Routes to open access

You can make your work open access at different points in the publishing process.

Pre-printing

Make the pre-peer-reviewed version open access on a preprint server, free of charge. Pre-printing makes your research findings quickly available and registers your discovery. Funders including The Wellcome Trust, UKRI and NIHR encourage researchers to share preprints, and may mandate this during public health emergencies. If you plan to submit to a journal, check the publisher policy before posting your preprint, to make sure they allow submissions of work that has already been shared as a preprint. 

Self-archiving

Make your work open access by uploading the accepted manuscript to an institutional or subject repository (self-archiving or green open access), without paying publishing fees. If your paper is covered by Rights Retention, you can make the accepted manuscript version immediately open access under a Creative Commons licence. Upload via Symplectic to ORE.

Publish open access on the publisher website

When you publish open access on the publisher website, your final full text will be freely available immediately upon online publication under a Creative Commons licence. This may require payment of an open access publishing fee; diamond open access venues do not charge fees to read or publish.

Open access advice for academics

Professor Sabina Leonelli gives advice to academics considering making work open access. 'Green' open access (self-archiving) is available to all researchers and involves making the accepted manuscript open access in an institutional or subject repository. This is compliant with University policy, REF 2021 and many research funders. Some researchers may also have access to funding to pay for open access.

Green and Gold open access

An explanation of the two main routes to open access. 'Green' open access (self-archiving): making your accepted manuscript open access in a repository, 'Gold' open access: paying to publish the final version as open access on the publisher website. Other options also exist.