Make my work open access

The gold option allows open access to the published paper via the journal's own website at the time of online publication. This either involves a one-off charge (an article-processing charge), or taking advantage of one of the deals listed below.

Please note that there is no central fund to support article processing charges (APCs).

Publisher-specific deals on gold open access

The agreements below have been negotiated through our national negotiating body JISC. Inclusion on this list does not necessarily constitute a recommendation by UWE to submit articles to these publishers. This area involves complicated and evolving issues. Discussion on this topic can be found on the library research support blog.

To take advantage of these deals, you must:

• Be the corresponding author
• Identify UWE Bristol as your affiliated institution (usually by using your UWE Bristol e-mail address) when submitting your journal article
• Have carried out the research at UWE Bristol, or with strong UWE Bristol involvement.

For a fully up-to-date list of all current deals please see our Open Access reading list, or contact the Library Research team for more information.

• American Chemical Society (ACS) - articles can be made open access for free.
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) - most articles can be made open access for free .
• BMJ - authors funded by UKRI, Wellcome and Medical Charities only can make some articles in the BMJ standard collection open access for free.
• Cambridge University Press (CUP) - most articles can be made open access for free.
• Elsevier - many articles (not all journal titles) can be made open access for free. A list of eligible journals can be found on the Elsevier/JISC agreement webpages. 15% discount on fully open access journals for authors with funding.
• Frontiers - have a prepayment deal, which includes a 10% discount, available to UKRI funded authors.
• Emerald - please do not select the open access option if publishing with Emerald. Instead, add your article to the UWE Bristol Research Repository and we can add a CC-BY licence to the author accepted manuscript with no embargo.
• MDPI - provide a 20% discount on APCs where no other discount has been applied.
• Oxford University Press (OUP) - articles can be made open access for free.
• Royal Society - membership provides a 25% discount on APCs.
• Sage - many articles (not all journal titles), listed in the SAGE Choice Scheme, can be made open access for free. 20% discount on fully open access journals for authors with funding.
• Springer - many articles (not all journal titles), as linked to from Springer Open Choice, can be made open access for free. 15% discount on fully open access journals for authors with funding.
• Taylor & Francis - most articles can be made open access for free.
• Wiley - most articles can be made open access.

The details of these APC payment deals vary from publisher to publisher. A list of open access journals you can publish in for free is available on the staff intranet open access publishing guide (staff log in required). Alternatively, please contact the Library Research team for a copy, or for more information. If none of these deals are suitable, you may be able to apply for funding if you are a Research Council (UKRI) grant holder, or are a member of CATE.

Apply for funding

Before submitting a journal article or conference paper for publication, ensure funds are available, either from your grant, your college or the library if you are RCUK funded.

If you are a Research Council (UKRI) grant holder, or are a member of CATE, you can apply for funding by completing the APC payment application form (DOC). Applications to all funds should be made by the corresponding UWE Bristol author prior to submission of the article.

The policy for UKRI block grant applications:

Please contact lib.rke@uwe.ac.uk for advice on how to proceed before submission.

There is a limited amount of funding available for articles resulting from UKRI-funded projects. Funds are usually only available for UKRI-funded publications which meet the following criteria:

1. The article is to be published in a pure Gold Open Access journal (i.e. the journal does not charge a subscription fee and is freely available online to all) and is listed in the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals).

OR

2. The article is to be published in a JISC approved transformative journal which UWE Bristol does not have an agreement with and therefore an APC is payable. Please contact lib.rke@uwe.ac.uk before submission to check compliance with UKRI policy.

If you wish to make your work fully open access, please complete the application form and email lib.rke@uwe.ac.uk.

The policy for the CATE open-access fund

An application should be made by the corresponding UWE Bristol author prior to submission of the article. Having an article accepted for publication in an open-access journal is not sufficient reason that the APC should be paid. Authors will need to supply a copy of their article for review. Final judgement of applications will be made by the Associate Dean and Director of Research using the following criteria:

• Is the article a high quality contribution to knowledge?
• Is there a potential UWE Bristol impact case study to which the availability of knowledge in the article could contribute?
• Is there a significant likelihood that timely availability of the article in open-access form could help advance towards and realise (further) impact?

Full details of the scheme are available to download: CATE open access APC scheme criteria (PDF).

The green option allows you to publish the version of the research paper that was accepted for publication, via the UWE Bristol Research Repository, either immediately or after a specified embargo period.

Unless you have funding from UKRI, or are taking advantage of one of the publisher-specific deals, you are encouraged to choose the green open-access option as there is no central fund to support article-processing charges.

The green route also facilitates compliance with Research England's policy for REF 2021.

See the UWE Bristol Research Repository for more information on how to deposit your research.

• Rights Retention (RR) allows authors to retain the rights to their own work (for example a journal article), rather than transferring the copyright to the publisher, as traditionally happens in academic publishing.
• Publishers will maintain ownership of the final version but the author accepted manuscript (AAM) won’t be subject to a publisher embargo meaning it can be made immediately open access with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence . The author can share and re-use the AAM.
• Rights retention applies to all submitted articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN. Most authors’ papers will continue to be made OA via our existing read and publish publisher agreements and through the payment of APCs for eligible papers (where funding is available) in fully Gold OA journals.
• Rights Retention means that any other papers that can’t be made OA via either of the above routes can be made OA immediately via the UWE Research Repository (Green route). 
• An opt out is available for UWE Authors.
• Funding will still be needed to cover the costs of article processing charges (APC’s) in fully open access journals.

• Under the UWE Bristol Research Publications policy, each author grants the University a non‐exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide licence to make the author accepted manuscript (AAM) openly available on the UWE Bristol Research Repository, without embargo from the date of first publication and under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.
• UWE Bristol has written to over 100 of the journal publishers our authors most frequently publish with to assign a prior licence to the author accepted manuscript.  For these publishers we are legally able to deposit the accepted manuscript in a repository and make it available from first date of online publication, as publishers will have prior notice of our licence.
• This prior licence takes precedence over any subsequent licences of copyright. This is done automatically on submission. It doesn’t prevent the journal publishing the final version of the article but means the author retains the rights (keeps the copyright) to their accepted manuscript.
• A CC BY licence allows for the publication to be reused and/or built upon, as long as attribution is given to the creator.
• In the unlikely event that a publisher refuses to publish your paper because you are applying rights retention (making the accepted manuscript openly available in a research repository without embargo and under a CC BY licence) please contact the Open Research Services Team. If they accept the submission for publication this should not be dependent on the removal of rights retention.
• Please note:  Funding will still be needed to cover the costs of article processing charges (APC’s) in fully open access journals.

In most cases, nothing changes in terms of what you need to do apart from informing any co-authors that you wish to apply rights retention and publish with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence (see submission below).

You will continue to submit your author accepted manuscript to the UWE Research Repository.

The difference is that the AAM won’t be subject to a publisher embargo meaning that it can be made immediately open access.

Submission

• Inform any co-authors: Before submission, inform your co-authors of the UWE Bristol Research Publications Policy and the intention to publish the accepted manuscript open access under a CC BY licence (see suggested wording below).
• The corresponding author usually handles the submission process and any correspondence with the publisher. They need to ensure that all authors consent to the application of the rights retention policy and CC BY licence. Agreement between the authors via email to use rights retention is sufficient (see suggested wording below).
• As a non-corresponding author, you can still apply your institution’s rights retention policy, but it typically requires coordination with the corresponding author and agreement from all co-authors.

Dear co-author(s)
UWE Bristol’s Research Publications Policy incorporates rights retention. This means that I automatically provide the University with the rights to make the author accepted manuscript (AAM) of my journal articles and conference proceedings available under a Creative Commons (CC BY) 4.0 Licence without embargo.
Please see UWE Bristol Research Rights Retention guidance for more information and let me know if you think there is any reason why UWE cannot make the AAM of our work available on this basis.

Acceptance

• Continue to deposit your author accepted manuscripts into the UWE Bristol Research Repository via PIMS (Worktribe). Authors may also choose to deposit their work in subject repositories relevant to their discipline.
• If you are unable to apply rights retention you can opt out - please contact the Open Research Services Team when providing the electronic copy of the AAM. This will allow us to ensure that your article is not made available immediately and instead follows your publisher's standard requirements.  Please also check your funder and REF policies to ensure you meet their open access requirements.

Instances where you may need to opt out:

• Where an article contains significant third party content that cannot be licensed as CC BY and the redaction of this content would compromise the integrity of the article.
• Where co-authors are not in agreement to apply rights retention and publish open access on a repository using CC BY.
• In the unlikely event that a publisher refuses to publish your paper because you are applying rights retention. Please note that multiple institutions have already implemented rights retention and have reported minimal challenges to authors.  As the non-revokable CC BY license has been asserted before the publishers Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA), the CC BY license stands even if you sign the CTA.
• You are publishing with a smaller publisher who has not yet been informed of UWE Bristol’s Research Publications Policy. List of publishers informed of UWE rights retention. Where a publisher is not listed you can apply the following rights retention statement with your submission:

Rights Retention Statement wording: For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a ‘Creative Commons Attribution’ (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.

Publication

• The Open Research Services team will make the deposited copy publicly available via the UWE Bristol Research Repository on the date of first online publication (or the conference end date for conference proceedings) with a CC BY licence.

Ensures academic freedom

Rights Retention enables authors to submit manuscripts to their preferred subscription or hybrid journal whilst retaining rights over the work. This means they can comply with open access requirements as well as reuse their content e.g. in their teaching.

Easier to meet open access requirements

Rights Retention ensures research outputs comply with research funder (including UKRI), REF and UWE Bristol policies for immediate open access.

Increases opportunities for reaching a broader audience

research outputs are disseminated quickly to a wide audience (including outside academia). The CC BY licence enables sharing and reuse whilst ensuring the author is credited.

A more equitable approach

Rights Retention allows the author accepted manuscript (AAM) of an article or conference proceeding to be made openly available on a repository reducing the reliance on funding to cover article processing charges.