Open Access Publications Policy - update

Authors, retain your rights in your manuscripts 

In scholarly publishing it has become common for publishers to require a copyright transfer for articles published in journal articles. This can often lead to problems when an author has to meet compliance criteria for open access set by funders like UKRI, or the REF, as the publishers often do not grant sufficient rights back to the author when archiving an article in a repository like WIRE, either in terms of the licence that can be applied or the embargo period before the manuscript can be released to the public. It can also impact on an author’s ability to share their work with others in other contexts. While publishing an article as open access will usually resolve these issues, this means having to find money to cover the costs. 

With the publication of the latest version of the Open Access Publications Policy, the university introduces a rights retention strategy that will allow authors to retain rights in their accepted manuscripts to use them as they wish under terms listed in the CC BY licence without cost to the author. This is done by licensing the manuscript to the university. This represents a great step forward for author rights in the field, and will also futureproof against any future changes funders or the REF might make in open access compliance criteria around the sharing of author manuscripts. 

Application of rights retention relies on notification of publishers so that they are aware that they will have to honour licences granted to the university by the author. As such we have a list of the practical steps to rights retention, along with a list of publishers already contacted, on our webpages. If you intend to submit to a publisher that is not currently on the list, please contact the Scholarly Communications Team, who will send the publisher a notice asap. 

Corresponding authors based at the university can also make use of the publishing agreements held by the university, which includes publishers like Elsevier and Wiley, which covers the cost of open access publishing in a range of journal titles. 

If you have any questions about the strategy, particularly relating to any upcoming submissions, please ask the Scholarly Communications Team.