Open Access is part of the wider Open Science or Open Research movement. "Open access (OA) means making research publications freely available so anyone can benefit from reading and using research" [Introduction to Open Access by Jisc]. Open Access publications are available online for everyone to read, without the need to be a subscriber or to make a payment to read it. Watch the eight minute video by Jisc Open Access Explained!, and also have a look at the diagram from the introduction, to learn how you can benefit from making your research available open access.
Benefits of open access diagram
courtesy of Danny Kingsley & Sarah Brown CC-BY.
Open access publishing is supported by various models. The two main approaches are known as the GREEN or the GOLD route:
Open Access publishing is increasingly mandated by funders.
The REF 2021 Open Access policy and guidance should be followed until further notice. The post-REF 2021 policy requires that all journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN accepted for publication must be discoverable in the institutional repository, if they are to be submitted to the REF.
The Middlesex University Research Repository is the Middlesex University framework to meet the post REF-2021 and other funders' Open Access requirements, for both the GREEN route and for the GOLD route. For your article post-REF 2021, you must:
For additional guidance regarding manuscript versions, consult the Manuscript version section of this Guide. The Repository team will check and apply any applicable embargoes (imposed by the publisher). The maximum permitted embargoes are 12 months for Panels A and B, and 24 months for Panels C and D.
The UK HE funding bodies launched their consultation on the future UK-wide research system which forms one element of the Future Research Assessment Programme (FRAP) - it is open for submission of consultation responses online by Friday 6 May. With this consultation and further updates on the way the programme of work is expected to conclude by late 2022.
UKRI launched in April 2018 as a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). It brings together the seven disciplinary research councils (AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC), Research England (formerly HEFCE), which is responsible for supporting research and knowledge exchange at higher education institutions in England, and the UK's innovation agency, Innovate UK. Following the UKRI Open Access Review the new UKRI Open Access policy has been published on 6 August 2021, to determine a single Open Access policy across UKRI. The new UKRI Open Access policy aims to ensure that findings from research funded by the public through UKRI can be freely accessed, used and built on.
The UKRI Open Access policy favours the GOLD route (you will need to pay to publish) but it also offers a GREEN route. The policy applies to:
To be compliant with the UKRI Open Access Policy, you need to
The new UKRI Open Access policy replaces the Research Councils' (RCUK) Policy on Open Access from 1 April 2022, and will also apply to certain funding provided by Innovate UK and Research England (see note).
Contact the Research Support Team eprints@mdx.ac.uk if your journal is published via a transformative agreement route, or if you have further questions about eligibility or UKRI Open Access compliance.
Horizon Europe is the EU's research and innovation programme for 2021-2027 and the successor to Horizon 2020. The Horizon Europe Open Science or Open Access policy applies to peer reviewed scientific publications as well as monographs and other long-text formats, research data and additional practices as per the General Model Grant Agreement Contract.
Open Science in Horizon Europe and Open Access to scientific publications - in brief:
Only publication fees (if any) in full open access venues for peer-reviewed scientific publications are eligible for reimbursement. Where the call conditions impose additional obligations regarding open science practices, the beneficiaries must also comply with those.
UKRI encourages innovators to apply for Horizon Europe funding. Horizon Europe funding is available for a wide variety of research and innovation areas including medical science and cancer treatment, adaptation to climate change, ocean health and agriculture.
The Horizon 2020 programme requires all beneficiaries to ensure open access to all “scientific information that is free of charge to the end-user and reusable. 'Scientific' refers to all academic disciplines. It includes both published work and research data.
Middlesex University encourages the GREEN Open Access route via self-archiving of the accepted manuscript in the Middlesex University Research Repository in cases where no funds are available to pay for GOLD.
This policy applies to all academic staff, all research staff and all students whose research outputs derive from their employment by the University, from research grants or otherwise from the use of University resources and facilities. This policy requires researchers at Middlesex University to:
The Repository team will check all files that are uploaded to ensure they comply with copyright law and will apply any embargoes required by the publisher. More information can be found in the full Middlesex University Open Access Publications Policy.
| As per the Middlesex University deposit requirements all research outputs must be deposited in the Middlesex University Research Repository at the point of acceptance. |
There are options to support the GOLD Open Access publishing route: if your journal is included in one of the Transformative Agreements Middlesex University signed, your Open Access fee is covered by the agreement (a check-list for eligibility is available in our Training Material section).
Open access fees for funded research may otherwise be managed by each faculty/department. Consult with your research lead and/or your Deputy Dean for Research about access to funding.
If you are working on a collaborative project, check if your collaborators are in receipt of Open Access funds to cover the Open Access publishing costs.
Middlesex University signed transformative agreements with the following publishers and the list of journals included in the current Middlesex University agreements is available via Jisc's Knowledge Base+ packages (see publisher web pages and links to KB+ lists as follows for each agreement):
Jisc is working with UKRI and Coalition S to improve the Journal Checker Tool, and to further customise it in line with UKRI policy changes (see Jisc blog). More detailed information about transitional agreements and the list of Jisc-approved transformative journals (downloadable list) is also available via the Sherpa services.
If you publish in a journal via a transformative agreement, the publisher will ask what licence you want to apply, select CC-BY unless you have secured permission from your funder for a CC-BY-ND licence.
Do have a look at our check-list provided via the slide-deck in the Training Materials section.
The following diagram highlights the difference between manuscript versions and shows that the final accepted manuscript version is the version before copy-editing or type-setting by the publisher.
Article version diagram courtesy of University of Cambridge CC-BY
Another manuscript version diagram is available via the National Web Archive of the HEFCE domain, originating from earlier HEFCE guidance.
Initiated by coalition S, the so-called Rights Retention Strategy requires that researchers add a Rights Retention Statement to their manuscript on submission of their article. Several funders are following this approach, including the Wellcome Trust (Jan 2021), UKRI (Apr 2022), NIHR (Jun 2022), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (January 2021) and have introduced similar requirements.
If your work is funded by one of these organisations and you publish via the self-archiving or GREEN Open Access route in one of the eligible journals, your manuscript will have to include a rights retention statement in the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission. The statement will be slightly different per each funder, but should say:
| The research was funded by funder / grant number, and for the purpose of Open Access the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising. |
When naming Middlesex University, you should declare your institution to be 'Middlesex University'.
The particular research centre, school or department may also be named separately and additionally, but not instead of Middlesex University, which should be the primary institutional affiliation of the author.
This will help to identify and retrieve all the University’s research publications in research aggregation services such as Web of Science and PubMed, and it will also help others to recognise you and your work.
In order to assist others to identify your work, you are also advised to create and use an ORCiD identifier when publishing. Obtaining an ORCiD will help you manage your outputs across multiple research platforms.
In case you have further questions or need additional information about Open Access, or how to meet your funder's open access compliance, request a one-to-one or group training session, contact the Research Support Team via eprints@mdx.ac.uk.
In October 2011 the University mandated the deposit of all research items in the repository on acceptance for publication. "Following the decision of the Research and Research Degrees Committee in October 2011 Middlesex University has mandated that academic and research staff deposit all outputs resulting from their research undertaken while employed at Middlesex University in the Research Repository."
The Middlesex University Research Repository (EPrints) is an online, open access archive of published research and other scholarly content produced by Middlesex University staff and researchers ('Who is eligible to add work?'). Access to bibliographic information is open to anyone on the internet without the need to log in. In rare cases where full-text is associated, access may not be immediate.
In addition to full texts of many articles, book chapters and conference papers, the repository is an index of Middlesex's practice related research, as it holds records of performances, exhibitions, compositions, artefacts, videos, portfolios, etc. The repository also holds a copy of all doctoral theses awarded by the University.
The Middlesex University Research Repository (https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/) is managed by the Research Support Team, based in Library and Student Support. Library and Student Support encourages self-deposits of research and practice research in the repository. Consult Jisc's Sherpa/Romeo service for the particular policy of your journal.
Help or support is provided by the Research Support Team (eprints@mdx.ac.uk).
All doctoral theses accredited by Middlesex University are uploaded to the Middlesex University Research Repository and will be openly accessible unless the author has requested otherwise. Via the deposit agreement form that you will have to sign, you can restrict access to the full-text of your thesis for a fixed time (usually around five years, although this is renewable) if you e.g. intend to publish your thesis, or register a trademark from your research, or to respect confidentiality and/or commercial obligations.
On completion of your degree, you will need to send a copy of your final thesis and the signed deposit agreement form to the Research Degrees Administration Team.
Take into account: