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Scholarly Communications

UEL

The University of East London is committed to and supports open access to its research outputs.

Open access is free and permanent access to the outputs of scholarly research. There is a worldwide move towards open access, with benefits for researchers, universities and wider society. UEL supports this initiative and recognises the importance of open access in increasing the visibility and impact of its research. This policy is aligned with and supports the Research Excellence Framework Policy for Open Access, and is aligned with the Open Access requirements of research funding bodies.

Outputs created by UEL staff will therefore be made available on an open access basis wherever possible.

 

This policy was adopted by the Research & Knowledge Exchange Committee on 19th April 2018.

  

REF

We are awaiting guidance for the REF 2029 Open Access policy for outputs, and currently advise that any journal article or conference paper from 1 January 2021 to be submitted to the next Research Excellence Framework follows the REF 2021 Open Access Policy Guidance.

Open Access and REF2021:

There is an Open Access policy in effect for publications to be submitted to the next Research Excellence Framework.

The policy applies to journal articles and conference proceedings published with an ISSN: these need to be added to the UEL Research Repository within 3 months of acceptance for publication.

What you need to do:

Upon acceptance: send details of the publication, the date of acceptance, and a copy of the Accepted Manuscript to repository@uel.ac.uk

We will check for all copyright or publisher requirements, including embargoes, and will upload to the UEL Research Repository for you in accordance with all relevant conditions.

There are a few exceptions to this policy, but to be sure of your publication's eligibility for the REF it is important you send the details and manuscript within 3 months of acceptance.

UKRI OA Policy for articles

UKRI OA Policy (from 01 April 2022)

UKRI’s OA policy applies to in-scope journal articles and conference papers that acknowledge UKRI funding and are submitted for publication from 01 April 2022 (and monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1 January 2024).

When submitting UKRI funded journal articles or conference proceedings for publication from 1 April 2022, authors must:

  • make sure that their paper can be made available immediately Open Access under a CC BY licence.

  • include a Data Access Statement. 

There are two routes to UKRI OA policy compliance

Route 1: 

Publish in an open access journal or publishing platform, with a CC BY licence​. This includes publishing in a journal covered by a UKRI-compliant transitional agreement. You can check journal compliance using the Journal Checker Tool.

(UEL researchers can publish their review and primary research articles open access with no charge in Elsevier, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis  journals that are part of our "read & publish" agreements with these publishers.) 

Route 2:

Publish in a subscription journal and deposit the accepted manuscript in a subject or institutional repository with a CC BY licence and with no embargo from the date of first online publication. To publish using route two, on submission manuscripts it is advisable to include the following licensing text: 

"For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising". 

Licence Exceptions

Use the following statement on submissions from 1st April 2022, but only if you have negotiated a licence exception with UKRI before submitting, or if you are using the Open Government Licence.

  • Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.’   

  • Open Government Licence: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied an Open Government Licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.’ 

The licensing text asserts author copyright to any arising accepted manuscript (following peer review and relevant editorial processes), including the application of a CC BY licence to that accepted manuscript when deposited in a repository. 

Third-Party Copyright Content 

Where an output includes third party copyright content, researchers do not need to seek permission for this content to be made available under a CC BY licence – UKRI specifies third party copyright content is not subject to its OA requirements.  

Data Access Statement

Regardless of the route chosen, in-scope articles must include a Data Access Statement. The Data Access Statement lets readers know where the underlying research materials associated with a paper are available, and how the research materials can be accessed. If applicable and appropriate, the statement can include links to the dataset.

The data referred to in a Data Access Statement does not have to be openly available, and if there is no associated data, this must be stated in the data access statement. 

UKRI OA Policy for Long-Form Publications

UKRI Open Access Policy for Long-Form Publications (from 01 January 2024)

UKRI's OA policy now applies to in-scope long-form publications that acknowledge UKRI funding, in whole or in part, from UKRI or any of its councils (see UKRI’s guidance on acknowledging your funding). This policy applies to works submitted for publication on or after 1 January 2024.

 

Items in scope of this policy are:

  • monographs,

  • book chapters, 

  • edited collections.

Routes to UKRI OA Compliance:

 

  • Deposit the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in our institutional repository to be made available under a Creative Commons licence, or other licence permitted by UKRI, within 12 months of publication.

 

  • or publish the final 'Version of Record' Open Access on the publisher’s website or a publication platform under a Creative Commons license or another licence permitted by UKRI. Please note that a book or chapter processing charge may apply.

 

UKRI do not require a rights retention statement on submitted or accepted manuscripts for long-form publications.

 

When considering a publisher, inform them that your publication is in scope of the UKRI Open Access policy and check if they can offer a compliant open access route. If your preferred publisher does not have an open access option, you must consider other publishers before applying for an exemption.

 

For more information, please refer to the UKRI guidance "Making your monograph, book chapter, or edited collection open access – UKRI." If you need further guidance before submitting to the publisher, please contact us.

 

Exemptions

UKRI recognises that exemptions may apply in circumstances where meeting open access requirements for long-form publications is not possible. For more information please refer to the UKRI OA Policy.

Funding

From 31 October 2023, it is no longer permitted to include publication costs for long-form publications (in scope of the Open Access policy) in funding applications. UKRI has introduced a two-stage process to apply for long-form publication funding. Applications must be submitted by the researcher’s organisation, on behalf of researchers.

Next steps:

If you are planning to publish an output in-scope of UKRI’s Long-Form Open Access policy and expect to pay for open access, before submission to a publisher please refer to the UKRI guidance and then contact the Scholarly Communications team at: repository@uel.ac.uk. This will help the team to work with you to select a route to open access that meets the funder's requirements.

Wellcome

Wellcome's Open Access policy states that funded, in part or whole, original research publications must:

Researchers should ensure they have retained sufficient rights over their research outputs to comply with the policy requirements. For further information on Wellcome's Rights Retention requirements please read Wellcome's 'complying with our open access policy page'.

*Please refer to compliance for monographs and book chapters for long-form publication exceptions.

Compliance for Research Articles

In order to comply with Wellcome's Open Access policy, a version of the funded research article needs to be available within Europe PMC under a CC BY license. This can either be:

  1. The Version of Record (VoR), or

  2. The Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM).

If authors are unable to make either of these versions open access, then you may post a preprint under a CC BY licence.

Requirements for Funding

  • When publishing in a fully open access journal or platform, Wellcome are willing to fund reasonable article processing charges (APCs) if the journal:

a) Is indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and

b) Has an agreement with the National Library of Medicine to deposit the VoR in PMC, and allow that content to be shared with Europe PMC.

Please note that Wellcome will not fund any APCs in journals that are not fully open access, or don't have transitional journal status. However, authors may be able to make articles open access through institutional agreements with publishers.

To apply for Wellcome Open Access funding, follow the guidance on Wellcome's Open Access Funding page for authors at organisations not in receipt of open access block grant funding.

UEL's staff and researchers are eligible to publish their original research articles open access with no charge through UEL's current transitional agreements. Please refer to our transitional agreements page for more information.

Licence Exceptions

All Wellcome-funded original research is required to be published under a CC BY licence.

However, in specific circumstances authors can ask for an exception to publish under a CC BY-ND licence instead.

To apply for the exception, authors will need to complete a CC BY-ND exception form, and have the request approved before the research paper is submitted for publication.

Compliance for Monographs and Book Chapters

Applies to all original scholarly monographs and book chapters. Wellcome will make funds available for the payment of publishers' open access monograph and book chapter processing charges (BPCs).

To apply for Wellcome Open Access funding, follow the guidance on Wellcome's Open Access Funding page.

The policy does NOT apply to:

- textbooks,

- 'trade' books,

- general reference works,

- works of fiction,

- collections edited, but not authored, by grantholders.

  • Authors must make their scholarly monograph or book chapter available from the National Center for Biotechnology (NCBI) Bookshelf and Europe PMC.

  • It must be made available within six months of the publisher's official date of final publication. 

  • Where there is a BPC, works must be made available without embargo, and licensed to support their re-use.

    • CC BY is strongly preferred,

    • But will accept other CC licences, such as CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND.

  • OA Monographs and book chapters will be freely available in both html and PDF format via repositories, as well as in epub format from OAPEN and the Directory of Open Access Books.

Preprints

Authors are strongly encouraged to post preprints of their work under a CC BY licence to facilitate the dissemination of results and, at times, open access compliance.

Wellcome requires the posting of preprints when there is a significant public health benefit to preprints being shared widely and rapidly, such as a disease outbreak.

Third-Party Copyright Content

Permission to use the image should be asked as usual, and it's important to inform the owner of the image that the publication will be open access. Although, the choice of how the image is licensed is up to the owner's discretion.

Ideally, the image will be published under the same licence as the publication, but this is not essential as the image can be licensed separately.

Contact:

For additional guidance on the Wellcome Open Access policy please contact: openaccess@wellcome.org

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