Open Access

Open Access (OA) is all about sharing research freely and openly.

The fundamental principle underlying OA is that research funded by the public should be freely available to the public. For the typical researcher this means that a copy of a research paper should be placed online upon acceptance with no restrictions on who can access, view or download it. In this way OA bypasses current obstacles to access such as the prohibitive cost of journal subscriptions, coupled with restrictive licences, that exclude most people from viewing research.

Open Access as a movement has been around for at least a decade. Support has grown significantly in the UK over the last few years for the following reasons:

1. The Research Excellence Framework has an Open Access Policy applying to REF2021. The policy applies to outputs accepted for publication after 1 April 2016. The main points of the policy are:

it is compulsory to make all research outputs accepted for publication Open Access in an institutional or subject repository within 3 months of acceptance. This applies to journal articles and conference proceedings, but other outputs are encouraged. The output deposited must be the author's accepted and final peer reviewed text (which may otherwise be known as the 'author accepted manuscript' or 'final author version' or 'post-print') and this could be supplemented by the final published version of record at a later date (if the publisher allows it, but the Library can check this)
outputs should be in a readable format so that they can be searched and re-used
outputs should apply a Creative Commons licence - CC BY or CC BY-NC if the publisher allows

2. Government-driven policy on widening access to research - a response to the Finch Report

3. OA as a principle has been taken up by many of the major research funders, including the UK Research Councils and The Wellcome Trust. All Research Councils now require that research funded by them is made Open Access. Please see the UK Research and Innovation open access policy

Lancaster University has embraced the Open Access movement and implemented its own Lancaster University Open Access Policy on 1 May 2015. An Open Access Checklist summarises the key points of the policy. Listen to Lancaster Vice-Chancellor Professor Mark E. Smith's podcast on the strategic implications of Open Access for Lancaster University, and the broader impact on the higher education sector. The policy and checklist can be found in the sidebar on each Open Access page.

There are two main routes to Open Access: Green and Gold. Please see How Do I... for further information.

If you have any further queries on Open Access, please contact openaccess@lancaster.ac.uk

Why should I put my research on Open Access?

Open Access is not just about benefiting the general public, there are clear benefits to individual researchers and their institutions:

Increased visibility of research and researchers, helping you to reach new audiences
Increased impact: Open Access research is cited more frequently
Research lifecycle can be accelerated: published, read, cited, built on
Compliance with funder mandates
Creation of new collaborative opportunities and exchange of knowledge
Public good: sharing scholarship and intellectual wealth

Research that is openly and freely available will be found more easily through, for example, Google, Google Scholar, specialist search engines such as BASE, and harvesters that trawl the web aggregating related content.

A number of recent studies have clearly demonstrated that putting research on OA increases the number of times it is cited. Additionally, the research lifecycle may be speeded up – it is quicker to get research out there and noticed and it can make collaborating and sharing easier.

Lancaster University is committed to ensuring that the outputs of our research are made readily available to anyone who would benefit from them. See Lancaster University Open Access Policy

Find out more about the Open Access movement

Listen to Lancaster Vice-Chancellor Professor Mark E. Smith's podcast on the strategic implications of open access for Lancaster University, and the broader impact on the higher education sector.
Listen to Sir Mark Walport, Chief Executive of the Wellcome Trust, on why Open Access is important
Stevan Harnad’s open access web pages
Go Open Access, a series of short films aiming to promote wider awareness and understanding of Open Access
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, on libraries, access to knowledge and Open Access
Where next with Open Access? A presentation by Martin Hall, Chair of the Open Access Implementation Group and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford (predates Finch Report and RCUK policy)
Web pages from the Open Citation Project on the effect of Open Access and downloads on citation impact

Where do I find the money to pay OA publishing costs?

The following funding grants may be available to assist with Gold Open Access fees.

UKRI (formerly RCUK) Block Grant

From 1 April 2013, UKRI issued research organisations (including Lancaster) with a block grant to help meet the cost of open access via the Gold pay-to-publish route. From this date it is no longer possible for individual grant applications to UKRI to request funding for pay-to-publish Article Processing Fees (APCs). Lancaster University has received a block grant to support Gold open access.

This policy will affect anyone funded by the following Research Councils:

Arts & Humanities Research Council
Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council
Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Economic & Social Research Council
Medical Research Council
Natural Environment Research Council
Science & Technology Facilities Research Council

In summary, the main points of the UKRI OA policy are:

Open Access should be through the Gold route (often pay-to-publish via the publisher's platform) and a record of the research output should be added to Lancaster's institutional repository (Pure) and also an appropriate subject repository if desired
The author should apply for Gold Open Access funding
All publications must be available on Open Access within six months of the publication date with the exception of AHRC and ESRC funded papers which must be available within a 12 month period
To check if a journal in which you wish to publish complies with your funder's requirements for open access please see the SHERPA/FACT tool
For Gold Open Access, the selected publisher must support the Creative Commons 'Attribution' licence - CC-BY - 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
Research papers must include a statement on how the underlying research materials can be accessed
Funding information must be included within the acknowledgement section of a paper

For further information please see the RCUK policy on Open Access.

Directory of Open Access Journals is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.

If you are the principal author and want to apply for funding please email openaccess@lancaster.ac.uk once your paper has been accepted and you have created a record of it in Pure. Please include the title of your paper in your email.

The Library will carry out administrative checks on your funding application, after which a decision should be made within 3 working days.

Lancaster University Funding

Institutional open access funding is no longer available. If your paper is being submitted to an open access journal and likely to be proposed for REF2021 then please contact the Research Director in your department to see if they have funding available.

If you have any further queries on Open Access please contact openaccess@lancaster.ac.uk

Pure Research Information System

Lancaster University's PURE Research Information System is a repository which aims to capture and preserve the intellectual output of Lancaster University and make it freely available over the Web.

Data in PURE is being used to produce staff profiles and other research related information such as publications metadata and full text, project information etc.

Please deposit metadata of all publications into PURE as soon as it is available (by adding a publication to PURE using the templates provided you are automatically adding metadata that describes the journal or conference paper).

In line with Lancaster University Open Access Policy and to be eligible for the post-2014 REF you must use PURE to deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript (see document versions explained) of journal articles and published conference proceedings as soon as they have been accepted by the publisher.

Other Repositories

In addition to depositing in PURE you can choose to deposit in a subject based repository such as Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC),SSOAR or CiteSeer. By depositing in such repositories you are placing your research paper next to those of your peers at other universities and research institutes. Other researchers will be able to find your article when searching the web, as all repositories are indexed by the major search engines.

Open access repositories can be located using the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) services.

Support

You can download user guides to help you use PURE.

If you still have problems accessing or using PURE please email pure-support@lancaster.ac.uk

Lancaster Open Access Policy