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 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.

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: