University open access policies
Below, you can find details of policies that apply to Open Research at the University, including the institutional open access policy, policy for managing centrally administered open access funds, eligibility criteria for accessing central open access funds and publisher Transformative Agreements and the Open Research Exeter (ORE) policy. Click each heading to find out more. Policies relating to Research Data Management and open data can be found on this page.
Institutional open access policy
The University of Exeter’s new Open Access Policy (April 2022) replaces the open access elements of the Open Access Research and Research Data Management Policy. The research data management part still applies, until such time as a new University Research Data Management Policy is published. The University now supports all open access routes equally (green, gold and diamond) rather than green being the preferred route. The policy does not bring any significant change for researchers as it still follows the current REF 2021 open access policy requirements.
The new Open Access Policy in summary:
- peer-reviewed journal articles (including reviews and conference papers) that are accepted for publication in a journal, conference proceedings (with an ISSN) or publishing platform must be uploaded via Symplectic to ORE upon, or at the very latest within three months of, acceptance for publication
- outputs published open access with a Creative Commons licence should still be uploaded to ORE
- authors of other output types such as monographs or book chapters are encouraged to pursue open access publication, where possible and practical
- researchers must comply with their funder open access policy (if applicable)
- funds are available to publish in open access venues (subject to availability); contact the Open Research team upon submission to apply
- researchers are encouraged to make use of Transformative Agreements that the Library has signed with publishers, which enable open access publishing without publishing fees as it has already been paid for
- where funds are available to pay for open access from the funder of research e.g. European Research Council, Horizon 2020, researchers are encouraged to recoup these costs
Policy for managing central open access funds
The University of Exeter policy for managing central open access funds
- applies from 01 January 2021
- applies to centrally administered open access funds: UKRI, Wellcome Trust, British Heart Foundation and Institutional open access fund
- aligns our strategy with Plan S and Wellcome Trust open access policy 2021
Funds will be prioritised to support:
- OA publishing fees where these are essential to publication e.g. fully open access journals
- Transformative Agreements with publishers
- APCs in hybrid journals only when payment is required for funder compliance
For more details, view the Central open access funds policy and FAQ.
Eligibility criteria: open access funds and publisher agreements
Revised eligibility criteria for accessing the University's central open access funds and publisher Transformative Agreements have been approved by the Research and Impact Executive Committee (REIC) and will apply to requests received from 1st May 2023. From this date, researchers that can access these are as follows:
- currently employed members of staff
- students of the University (PGR, PGT and UG) during their course and for 2 (STEM) or 3 (HASS) years afterwards, when publishing research that was conducted at the University
- staff that left / retired from the University between 1st August 2020 and the next REF
- clinicians (with University of Exeter Associate status)
- funded through the Council for At Risk Academics (and with University of Exeter Associate status)
Affiliation will be verified at the point of approving an open access request, which is usually at submission to a full open access journal and upon acceptance to a "hybrid" one.
Existing criteria for accessing the central funds are maintained (see central open access funds policy above). When publishing through Transformative Agreements, it must always be the corresponding author that meets the affiliation criteria, as defined in the publisher licence for the agreement. When using Exeter's central funds or publisher agreements, a University of Exeter affiliation must be included on the paper.
ORE policy
This document is the policy for Open Research Exeter (ORE), the institutional repository of the University of Exeter: ORE policy.
University of Exeter Rights Retention Policy
The University of Exeter Rights Retention policy applies to:
- authors and co-authors who are Staff or Postgraduate Research Students (PGRs) at the University of Exeter
- journal articles or conference proceedings with an ISSN that are authored or co-authored whilst affiliated with University of Exeter
- first submitted for publication from 1st January 2024
- The University waives ownership of copyright of and acknowledges that members of staff own the copyright to, scholarly works they create, such as academic journal articles, text books, conference papers and related presentations/aide memoires for personal use, see the University Intellectual Property (IP) policy.
- In exchange for waiving ownership of copyright, authors grant the University a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to make manuscripts of their scholarly articles publicly available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence or a similar licence terms
- Authors apply a CC-BY licence to the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) upon submission, giving precedence over any subsequent publisher's licensing agreement.
- Include the following wording in all article submissions, in the manuscript and any covering letter: “For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission"
- An alternative statement with the same intended outcome can be used if required by specific funders.
- Inform your co-authors about the University's Rights Retention policy and agree on a licence before submission.
- Whilst CC-BY is strongly encouraged, the University recognizes the need for different licences based on funder requirements, such as CC BY NC/ND or the Open Government Licence for research subject to Crown copyright.
- After acceptance, upload the accepted manuscript (containing the Rights Retention wording above) via Symplectic to ORE. If you are also publishing open access on the publisher website, you may wait and upload the final published PDF, as soon as possible after publication.