Why Open Research

• Promoting scientific rigour

  There has been an increased focus on issues around reproducibility in research. In January 2017, the government launched an enquiry into research integrity, where the background information included the comment that over a quarter of researchers at 26% of survey respondents (primarily researchers from higher education institutions) had felt tempted or under pressure to compromise on integrity and standards.

  A strain of the Open Research discourse addresses such perceived dysfunctions in the way scientific research is reported and validated. Discussion of the so-called reproducibility crisis has highlighted high rates of failure to replicate results of published studies. Various reasons have been adduced for this, including poor reporting of research methods, weaknesses in study design and statistical analysis, and failure to provide access to data and software code supporting published results.

  Reproducibility means that research data and code are made available so that others are able to reach the same results as are claimed in scientific outputs. Closely related is the concept of replicability, the act of repeating a scientific methodology to reach similar conclusions. These concepts are core elements of empirical research.

  Improving reproducibility leads to increased rigour and quality of scientific outputs, and thus to greater trust in science.

  Best practices in reproducibility offers benefits to the individual researcher themselves improving the planning, organization, and documentation of research.

• Increase your research impact

  Open methodologies, analytics and publications optimise the reach and scope of your research by capitalising on the benefits of networked and accessible knowledge.

  Open Research:

  • Stimulates and increases dialogue across society by using collaborative methods to widen participation in your research;
  • Allows potential research collaborators, partners, or audiences to access your work without being restricted by paywalls;
  • With permissive licences like CC BY, researchers are empowered to build on existing research quickly;
  • Allows your work to be used freely in an educational context
  • Makes your work more visible to search engines.

  In the world of research impact, colleagues often refer to the ‘pathway to impact’, meaning the specific activities a researcher can undertake to ensure that the benefits of their research are realised. More often than not, a successful pathway to impact relies on the researcher being open about their findings and disseminating their results via appropriate channels.

• Be open and get more citations, page views and downloads

  Numerous studies have shown that publishing openly – whether in an Open Access journal, or self- archiving in an open repository – confers a citation advantage.

  The Open Access Citation Advantage Service, maintained by SPARC Europe, kept a list of relevant citation studies and summaries of their results. In 2016 SPARC Europe decided not to further update The Open Access Citation Advantage Service since the citation advantage evidence had now become far more common knowledge.

  Two- thirds of the studies found a significant citation advantage of publishing openly. The open access citation advantage holds for diverse fields, with maximum percent increases in citations from 36-600%!

  Studies that share their data openly tend to get more citations than studies that do not make their data available.

  Ulster's Citations webpage provides more guidance and direction on increasing your citations.

• Take more control on how your work is used

  Many subscription publishers require authors to sign a copyright transfer agreement which gives ownership of your work to the publisher who subsequently decides who can read, share, and reuse the content.

  You can negotiate the terms of your publishing agreement, for example:

  • do you want to retain your copyright?
  • The right to post a free copy in an open repository?
  • Do you want to reuse the content?

  You can read about your rights and how to protect them in this resource from SPARC.

  Of course, instead  of negotiating with a subscription publisher, you can go with an open access publisher and keep all your rights.

  Open access publishers do not require a copyright transfer agreement; authors retain copyright. Articles are most often distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows anyone to read, share, and reuse the content provided they attribute the original source.

  For more information about licensing for open research see licensing and copyright for open research.

Ulster's Open Access website provide more detailed support on making your outputs open access.  Read the guidance on making your research data open for things you can do to ensure your research data is as open as possible.

Funders' Open Research Initiatives

The Wellcome Trust has identified Open Research as a new area of development with potential future strategic priority. They have launched Wellcome Open Research as a publishing platform for a range of research outputs. This is based on the F1000 platform. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have launched their own publishing platform and the AMRC Open Research is a publishing platform funded by AMRC member charities, again powered by F1000.

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders including UK Research and Innovation, Science Foundation Ireland, The Wellcome Trust, World Health Organisation and the European Research Council.

Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms. The detailed implementation decisions of individual funding agenices, such as UKRI, will be key in determining the likely impact of Plan S on UK researchers.

Funders' Open Research Policies

There are a number of ways in which you can search for funder policies.  Although these sources are a useful means of identifying policies and are regularly maintained, authors are advised to read through the full policy terms on their funder or institution’s website.

• ROARMAP

  The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) is a directory that has information about organisations (including funders) that have open access requirements. ROAR is hosted  at the University of Southampton, UK. More than 4000 institutional and cross-institutional repositories have been registered in ROAR. The database can be searched by country, policymaker type, and policy details, such as the time period in which research outputs must be shared or if a specific license is required. It also allows authors to search for funders and institutions with policies that provide funding for open publishing.

• SHERPA/JULIET

  SHERPA Juliet is a searchable database of information concerning funders' policies and their requirements on open access, publication and data archiving.

Publishing via the Gold route:  Can I get funding support for APCs?

The only dedicated funds for APCs at Ulster is in the form of the UKRI block grant, there is no central provision for APCs other than for articles from UKRI funding. However, there are two additional options for reducing the cost of OA publishing: obtaining costs from Research Funders and Publishers deals.

• UKRI Block Grant for Open Access Publishing

  Ulster University receives a Block Grant from UKRI to help fund costs of compliance with their open access policy: our current allocation is not sufficient to cover all requests for APCs. This fund pays for articles that are funder-compliant, i.e. have a CC BY licence (also known as an attribution licence) and can be made available immediately online and deposited in other repositories. Authors must include funding information in the acknowledgement section of the paper. If you have a grant from one of the UKRI research councils and are interested in applying to this fund, please contact the Library open access team at open.access@library.ulster.ac.uk.

• Research Funders' support for APCs

  Most research funding organizations have adopted policies that make open access mandatory for grantees (see also Plan S). A number of these funders allow OA publication costs (i.e. APCs) to be applied for on grants, so authors should have a plan for where and when to publish and include costs at the application stage.

  Some of Ulster’s funders that allow APCs as permissible costs are given in the table below. UKRI funders are not included as given the UKRI Block Grant to the university, APCs are not permissible costs to UKRI funders.

  For a funder not listed, check SHERPA/JULIET for information. SHERPA/JULIET is a searchable database of research funders who have registered open access requirements. The record will provide a summary of your funders' policy with links to further information online. Please note that if a funding body does not have any requirements registered with SHERPA no result will be shown. If no results are found try your funder's website.

  Funder	Open Access Publishing Support
  Alzheimer’s Research UK	Alzheimer’s Research UK is committed to cover the costs of APCs up to a maximum of £2,000 per research article and will consider it when these are included in the proposed budget of an application for funding. Alzheimer’s Research UK Open Access and Data Sharing Statement and Guidance
  Department of Health	Open Access fees may be supported by the original award or via NIHR Open Access Fund. https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/funder/943
  European Commission Horizon 2020	APCs are eligible for reimbursement during the duration of the project (as other costs defined in Article 6.2.D.3 of the Model Grant Agreement). As stated, the article must also be made accessible through a repository upon publication. The costs of 'gold' open access publications incurred once a project is completed cannot be refunded from that project's budget Guidelines to the Rules on Open Access
  Fight for Sight	The Research strategy states that the fund ‘covers direct costs of the research including dissemination costs (e.g. open access charges)’. http://www.fightforsight.org.uk/apply-for-funding/research-strategy/
  Leverhulme Trust	Open Access Publishing is a permissible cost and should be included either within the 25% associated costs allowable on Research Project Grants and Research Programme Grants or within the research expenses category for fellowships. However, open access charges should only be incurred during the period of a Leverhulme award (rather than being built into a budget but with anticipated expenditure after the research and award has concluded). https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/funding/frequently-asked-questions/associated-costsresearch-expenses
  National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)	It is expected that award holders will make provision from their funding award to cover the costs of publishing in an open access journal. https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/nihr-open-access-policy/12251#Advice_on_costs
  Wellcome Trust	Wellcome-funded researchers can access funds to cover open access publishing costs for research papers. https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/guidance/open-access-guidance/how-get-open-access-funding

• Publishers' Offsetting Deals

  Offset agreements are a compensation by a publisher to an institution for the extra money they are putting into the system through payment of APCs. Most large publishers have some sort of offset agreement for institutions in the UK which are negotiated by JISC.

  Several offsetting deals are now available to Ulster researchers who wish to publish Gold OA.  You will find the list of publishers as of June 2020 listed in the table below.  

  However this is a developing area, so please check the Library webpage Open Access: Publisher Agreements for new arrangements or agreements with additional publishers.  Offsetting deals are exploratory models in the shift from subscription to OA publishing and may change at short notice.

  For further details on specific journals and instructions on these agreements contact your subject librarian or email open.access@library.ulster.ac.uk for information.

  • Wiley
  • Taylor & Francis Open Select (hybrid) Journals. Medical titles are not currently included in the scheme.
  • Springer Open Choice Journals
  • Sage
  • Royal Society of Chemistry
  • Portland University Press
  • Oxford University Press
  • Cambridge University Press
  • Institute of Physics
  • American Institute of Physics
  • Association for Computing Machinery
  • American Chemical Society (ACS)