We often come across staff who think they only need to deposit their work in RIS if they will be putting it forward for the REF. However, open access can give higher visibility and increased impact. It is increasingly required by government and funders, and university policy. It also contributes to the democratization of research since articles are free to all.
Ideally you should build open access into your research cycle:
- Producing a proposal – do you have funds for article processing charges? Does your funder have open access requirements you need to meet (You can check using Sherpa Juliet)
- Literature review – you might want to search the open access aggregator CORE
- Collecting data – open research data is increasingly on the agenda of funders.
- Writing up – does your chosen journal meet your funder’s criteria.
University open access policy states that “Wherever possible researchers will be expected to make all published research outputs available as Green Open Access” with the aim to “collect, disseminate and promote the scholarly output of the university’s staff as widely as possible”
Why wouldn’t you publish open access?
- It’s complicated and I don’t understand what my publisher allows.
- The Sherpa Romeo site gives details of what publishers allow and we are here to help if you get confused – email iss-research@swansea.ac.uk
- I have no funding
- if you are funded by UKRI we can pay an APC for you. If you are not eligible for this you can deposit your accepted manuscript in the Research Information System to make your work open access, perhaps after an embargo period.
- I think it limits my choice of journal
- if you use the green route of depositing in a repository, most journals allow open access so it shouldn’t have a significant effect on your freedom to publish where you wish.