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 research outputs 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.

Image: 'Benefits of Open Access' by Danny Kingsley and Sarah Brown CC BY.

This short video created by UKRN introduces the open research practice of Open Access for research publications

There are three main ways to make your research outputs OA. It is important to note different publishers and policies may use slightly different terminology to what we discuss below but they will be referring to one of these routes.

Route A: Repository Open Access (Green OA)

• Your journal article, book, book chapter or edited collections is published in a subscription journal or in a non-OA form.
• Your Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is deposited into the Institutional Repository (TeesRep)
• The AAM is made OA after an embargo period set by the publisher
• No costs are associated with this type of publishing
• University policy is for Repository Open Access publishing.

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

• Your research is made freely available immediately on publication usually with a Creative Commons Licence.
• There is an upfront cost to make the research output free. For a journal article, or book chapter the fee for making it OA - is called the Article Processing Charge (APC). For books this fee is called the Book Processing Charge (BPC).
• The APC/BPC 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 or BPCs.  The preferred route is via Repository OA or through a journal included in one of our Transformative Agreements.

Route C: Publisher Open Access for journal articles 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.

Route D: Publisher Open Access (no fees for author or reader) (Diamond OA or Platinum OA)

• This type of publishing is considered to be the most equitable form of publishing, as readers can access the materials for free, with no paywalls, and authors can publish with no APC or BPC. 
• Diamond OA publishing is often funded by organisations, institutions, research organisation or other initiatives.
• There are several different publishing models for Diamond OA- see for more information.
• Some funders may contribute towards participation in alternative open access models so please check with their guidance. 

Rights Retention (RR) is a route to achieve immediate Open Access via the Green route (deposit into a repository), enabling authors to retain their intellectual ownership rights to their work to make the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) (or Version of Record (VoR) where the publisher allows) fully and immediately Open Access (OA) at the time of publication with a Creative Commons (CC) Licence. Utilising RR enables authors to distribute copies of their work freely via any academic or research network; to use their work within any other work of their own or anyone else’s; to use their work for teaching and to share, use and re-use as they choose under CC-BY conditions. 

Funder Rights Retention for Open Access in subscription journals, monographs, book chapters and edited collections

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 Manuscript 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.

Teesside University Rights Retention Policy - Coming September 2025

For submissions from the 1st September 2025 Teesside University will be introducing an institutional rights retention policy. Under this policy Teesside University staff and doctoral students will be required to publish the AAM of their journal article or conference proceeding on TeesRep under a CC-BY licence. Ahead of this date this page describes why this is happening and what it means for authors. Further details will be available soon.

Why is this being introduced?

Normally, you would lose the right to disseminate your AAM during your publication journey. Although you automatically hold the copyright when you write a paper, if you publish it via a route that is not OA, you may be asked to sign a publishing agreement in which you give all or part of your rights to the publisher, who now holds them exclusively. In practice, this means that you cannot use your own work without explicit written permission from the publisher. While the publisher will retain their rights to the VOR, by asserting your rights and applying a CC-BY licence you will be able to disseminate the AAM as you see fit.

This has the additional benefit of allowing you to publish in venues where licence or embargo restrictions would make the VOR non-compliant with OA requirements from funders or for policies such as the REF, as the AAM can be made open access in line with these requirements.

How does this work in practice?

The policy applies to the submission of journal articles or conference proceedings (which are published under an ISSN) from the 1st September 2025 by Teesside University authors or co-authors who are members of staff or doctoral students.

If you are working with co-authors based elsewhere, they need to be aware of, and agree to, the Rights Retention position at Teesside University.

In order to retain your rights the below Rights Retention Statement should be included in either the funding/ acknowledgement section or in the first footnote or endnote and in any cover letter/note of all papers submitted from the above date.

‘For the purpose of open access, the author(s) has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.’

Alternative wording, with the same intended outcome can be used instead, if required by a relevant funder.

To comply with OA requirements, upon acceptance for publication you will need to deposit the (AAM) of your paper into TeesRep.

On the date of  publication the full-text of the AAM will be made public on TeesRep under the CC-BY licence.

What if it's not possible for me to comply fully, or in part, with this policy?

If compliance isn't possible, for example, there is not agreement from all authors or there are copyright concerns over third party content, then it may be possible to apply a partial or complete opt-out, to the manuscript. Be aware that this may mean that the output is not compliant with funder or REF policies.

More information

Please listen to Episode 1 of The Buttery Sessions podcast for an introduction to the policy. 

JISC have created these useful tools that can help you with your OA journey and publishing.

• 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

UKRN have produced this useful primer on what is OA research publishing: