Open Access Process at Aberystwyth

The “routes” below apply to scholarly works submitted and accepted for publication in journals or conference proceedings with an International Standards Serial Number (ISSN), or those hosted on a publishing platform, written by Aberystwyth University (AU) authors and co-authors who are staff, or students whose funders have open access requirements. Other authors utilising an AU affiliation are encouraged to adopt this policy where possible.

The open access deposit of other scholarly works e.g. monographs or book chapters in the University’s Open Access repository continues to be strongly encouraged where possible.

Please refer to the Open Access and Rights Retention Policy for further detail.

Author’s guide diagram

    Green Rights Retention Route

    1. Prior to submission:
      1. Notify any co-authors that AU operates an author’s rights retention policy. This allows the University to make the post-print/author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) available to read without the application of any publisher embargo, and for University authors to share their work with others without potentially breaching any copyright transfer agreement entered into with a publisher.
      2. Confirm that your publisher appears on the list of those that have already been notified by AU. If your publisher does not appear, please contact openaccess@aber.ac.uk and we will contact them on your behalf.
      3. Consider any 3rd party copyrighted material included in your submission and whether permissions are compatible with use under a CC-BY licence or whether you need a notice exempting them. Further information can be found here.
    1. At submission:

      At this point if you have supporting data for your submission you may need to create a dataset record within Pure and have a DOI assigned to it to provide to the journal for the peer-review process; see our PURE information page for guidance.
    1. At acceptance:
      1. Within 1-month of acceptance you need to create a Pure record for your output and upload your AAM. This will fulfil any funder requirement for deposit within an institutional repository (if the work was funded then check if they have any additional requirements).
      2. Set the record ‘For approval’ and save, then a Pure administrator will review the record for completeness and apply a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to your AAM. Once 'Approved’, output records will then be transferred automatically to the Research Portal, the University’s public-facing institutional repository.

    We recognise that there may be a small number of scenarios where AU authors need to opt-out of this policy. AU authors will need to contact openaccess@aber.ac.uk to request such an opt-out.

    Gold Route

    via payment of an article processing charge (APC) to a publisher, either directly or via a transformative agreement.

    1. At submission:

    At this point if you have supporting data for your submission you may need to create a dataset record within Pure and have a DOI assigned to it to provide to the journal for the peer-review process; see our Pure information page for guidance.

    1. At publication:

    If your output is published Gold open access create a Pure record for your output including the deposit of the publisher’s version into Pure. There is no need to deposit an AAM at acceptance as is the case with the Green route.

    Need to know bullet points

    • CC BY licence for Green AAM
      • 1-month grace period after acceptance for Pure deposit
      • Your funder may require further deposits elsewhere (check with them)
      • No embargos required
    • CC BY licence for Gold publications
      • Open Government licence is compatible
      • No retrospective open access
      • No embargos allowed
      • No AAM needed
    • Any funding must be acknowledged.
    • Need a data access statement
      • Including a link to the repository where data is available for download