Practical Open Access
So, what about the practical aspects of Open Access and making work available. A common misunderstanding is the difference between sharing something openly and sharing something via Open Access. Many researchers will share versions of their work online via departmental webpages or sites such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu but just because they are available does not make them Open Access. This is particularly important when it comes to outputs which are eligible for REF assessment as certain criteria need to be followed.
- To make work Open Access it needs to be uploaded to a repository. As discussed in the section on terminology, a repository is an online store of information which commits to the ongoing preservation of and access to the material it contains. Commercial sites such as online social networks and personal/departmental webpages do not meet these criteria and are therefore not considered compliant with Open Access. Many institutions will maintain such a repository and there are also subject specific repositories which can be used.
- The REF Open Access policy says that the authors accepted manuscript of an article or conference proceedings with an ISSN must be uploaded to a suitable repository within three months of its publication to be eligible. This is usually the date found on the email sent from the publisher where they agree to publish an output.
If there are valid reasons why a manuscript cannot be shared it should still be uploaded within the time frame and placed under an embargo. This means that the record for the material is openly available but the actual content is still restricted. This will satisfy most funders Open Access requirements but anyone who is unsure should consult the funder or the Open Access team directly for clarification.
Routes to Open Access: green and gold
As discussed earlier, there are two major routes for researchers wanting to make their work available Open Access: green and gold.
- Green - sometimes referred to as 'self-archiving' this is the most common route to sharing work openly. This option allows researchers to share a version of their work in a repository (institutional or subject based) for anyone to access as needed. Whilst this route does not incur any financial cost for the researcher there are some other costs to be aware of. The burden of uploading the output is on the researcher, there may be restrictions on which version can be shared due to copyright and it is likely that the output may be placed under an embargo - a temporary restriction on general access.
- Gold - also known as 'born Open Access content', these are outputs which are made openly available as soon as they are published with no embargo period. The output can be published via a title which publishes everything openly as default or by paying a fee known as an article processing charge (APC). This option often costs the researcher a large sum of money, something which should be factored into grant applications and publication strategies.
Researchers should carefully check which option(s) are available to them as these vary according to both funder mandates and the policy of the title they want to publish with.
This resource is licenced under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence by Claire Sewell, the Office of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge University Libraries.