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Research support

What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) means making research publications freely available to read and reuse by anyone with internet access

Why publish your journal article OA?

  • OA makes your research available to many more people than if your article was published in a subscription journal
  • More exposure of your work means higher citation rates
  • Making your research OA is now required by many research funders
  • Publicly funded research is made available to the public (tax payer)
  • It is University policy for researchers to make their research OA by depositing it into the University’s Institutional Repository - TeesRep

Routes to Open Access

There are three main routes to making your research publications Open Access

Route A: Repository Open Access (Green OA)

  • Your journal article is published in a subscription journal 
  • Your Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is deposited into the Insitutional Repository (TeesRep)
  • The AAM is made OA after an embargo period set by the publisher
  • No costs are associated with this type of pubishing
  • University policy is for Repository Open Access publishing.

Rout B: Publisher Open Access (after payment of a fee) (Gold OA)

  • Your journal article is made freely available immediately on pulication usually with a Creative Commons Licence.
  • There is an upfront cost to make the article OA - this cost is called the Article Processing Charge (APC)
  • The APC may be paid by the author or subsidised by a third party such as a funding council
  • Please note: Teesside University does not have a central fund to pay APCs.  The preferred route is via Repository OA or through a journal included in one of our Transformative Agreemnents.

Route C: Publisher Open Access via a Transformative Agreement (Gold OA)

  • These agreements have been negotiated by Jisc and are a way for publishers to transition away from subscription journals to open access journals
  • The cost of open access is part of an overall Teesside University payment covering both subscriptions (Read) and open access publishing (Publish)
  • Some journals included in a Transformative Agreement are fully open access, and others contain a mix of open access and subscription articles - these journals are known as hybrid journals
  • They enable TU authors to publish open access without the need to pay APCs in journals that are part of the agreement.

Rights Retention for Green Open Access

Rights Retention for Open Access in suscription journals

Funders such as UKRI, Wellcome or NIHR require that you apply a Rights Retention statement and a CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution)  licence to your submitted manuscript.  This ensures that your Author Accepted Manusucript can be made freely available, without embargo in an Institutional Repository irrespective of embargo periods by publishers.

The exact wording differs depending on your funder so make sure you check your own funder's Open Access Policy before you submit your manuscript for publication.

JISC Sherpa Services

  • SHERPA /FACT - a tool to help researchers check if the journals in which they wish to publish their results comply with their funder's requirements for open access to research.
  • SHERPA/JULIET - This contains detailed information about research funders' open access policies
  • SHERPA/ROMEO - This contains detailed information about publisher copyright policies & self-archiving