What do I need to do?

Upon submission

1. Include a Rights Retention statement in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in 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" *assuming there is no funder mandate for CC BY (only) another Creative Commons licence may be used instead.
2. If submitting to a full open access venue, identify how you will pay any publishing fees before submitting
3. Contact Open Research upon submission if you need to apply for funding to publish in a full open access journal.
4. Check if your publication venue charges page, colour, figure or excess length charges, choose "colour online only" free of charge, or ask the publisher to waive these fees
5. If you're submitting to a journal included in one of Exeter's publisher Transformative Agreement, check if the corresponding author meets the affiliation eligibility criteria, check if yours is an eligible article type and check the end date of the agreement.
6. If possible, use your institutional email address on the publisher forms, this helps the publisher offer you relevant publishing options based on your affiliation.
7. List your funding on the publisher forms, to help them offer you compliant publishing options.
8. Acknowledge funding in your publication using your funder's standard format, including funder name and grant references.
9. Include a data access statement.
10. Use your ORCiD ID.

Upon acceptance

1. If you are not publishing open access with a Creative Commons licence on the publisher website, upload your  accepted manuscript upon (within three months of) acceptance via Symplectic to ORE to comply with University policy and REF open access policy.
2. If the journal is included in a Transformative Agreement, it is an eligible article type, and you are the primary / submitting / responsible corresponding author, request open access in the publisher systems and select a Creative Commons licence; we will be notified to approve your request and there should be no publishing fees to pay.
3. Check your funder requirements and make sure you do what is needed to comply.
4. If you publish open access, select a licence. To make your work as open access possible, we recommend Creative Commons Attribution Licence CC BY this is required by UKRI, Wellcome Trust, NIHR, Horizon Europe. Other Creative Commons licences are available, additional letters after CC BY e.g. NC, ND, place additional restrictions on reuse.
5. If funded by a PubMed Central (PMC) funder, ensure a copy is deposited in PMC. If you publish OA, often the publisher will deposit for you; if they do not, upload in Europe PMC Plus.
6. Wellcome Trust funded monographs and book chapters must be uploaded to PubMed Bookshelf.
7. All peer-reviewed outputs arising from EU funding (including ERC, Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe) must be deposited in a repository, including when you publish open access with a Creative Commons licence on the publisher website.

Upon publication

1. Promote your work using social media.
2. If you published open access you can share a link to the final published version on the publisher website, confident that anybody that wishes to read and reuse your work can do so, without having to log in or pay.
3. If you did not publish open access, you can share a link to the copy you uploaded to ORE.
4. If your accepted manuscript in ORE is under a publisher-imposed embargo, others can request to read your work using "request a copy". Consider giving "blanket permissions" so we can share a copy every time it's requested without additional steps.

The University of Exeter open access policy applies to all research conducted at the University.

Please vist the University open access policies page for further details.

The REF open access policy applies to journal articles and conference contributions (with an ISSN). Upload your accepted manuscript version via Symplectic to ORE upon (within three months of) acceptance. When you publish open access with a Creative Commons licence on the publisher website, this complies with REF policy so you no longer need to upload to ORE. Visit the REF open access policy page for further details.

Peer-reviewed articles and conference papers

New UKRI open access policy applies to peer-reviewed original research articles, review articles and conference papers acknowledging funding from UKRI or any of its constituent councils, first submitted for publication from 1st April 2022. Visit the funder policies page for more information. If the output was first submitted before 1st April 2022, previous UKRI open access policy applies.

Monographs, long form outputs

New UKRI open access policy applies to long form outputs (monographs, chapters, edited collections) acknowledging funding from UKRI or any of its constituent councils, published on or after 1st January 2024. Visit the funder policies page for more information.

Peer-reviewed original research articles submitted from 1st January 2021

Wellcome Trust OA policy 2021 applies to peer-reviewed original research articles submitted for publication after 01 January 2021. In-scope research articles must be open access with the Creative Commons Attribution Licence CC BY (only) immediately upon publication, in PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC. Visit the funder policies page for more information.

Book chapters and monographs

Wellcome Trust funded book chapters and monographs must be deposited in PMC Bookshelf and made OA there not longer than 6 months after publication. Visit the funder policies page for more information.

If your research was externally funded, your funder may require you to make your work open access either in a repository, or by paying for open access, they may require this immediately or an embargo may be allowed. Check your funder open access policy for details, check the terms and conditions of your research grant to see if any open access obligations apply and whether publication fees are eligible costs. Visit the funder requirements page, for further details of funder open access policies.

If you have no external funding, you only need to ensure you meet the requirements of the University and REF open access policy.

To comply with both, upload your accepted manuscript upon (within three months of) acceptance via Symplectic to ORE.

Institutional open access fund are available to pay open access publishing fees for outputs that are not eligible to have open access costs paid by a funder of research, you can also publish open access at no extra cost through publisher Transformative Agreements when you are the corresponding author.