What is open access publishing - test
Open access publishing means research is made available for anyone to read for free.
Benefits of open access publishing
The benefits of publishing your research open access include:
- Contributing to advancing knowledge and understanding faster, as other researchers can build on your work.
- Getting more visibility, which helps to build or enhance your research profile more quickly.
- Allowing practitioners to access and use the results of your research – regardless of where they are or of their affiliation to a wealthy academic institution.
- Demonstrating good open access practices helps us secure more funding from the UK government and funders who have their own open access policies.
Open access publishing and Oxford University
At Oxford, our goal is for all research outputs to be published open access. This is part of Oxford University’s open research framework, encouraging openness, transparency and collaboration in research.
In some cases, you must publish open access:
- If you are completing a DPhil, MLitt, MSc by Research or DClinPsych at Oxford University, you must deposit your final thesis open access in the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) to complete your degree.
- If your research is funded, your funder may require you to publish outputs from your research open access.
- For your output to be counted towards the REF (Research Excellence Framework), a government evaluation of research excellence which results in funding for the University, you must make it open access.
Basic steps to publishing open access
It is best to think about open access publishing early in your research writing. The basic steps to publishing open access are:
- Choose where you want to publish and be open from the start: check funder requirements and where you can publish based on your funding status.
- Be aware of the licence your work needs to be published under to meet funder or publisher requirements.
- Submit your manuscript.
- Once it is accepted, deposit your author accepted manuscript in ORA.
If you are funded, there may be additional steps depending on your funder's policy.
Choosing your open access publishing route
There are three key open access routes.
Diamond open access refers to open access journals which do not charge a fee for authors, instead making all their research free to read and free to publish. These are commonly supported by libraries and scholarly societies.
You can use this route for journals but also, in some cases, for books and book chapters.
You can find a list of these journals by searching the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and filtering your search to show journals without fees.
Green open access – otherwise known as “self-archiving” – is when the author accepted manuscript (an earlier draft of the work with peer review changes but without publisher formatting, known as the AAM) is uploaded to a research repository and made available there.
The Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) is our institutional repository where research can be uploaded.
You can use this route to publish any research output including a journal article, book chapter, thesis or dataset.
Gold open access means the final published version of your research is made open access on the publisher's website in exchange for a fee.
‘Gold’ indicates that a fee is involved, not that this is a preferred publishing method.
In some instances, the University has already paid for the fee through a read and publish deal, or the fee can be paid for by your funder (using allowances known as 'block grants').
In some journals, the author can pay a fee for an article to be open access, but the rest of the journal remains subscription-only. These are called hybrid journals.
You can use this route for journals but also, in some cases, for books and book chapters.
Even if you have chosen to publish your work via ‘gold’ or ‘diamond’ open access, we encourage all researchers to deposit your author accepted manuscript on ORA as well. This ensures that your research will be made available in perpetuity.
Help and support
The Open Scholarship Support team in the Bodleian Libraries can help you understand the process and your options for publishing open access.
Contact: openaccess@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Training
If you would like to learn more about open access publishing or open scholarship practices, we offer training opportunities throughout the academic year.
