An opeNWorks OA advocacy template - designed to cover the basics of open access, with room to include your own slides to clarify local policy.

1. Open Access:
what you need to
know
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License. Authored
by the opeNWorks project.

2. What you need to know
• What is open access?
• Where did it come from?
• What are the benefits?
• How do you make your work openly accessible?
• Open Access policies and mandates

3. What is open access?
• Unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed
scholarly research
• Free of charge
• Free of most restrictions on use (though attribution is still a must)
• Defined by the Bethesda, Berlin and Budapest statements on
open access publishing

4. Where did it come from?
• The Open Access movement is a response to a
number of developments and challenges within
scholarly communications
• Technology allows quicker and cheaper dissemination of research
outputs
• Journal subscription costs are increasing and libraries are
struggling to keep up
• Growing demand for taxpayers to be able to access the research
they fund

5. What are the benefits?
For researchers:
• Increases impact – studies have found that OA
research has higher citation rates
• Increases the amount of accessible research – no
more being locked out by paywalls
• Stimulates collaboration

6. What are the benefits?
For students and teachers:
• Unrestricted access to research, regardless of
economic status or institutional affiliation
• Freedom to use and re-purpose research
materials in new and interesting ways

7. What are the benefits?
For the general public:
• Enables access to the research that their taxes fund
and encourages lifelong learning
• Allows independent researchers to access research
• Gives businesses and other organisations access to
research and encourages innovation

8. Enter here any statement you might have from senior
management in your institution about the importance they place
on open access

9. How do you make your work
openly accessible?
There are two routes to open access:
GOLD GREEN

10. Gold open access
• Available immediately upon publication
• Available at the source of publication (usually
the journal website)
• No charge at point of access for users
• Typically paid for with APCs (article processing
charges) though there are other business models
• Typically made available under a Creative
Commons licence

11. Article processing charges
• Fees charged to authors by journals to recover
the costs of publication
• Average price around £1,800 but can vary
between £200 and £4,000+
• Fees charged by hybrid journals tend to cost
more than those charged by pure open access
journals (see next slide)

12. Pure or hybrid?
• Pure open access journals contain only work
made openly accessible
• Hybrid journals contain a mix of both open
access and subscription based content
• Some of these journals have been accused of “double dipping” as
they are receiving income from both APCs and journal
subscriptions

13. Green open access (or self-
archiving)
• Subject to journal enforced embargo periods
• Available from a secondary source, such as a
subject or institutional repository
• Author accepted manuscript rather than
formatted publisher version deposited by
authors themselves
• Check Sherpa/Romeo for your journal’s Green
OA policy

14. Enter here some screenshots of your institutional repository,
and/or provide a demonstration

15. Funder open access policies
• Research funders are keen to encourage the
recipients of their grants to make their outputs
openly accessible
• A number of OA policies have been announced
in recent years that mandate open access

16. Research Councils UK
RCUK consists of these funding bodies:
• Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
• Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
(BBSRC)
• Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
• Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
• Medical Research Council (MRC)
• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)

17. Research Councils UK
• All peer-reviewed research articles and
conference proceedings that acknowledge
funding from RCUK must be made open access
• Supports both Green and Gold routes but has
preference for Gold
• Funding is provided to institutions to pay for
APCs
• If RCUK funds are used to pay for APCs, CC-BY
licence must be used

18. Research Councils UK
• If going Green, maximum embargo periods must
be complied with:
• Humanities and social sciences – 12 months
• STEM disciplines – 6 months
• Where funding is not available to pay APCs, these
maximum embargo periods can be extended to 24
months for humanities and 12 months for STEM
• Check Sherpa/Romeo to see if your journal
complies

19. Charity Open Access Fund
(COAF)
• COAF includes the following organisations:
• Wellcome
• Arthritis Research UK
• Breast Cancer Campaign
• British Heart Foundation
• Cancer Research UK
• Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research

20. Charity Open Access Fund
(COAF)
• Requires articles that acknowledge funding to be made
open access as quickly as possible – no longer than six
months from publication date
• Must also be deposited in PubMed Central and Europe
PubMed Central but publishers are expected to do this
• Funds are provided to pay for Gold open access
• CC-BY licence must be used

21. HEFCE
• HEFCE announced their policy on open access
and the next Research Excellence Framework in
2014
• In order to be eligible for the next REF, all final
peer-reviewed research articles and conference
proceedings must comply with the policy

22. HEFCE
• All final peer-reviewed manuscripts and
conference proceedings must be deposited in an
institutional or subject repository within three
months of acceptance
• Publisher embargo periods will be respected –
maximum 24 months for humanities and 12
months for STEM
• Requirement applies from 1 April 2016

23. HEFCE
• No preference for any particular licence, but CC-
BY-NC-ND would meet the requirements
• Applies to outputs already made open access via
Gold route – these must also be deposited in an
institutional or subject repository

24. Enter here links to your institution’s policy on open access, if you
have one

25. Useful links
• RCUK policy
• HEFCE policy
• COAF/Wellcome policy
• Creative Commons guide
• Sherpa/Romeo
Also enter here link to your institution’s own web pages on open
access, if you have some