How to publish Open Access
How can you publish Open Access?
Journals that are completely and immediately OA are referred to as 'gold'. Journals that offer some immediate OA articles and others via subscription only are known as ‘hybrid’.
As an author, you can achieve open access by publishing in a Gold journal (sometimes via an Article Processing Charge – APC), in a hybrid journal via an APC, or by depositing a post-print of your article in the Current Research Information System Pure for open access via the Aberystwyth Research Portal (sometimes available after an embargo). The latter is known as Green OA.
For further information go to ROMEO for help with publishers' copyright and embargo policies and OpenDOAR for a list of academic Open Access repositories.
How to make your work Open Access in Aberystwyth University
A significant number of research funders, including UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), European Funding FP7/Horizon 2020 and the European Research Council, now require that research outputs, specifically journal articles, generated by the research they fund are available through Open Access (OA). In addition, HEFCE/ HEFCW have stated that journal contributions and conference proceedings should be made available OA before they can be considered for REF2020 assessment.
Aberystwyth University Research Committee and Executive have agreed that where possible, all new Journal contributions, including Conference Proceedings published in a journal edition, should be made available through the Green OA route by depositing a postprint of your paper in PURE at the point of acceptance.
AU Open Access and PURE submission policy
Please note that the deposit of papers on social media sites such as ResearchGate, Mendeley and Academia.edu will not meet with the HEFC or UKRI Open Access requirements, either in terms of metadata content or capacity for the records to be aggregated and harvested. Please always submit your papers to PURE as your primary Open Access deposit route.
Please contact openaccess@aber.ac.uk with any urgent questions.