Whilst the University encourages its researchers to publish open access both for their own personal benefit and for the public good, it is useful for authors to be aware of the open access policy framework in the UK and Europe that may place requirements on how they publish.
In order to ensure their funded research is made openly available, research funders have policies that require that authors in receipt of their funding publish their research via open access routes. The largest funding bodies in the UK and Europe (UKRI, Wellcome, Horizon) all have such policies. Whilst such policies place requirements on authors, funding bodies will usually make funds available to allow them to adhere to their policies.
In the UK, their are similar open access requirements governing submissions to the Research Excellence Framework. These have been designed to mirror funder policies. If you are publishing in compliance with UKRI policy, for example, then you will already be meeting REF requirements.
The University's institutional open access policy is designed to make it easier for York authors to publish in compliance with their funder mandates.
The University's Research Publications and Open Access Policy applies to all scholarly research articles (including conference proceedings) by University of York research staff.
The policy aims to:
The policy asserts the author's rights to the "accepted manuscript" of any research article they have created and that has been accepted for publication. This means that, for all articles, the accepted manuscript can be uploaded to the University Research Repository and made openly available when the journal publishes their final version.
By following the University's open access policy, researchers ensure they are acting in accordance with their funders' open access requirements, and that their outputs are likely to be eligible for the next REF exercise. This means their is no compulsion on authors to use a paid open access route.
The policy is based on the principle of Rights Retention. This recognises that researchers own the initial copyright to the manuscripts that they create as part of their research, and that it is not necessary for an author to sign over their copyright or grant an exclusive licence to a publisher in order for their work to be published or disseminated.
Under the institutional policy, the author retains their rights by granting the University a non-exclusive licence to make accepted manuscripts publicly available (under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence)) without embargo via the University repository, White Rose Research Online. This allows any research article produced by York research staff to take advantage of the Green route to open access.
You can opt any of your papers out of the institutional open access policy, whenever you feel this is necessary. Opting-out might be especially appropriate in scenarios where:
Note that opting-out of the University's policy of immediate open access may cause an output to be non-compliant with some funder open access policies.
Outputs that have been opted-out of immediate open access should still be deposited in Pure.
You do not need to opt-out of the institutional policy if the final published version will be made openly available. In these instances, the accepted manuscript will not be made available, and the Pure record will direct users to the final version via the journal website.
Plan S is an initiative for open access publishing developed by an international consortium of research funding organisations known as cOAlition S. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant open access journals or platforms.
What does Plan S mean for me?
Plan S seeks to bring about a significant international shift towards open access publication of research results.
If your research is funded by an organisation that has committed to Plan S (such as UKRI or the Wellcome Trust) then they are likely to require you to comply with the Plan S principles as conditions of research publication.
If your research is not funded by a Plan S funder then you are still likely to benefit from Plan S through the increased availability of open access publication options.
Plan S Funders
Research funders who have committed to the principles of Plan S include UKRI, the Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Health Organization.
The Horizon Europe programmes of the European Commission have open access requirements covering:
Horizon open access requirements apply to all peer-reviewed research publications that arise from Horizon funded research.
For in scope publications:
To comply with the policy you can publish an article via any of these routes:
If publishing via route 2 or 3 you should also deposit the final version into Pure.
To comply with the policy you can publish a book/book chapter via any of these routes:
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have open access policies covering:
The UKRI open access policy applies to peer-reviewed research articles and conference papers. This includes review articles such as evidence syntheses, systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The policy does not apply to book reviews or narrative reviews.
For in-scope articles:
In order to comply with the UKRI open access policy for research articles you can publish via one of these routes:
The UKRI open access policy applies to books, book chapters and edited collections. It does not apply to trade books (unless this book is the only output from UKRI-funded research), scholarly editions, exhibition catalogues, textbooks, or any type of fictional works. The policy also does not apply to books and theses produced as a result of a UKRI training grant.
For in-scope monographs:
To comply with this policy:
The Wellcome Trust has open access policies covering:
The Wellcome Trust open access policy covers article types whose focus is to report original research. Other article types such as reviews and editorials are not required to comply with this policy.
For in-scope articles:
In order to comply with the policy you can publish via one of these routes:
The Wellcome open access policy applies to all original scholarly books and book chapters authored or co-authored by Wellcome grantholders as part of their grant-funded research. The policy does not apply to textbooks, trade books, general reference works, or works of fiction. The policy also does not apply to collections edited, but not authored, by Wellcome grantholders.
For in scope monographs:
To comply with the policy:
You can also contact the team by email lib-open-research@york.ac.uk to: