. Green OA (self-archiving) allows an author:

• to make a version of their publication available on open access
• normally, to make it available in a repository (such as AURA etc.) after an embargo period (e.g. 6 or 12 months after the item has been published in a journal)

For example, a version which can often be self-archived in a repository is the author’s final peer-reviewed MSS, as submitted to the publisher (incorporating referees’ comments). Although, it will not contain the publisher’s final formatting and other features associated with the Version of Record, it is nevertheless a valuable surrogate for the Version of Record. Access to it hugely benefits the researcher and the scholarly community.

Getting Permission to Self-Archive Your Article

The version which an author may deposit in a repository will be stipulated by the publisher’s copyright policy, or in the licence agreement which an author signs transferring copyright to the publisher for publication. As suggested under Gold OA, publishers often provide this information on their websites.

Or the SHERPA/ROMEO website contains information on many publishers’ copyright and licence to publish policies.

Gold Open Access

This means that an author pays the publisher to make a journal article or conference paper fully OA as soon as it is published. Essentially in return for an Article Processing Charge (APC) Gold OA gives access to the publisher’s “Version of Record” from the day of publication:

• the publisher will make a copy of the final article, as published, free for anyone to access from the publisher’s own website, on the day the article is published
• depending on the publisher it may also be permissible to deposit a copy of the article in AURA and/or a subject-based repository, such as UK PubMed Central
• the rights to “re-use” an article published under Gold OA are normally more generous than in other publishing models (for example, text and data mining might be permitted)

Details of what each publisher allows can be found in any Instructions/Guides to Authors available on the publisher’s website; and/or in the licence agreement you sign with the publisher to publish your article. Or the SHERPA/ROMEO website contains information on many publishers’ copyright and licence to publish policies.

Funder mandates, from such bodies as Wellcome and RCUK, are strict policies on publishing papers from research funded by the body concerned. You should ensure that you understand, and fully comply with, any funder mandates and their requirements if you are a recipient of a grant from any funding body, and your grant leads to published research outputs. Check the terms and conditions of your grant.

You can also find details on the funder policies of many research funding bodies and agencies on SHERPA/JULIET.

top

What is Open Access?

Contemporary open access (OA) dates back to the 1990s although the idea of open access to scholarly journal articles can trace its origins back a further 50 years or so.

The contemporary open access movement strives to make research publications (but especially peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers) available globally, for free, to anyone, at their point of access. This is made possible by the increasing ubiquity of computer and telecommunications technologies. The unacceptable inflationary costs of traditional print models of scholarly journal publishing have given tremendous impetus to alternative contemporary open access publishing modes in recent years.

An open access journal article or conference paper can:

• be viewed for free by anyone, including academics, other scholars, the general public etc.
• normally be re-used in more ways than a traditionally published article.

Other research outputs (such as research data) can also be made available using an open access model.

Watch a YouTube video on 'Open Access Explained!'

What are the benefits of Open Access?

Researchers who publish using an open access model benefit in many ways:

• it leads to much faster and wider dissemination and sharing of research findings.
• open access maximises research impact – numerous studies are confirming that an OA article is much more likely to be accessed and cited than an article which sits behind paid-for, traditional subscription models.
• institutional repositories (such as AURA here at Aberdeen) enhance the visibility of research undertaken by individuals, departments, research groups etc. here at the University. This can be important in attracting research students, research funding etc.
• since no library can possibly collect or provide access to all of the peer-reviewed scholarly literature, publishing research outputs via an OA model vastly increases all researchers’ access to the scholarly literature of their disciplines.

Watch a YouTube video on the 'Benefits of Open Access'.

If you need help or advice on any aspect of OA publishing at Aberdeen then:

• you may find an answer to your question in one of the items under the Guides and Resources tab, or under Online Help in the table below
• or please use the contacts in the following tables for specific issues; or use the general email help account openaccess@abdn.ac.uk

Contact your Information Consultant or Information Adviser if you just want more general information on Open Access publishing, or to arrange a presentation by LSC&M on OA and OA publishing at Aberdeen for your College, School or Department.