Open Access: what you need to know

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)

How can Open Access benefit researchers?

Open access brings real benefits to researchers:

1. Enhancing the visibility of your research as well as your research profile;
2. Increasing the number of citations for your paper;
3. Providing the public with access to publicly-funded research outputs;
4. Increasing the reach and impact of research;
5. Creating new opportunities for partnerships and collaborations;
6. Opening up vital research to those working in developing countries, often excluded from access be the cost of journal subscriptions.

REF Open Access policy

Building on the high degree of compliance with the open access policy for REF 2021, there will continue to be an open access requirement in REF 2029 specifically for journal articles and conference proceedings:

• The REF 2021 policy will continue to apply to journal articles and conference contributions with an ISSN published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025.
• The revised REF 2029 policy will apply to journal articles and conference contributions with an ISSN published between 1 January 2026 and 31 December 2028.
• As required in REF 2021, the full-text (Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM)) of journal articles and conference proceedings (with an ISSN) should be deposited in PURE immediately on acceptance and no later than 3 months of the first published date.

You can read  the full REF 2029 guidance on REF 2029 Open Access Policy.  You can also find a summary of REF2029 CKU (Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding) on Ulster University’s REF2029 website.

Rights, permissions and licensing

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.

Ulster University Rights Retention Policy for Scholarly Works

With the launch of the University’s Rights Retention Policy for Scholarly Works Policy on 2 February 2026, authors will retain the right to make a copy of their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) immediately open access through the institutional repository (PURE) under a CC BY licence (Creative Commons Attribution Licence), irrespective of embargo periods stipulated by publishers.  This will not only mean that authors’ articles are immediately available for access, thus extending the potential reach and impact of the research. It will also make it easier for authors to comply with the open access requirements of Research Excellence Framework (REF) and of research funders.  Full guidance and template wording for manuscript submissions is available on the Library Open Access website.

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:

• Identify trustworthy journals through the 'Think.Check.Submit' campaign.
• Verify spam invitations made by email, text message or telephone call to submit manuscripts or attend conferences.
• Check journal names and ISSN codes are real ones.  An ISSN is an unique identifier for a journal and can be checked  on the ISSN portal.
• Check that researcher profiles on institutional websites mention claimed editorship of journals.