Find out how to make your research outputs open access.
Welcome to the Open Access web pages. These pages introduce Open Access to research outputs, answer questions about the topic and provides guidance on how to make your research outputs openly accessible.
Check out our Open Research web pages for a broader discussion of open research practices from pre-registering your study to open source code and open data.
Open Access is about sharing research freely and openly for the benefit of the public, researchers and universities. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the copyright-holder. Open Access is entirely compatible with peer review, and all the major Open Access initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature highlight its importance. Open Access is about removing barriers; price barriers (subscriptions, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees) and permission barriers (most copyright and licensing restrictions).
(Suber, 2004, CCBY 3.0 US)
Open access brings real benefits to researchers:
Guidance on the Open Access Policy for the next REF has not yet been published. In the interim period, the REF2021 OA Policy remains applicable.
The REF Open Access policy requires the full-text of journal articles and published, peer-reviewed conference proceedings (with an ISSN) be deposited in an open access repository within 3 months of date of acceptance. The version of the publication required is the Author’s Accepted Manuscript.
There are limited exceptions of course, but a non-Open Access compliant paper means a non REF-eligible paper.
The quick link for Researchers and Editors below will provide you with a flowchart of the essential steps within PURE for REF Open Access compliance. You will also find 'step by step' guides and videos for depositors and editors. For other pertinent resources, look into the Open Access Resources below.
Quick link: PURE Depositors & Editors
When publishing in Open Access journals, authors (or institutions) often retain the copyright of their manuscripts and the journal applies a Creative Commons licence (typically CC BY). The CC BY licence allows for the distribution, remixing, tweaking, and building upon the licensed work, including for commercial purposes, as long as the original author is credited (Wild and Wilson 2013). It is the most liberal of the six CC licences in comparison with, for example, CC BY-ND (no derivatives, no modifications) and CC BY-NC (no commercial use).
The 'Guide to Creative Commons for Scholarly Publications and Educational Resources' seeks to provide guidance on choosing the right licence by addressing several frequently asked questions and common concerns expressed by researchers about the use of Creative Commons licenses.
Resources on licensing your research data can be found on the Licensing and Copyright page of Ulster's Open Research website.
Predatory journals are a global threat.
They accept articles for publication — along with authors’ fees — without performing promised quality checks for issues such as plagiarism or ethical approval.
They are driven by self-interest, usually financial, at the expense of scholarship and are characterised by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.
COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) have published a Predatory Publishing discussion document (https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.3.6) which outlines useful warning signs of fake journals.
Amongst COPE's advice to authors are the following suggested actions:
A step by step guide for depositing in PURE to ensure your research outputs are REF open access compliant.
Are you publishing UKRI funded research? Information on critical policy changes and guidance on compliance.
Publishing Open Access: Can I get funding support for APCs?
