Open Access Policy
Appendix 2: Further information
Introduction
City is committed to the principles of open research, involving the responsible and ethical sharing of publications, aiming to disseminate its research outputs as widely as possible for the benefit of society and to support academic advancement.
The current Research Excellence Framework (REF) policy on open access requires the accepted manuscript of research outputs to be deposited within a repository, such as City Research Online (CRO), within three months of formal acceptance and may be subject to publisher embargoes.
Academic funders such as UK Research and Innovation UKRI, Wellcome Trust, National Institute of Health Care Research (NIHR) and Horizon Europe, have recently mandated open access for funded research outputs to be made immediately available with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence. Further details on these policies can be found in the funders webpages, and City Library's guide on research funder policies.
Open access for monographs and book chapters is now a mandatory requirement for Horizon Europe, UKRI and Wellcome Trust, and it is anticipated that this may be a requirement for REF2029. Full details of the different funders open access policies for monographs can be found in City Library's guide on research funder policies.
There are two main routes to making academic research open access:
- Green open access: depositing the final accepted version of your manuscript/research output into an institutional or subject repository, often allowed by publishers with a set embargo period. Embargo periods for green open access are not permitted by many academic research funders.
- Gold open access: making the final version of your publication freely accessible immediately upon publication, with a reuse license. Payment of Article Processing Charges (APC) to the publisher are usually required. (see Funding for gold open access).
City supports the open access publication via both the gold and green routes, and has put in place support systems, staffing and limited funds to achieve these.
Scope
This policy applies to all research outputs, including journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and other publications authored by contracted City staff.
The policy also applies to all published research outputs authored or co-authored by postgraduate research students at City.
The policy
- Researchers may follow either the green route or the gold route to open access. Where authors are in receipt of academic research funding the route must comply with their open access policy.
- The author accepted manuscript (AAM) version of peer reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings should be deposited into the institutional repository, City Resarch Online (CRO). This should be done as soon as possible after the output has been accepted for publication, and no later than three months after this date, this is especially important for outputs to be considered for the REF.
- All other research outputs, such as book chapters, should also be deposited in CRO, unless there are specific technical or legal reasons not to do so.
- All publications should acknowledge affiliation to City, University of London to ensure they are correctly attributed for the purposes of citation counts etc. Where necessary, the school affiliation should be noted e.g. City Law School, Bayes Business School, and where appropriate, acknowledge any funder of the research.
- Embargo periods for publications may be applied where it is a requirement of the publishers' terms and conditions. Where embargo periods apply publications should still be submitted to CRO within the three-month period from acceptance; they will be made visible automatically after the embargo period. (This is known as a "closed deposit"). Embargo periods for specific funded research outputs may not be permitted.
- Where a research output is to be published Gold Open Access, including via City's Transformative Agreements, authors are encouraged to choose the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. This license must be chosen for outputs funded by specific research funders.
- Where research is funded, academic staff must publish their outputs in accordance with their funders' open access policy requirements. This covers open access for monographs and book chapters where required by the funder.
- All PhD theses will be made available in full text format in CRO; they may be subject to an embargo period or a waiver of requested on submission, at the discretion of the Director of Library Services. See Senate Regulation 25 for further details.
- All journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN that are to be included in the Annual Research Quality Monitoring (ARQM) will only be considered if they comply with this open access policy.
Responsibilities
Staff and Research students
- Individual researchers must ensure that all research outputs are recorded in Elements (City's current research information system) and the full texts (or equivalent) are deposited in CRO within the relevant timeframes. Library Services' Elements Help guide is available to assist with this process and further support can be obtained by contacting publications@city.ac.uk.
- Newly appointed academic and research staff must deposit all research outputs to CRO that have been published within the current Research Excellence Framework (REF) publication period.
- Researchers must engage with open access policy information offered by City and attend any relevant training where necessary.
- Researchers must ensure that funded research outputs are published in compliance with the research funders' open access policy requirements.
Institutional
- City will offer information and support enabling academic staff and research students to make research outputs open access in order to comply with this policy, the requirements of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the requirements of open access research funders policies.
- Library Services are responsible for providing advice and assistance to academic staff in depositing the correct versions of their research outputs in City Research Online within the relevant timeframe and in accordance with publisher copyright terms and conditions.
Funding for gold open access
- City has existing transformative publisher agreements in place which may cover these APC fees - to find out more information on the publisher agreements please refer to the Library Guide on Open Access Transformative Agreements. Authors are encouraged to choose the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license when publishing via an agreement. For any enquiries contact the library's Publications Team.
- There may be funds available at School level to cover APCs - researchers should speak to the support team in their School to find out if funds are available.
- City has an annual allocation from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) to support the open access publication of any outputs generated from UKRI-funded research. For more information contact Research Support Services.
- Payment of an APC allows deposit of a copy of the published article in CRO.
University takedown policy
Material which has been included in contradiction to publisher copyright policies may be removed immediately on request, please refer to City's Takedown Policy.
Appendix 1: Definitions
- Annual Research Quality Monitoring (ARQM)
- The Annual Research Quality Monitoring (ARQM) exercise at City monitors the quality of research outputs by our academic staff between external reviews.
- Article Processing Charge (APC)
- An Article Processing Charge (APC) is a fee paid to the publisher to make an article freely available online in a gold open access journal.
- Author accepted manuscript (AAM)
- The author's final accepted manuscript that contains all the changes made after peer-review but has not been typeset or copy edited by the journal/publisher in any way.
- Block grant
- An annual sum of money received by the University from a funder specifically to pay for open access charges.
- City Research Online (CRO)
- The institutional repository of research outputs produced by City staff and research students.
- Current Research Information Management System (CRIS)
- A system designed to help with the information management of research activity at an institution.
- Gold open access
- Gold open access means immediate access to the published article, which usually requires an additional article processing charge (APC) to be paid to the journal publisher.
- Green open access
- Making a version of work (usually an AAM) available in an Open Access repository, for example, an institutional repository. This is usually allowed within the standard copyright terms of a journal and is not associated with any additional cost. Publishers may apply an embargo to manuscripts in a repository.
- Open access
- In the broadest sense this means the output is freely available online. This can be achieved through either the green or gold open access routes.
- Open access journal
- Open access journals are journals in which all the articles are available open access at no cost to the reader. The business model of these journals is either through support from learned societies, professional organisations or institutions, where there is no cost to the author, or through Article Processing Charges (APCs) which are generally met by funder grants.
- Transformative agreement
- An agreement with the publisher whereby open access funds are available as part of the read and publish subscription charges paid to the publisher. nextra publishing fees are applicable.
Appendix 2: Further information
City Research Online (CRO) and open access Library Guide
Horizon Europe open access policy
National Institute of Health Care and Research (NIHR) open access policy
Research Excellence Framework (REF)
UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) open access policy
Wellcome Trust open access policy
Head of Content and Discovery Services, reviewed November 2022