If you are publishing in journals this will be of interest...
The university has a new
Open Access Policy. In essence this states that, "The university supports the principle of making publically funded and peer‐reviewed research available via open access." This reflects HEFCE's policy of making open access a requirement for submission to the next Research Excellence Framework - for journal articles. You can read more about HEFCE's stance
here, along with details about the work they are doing in relation to monographs.
Open Access can either be through the 'gold' or 'green' routes:
Gold - is where the research is made available through publishing with an open access journal OR through paying a subscription-based journal to publish the article available on an open-access basis. (Limited funds are available to pay the Article Processing Charge (APC)
if that applies to the journal you are submitting to. See the link
below for the application form.)
Green - is where the research is made available via a repository (e.g. WestminsterResearch), where this is allowed by the journal that has accepted your work. In this model the publisher sometimes imposes an embargo (i.e. you have to wait for a period before you have the right to include your research on WestminsterResearch), but some journals do allow immediate inclusion on an institutional respository.
More information is available about how this will work at Westminster on the
WestminsterResearch pages (use the links in the grey sub-menu to navigate). You should look particularly at the 'Information for our authors and open access policy' section, which gives links to two useful resources - SHERPA/JULIET and SHERPA/ROMEO.
These resources have been around for an age and give you a quick reference to what the policies of funders are in relation to open access (SHERPA/JULIET) and what the policies of individual journals are (SHERPA/ROMEO). SHERPA/ROMEO will show what a journals policies are in relation to:
- paid open access
- the deposit to an institutional repository of: author's pre-prints (i.e. pre-refereed and not compliant with the HEFCE policy), author's post-prints (as published minus publisher formatting), and the publisher version/PDF.
This new policy will give impetus to the use of WestminsterResearch as not just a record of published work, but as a repository of it; and in many cases you will already have the right to deposit the full-text of articles you have authored onto WestminsterResearch.
If you would like to discuss any of this with me, please get in touch. I have been briefed, and I am also attending an update session next week where I could raise any issues that you wish to raise.
Further Reading
See my post on
Open Access Search Tools
