How to publish journal articles through open access
Read and publish OA publishing deals
Read and publish deals subscribed to by the Library, allow you to access and read content, as well as publish through gold open access in return for a single subscription cost paid for by the University. For an updated list of the publishers and criteria, please see the RKEO Blog post. You do not need to apply through the University. Most of these deals will not cover gold/fully open access journals. For these you should apply to the Central APC fund.
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access journals)
Gold open access is often referred to as the ‘author pays’ model of publishing (rather than the traditional ‘reader pays’), but in actual fact there are many fully open journals that do not make a charge. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a listing of reputable open access journals that will let you know if an Article Processing Charge (APC) must be paid by the author. The University of Westminster Press is an example of one such diamond open access publisher.
Green open access
The item is published in the normal way and then a second copy, usually the accepted author manuscript version, is deposited (‘self-archived’) in an institutional or subject repository and made available on here after any embargo period agreed by the publisher has expired. This is known as ‘green open access’.
Green OA is the University’s preferred route to open access. Create an output record in the VRE and attach a copy of the accepted author manuscript for journal articles and book chapters. For journal articles, this should be done within 3 months of acceptance. The repository team will check publisher policies, applying any required embargo, before making the record live in WestminsterResearch.
There is a Simple Guide to Adding outputs and a short video available.
APC fund to pay Open Access charges
The University has a limited Article Processing Charge (APC) Application Fund to pay Open Access costs for journal articles. All applications are subject to the approval of the College Research Director and budget constraints, as the fund is very limited. The APC Fund’s primary aim is to enable academic freedom to publish in the context of ensuring wide readership and impact for research. If the most appropriate place to publish is a gold, fully open access journal, then the fund will enable this.
Is my article eligible to apply for APC funding?
Articles published in pure gold journals – journals where all articles are entirely free to read. They must be included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listing. The applicant must be the lead, or corresponding author and a member of University staff. The fund is not open to doctoral researchers (other than when they appear as a co-authors of a paper submitted by a qualifying staff member).
Further details and a link to the application form can be found on our APC Application Fund page.
It does not cover gold access to individual papers in hybrid journals (those that charge both a subscription to read and charge APCs to make individual articles open). You may still publish in these journals and for the vast majority we will be able to make the accepted author manuscript freely available in WestminsterResearch through Green Open Access.
As this fund is very limited, we will not pay for applications without support of your College Research Director, who helps inform us on the best use of the resources we have. Please do not commit the University to payment before an application to the Fund is successful.
If your article meets the above criteria you should log in to the application form using your gmail University email ([email protected] and normal password).
University of Westminster Press
The University of Westminster Press (UWP) is a non-profit open access publisher of peer reviewed books, journals and policy briefs. UWP is happy to provide informal advice on all aspects of the publishing process or Open Access publishing, whether you are publishing with UWP or elsewhere, especially for Early Career Researchers and first-time authors.
Does my funder have an open access requirement?
Some funding bodies will support their grant holders to deliver on open access policies by paying APCs. Where possible you should include anticipated open access charges in your grant application. Where an APC is paid, most funding bodies will expect the article to be made available under a specific Creative Commons licence, and failure to follow this requirement will result in the output being considered as non-compliant. Please email [email protected] if you have a query about the choice of Creative Commons licence required by your funding body.
It is always good practice to plan publications in the course of a grant, when costs may be covered. If you have received funding, you should acknowledge the funder in any publications that arise from it.
If your funder is not listed here, or you require further information, you may wish to check with them directly or refer to the Sherpa Juliet aggregate list of funder policies.
Long-form publications from 1 January 2024
Monographs, book chapters and edited collections published on or after 1 January 2024 will need to be openly accessible within 12 months of publication.
If you are planning to publish a publication in-scope of UKRI’s open access policy (books, chapters, edited collections and journal articles) and expect to pay for open access, you should contact the Repository & Open Access Manager [email protected] as early as possible.
We can apply to UKRI for funding of up to £10,000 (incl. VAT) for book processing charges (BPCs), or £1000 per chapter.
Further information can be found in the UKRI Open Access Policy: Funding now available for open access costs for monographs, chapters and edited collections blogpost.
New Open Access policy – Articles submitted for publication from 1 April 2022
The updated UKRI Open Access policy came into force on 1 April 2022 for peer-reviewed journal articles.
Peer-reviewed research articles submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022 will need to be openly accessible from the point of publication. There are two routes to compliance:
- Gold route: final published version available openly on the publisher’s website
- Green route: accepted version available in a repository (WestminsterResearch – add through VRE) without embargo
The University receives a block grant from UKRI to cover APC charges for articles resulting from research they have funded. You must apply to the University's central APC Fund if you require funding for gold open access.
Further information is available in the UKRI New Open Access Policy blogpost.
Use the Article Processing Charge (APC) Application Fund Process form to apply for funding.
Previous policy – Articles submitted for publication before 1 April 2022
If funded by UKRI or any of its funding councils, Research England or Innovate UK all peer-reviewed research and review articles published in academic journals or conference proceedings should be made Open Access. The Research Councils' preference is for immediate unrestricted open access ('Gold'), however, they support a mixed approach to Open Access, and the decision on which route to follow remains at the discretion of the researchers and their research organisations. Where publishers offer a Gold Route, but the researcher chooses green, papers should be published in a journal with a maximum embargo of six months for STEM funded disciplines, or 12 months in the arts, humanities and social sciences funded research. Embargoes are no longer permitted for articles published from April 2022 onwards.
Journal articles
All original, peer-reviewed research articles that are supported in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust must be:
made freely available through PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC by the official final publication date
and
published under a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY), unless Wellcome has agreed, as an exception, to allow publication under a CC BY-ND licence.
Grantholders should read the Complying with the Wellcome open access policy page for detailed practical guidance on how to comply.
Monographs and book chapters
All original scholarly monographs and book chapters authored or co-authored by Wellcome grantholders as part of their grant-funded research, must be:
made freely available through NCBI Bookshelf PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC as soon as possible and no later than within 6 months of the official final publication date
and
be published under a Creative Commons licence where a fee has been paid to the publisher to make the work open access. Our preference is for a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY), however, researchers may choose to publish their work under any of the Creative Commons licences including non-commercial and non-derivative licences (CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND).
Funding is available to cover publishers' open access monograph and book chapter processing charges.
The British Academy does not have an Open Access policy, and grants cannot be used to pay publication charges.
Deposit in a repository the final accepted manuscript (or published version if permitted) of journal articles at the latest upon publication; deposit even if using the ‘gold’ (OA publishing) route. This should be within 6 months of publication (12 months for Humanities & Social Science).
Open access costs should be paid from your grant. Research the options for open access publishing when preparing dissemination plan, and budget for potential publishing charges in your grant application (some good publication budget advice on OpenAire). Be realistic. Don’t underestimate the number of articles or costs.
The European Research Council (ERC) additionally requires all peer-reviewed publications supported by ERC funding to be deposited in a repository. For ERC grants, the open access mandate includes monographs, chapters, edited volumes etc. as well as articles. See the ERC Open Research Guidelines.
Costs are eligible for reimbursement during the duration of the project as part of the overall project budget.
As an ERC grant holder funded under a Horizon Europe ERC Work Programme, you have to ensure open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to the results of your ERC-funded project.
Leverhulme Trust encourages Open Access Publishing. However, the Trust Board has resolved to make no stipulations regarding mandatory archiving or open access publication for Leverhulme grant holders. Costs for open access publication are considered a permissible expense if incurred during the life of the grant. The cost of 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 they should only be incurred during the period of a Leverhulme award.
Minimum requirement is that you must produce at least one report which is freely and publicly available and which serves as a concise and accessible account of your entire project, drawing out key findings and recommendations. This is referred to as your Main Public Output, it must be published by your organisation and disseminated before your grant end date and in accordance with the agreed activity and timelines set out in your Communications plan.
No policy for open access archiving or publishing.
Contact
Please contact [email protected] for more information on Open Access, or [email protected] for more information on research funding.
Creative Commons licences
There is a LibGuide from the Library, Copyright for Researchers which contains a section on Creative Commons licenses.
Creative Commons licences are a type of open licence that you can apply to your work to indicate you are happy to share the work under certain conditions.
They are sometimes described as an alternative to copyright, however Creative Commons does not mean you give up the copyright in your work, or your right to be acknowledged as the creator of a work.
Typically Creative Commons licences are added to online content, and search engines are increasingly able to identify content that has been shared under these licences because in addition to the legal document, there is a machine readable licence.
There are six different licence types, with the most permissive being the CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) License and most restrictive being the CC-BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives) licence. The licences allow you to specify if you wish your work to be used for commercial purposes and if you require the person re-using your work to share it under the same licence, or if you are happy with derivative works being created from your work.
It is relatively simple to add a Creative Commons Licence to your work. The first step is to visit the Creative Commons website and choose the licence that best suits your needs. The instructions on screen make this relatively straightforward to choose between the six licences types.
There is a blog post giving guidance specifically on How to license your research data is also available.
How to make practice research open
At Westminster work has begun to better capture and share non-traditional research outputs. You can record details of non-text based output types in the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) as well as creating collections of work into wider portfolios of research. Help on how to do this is available.