"Open Access" is unrestricted access via the internet to peer reviewed scholarly research. This includes:
- Journal Articles
- Conference Proceedings
- Book Chapters
- Monographs
- Research Data
- Open Educational Resources
The University of Strathclyde is working to help academics to not only comply with funding body requirements for open access (OA), but also to increase the visibility of all their research outputs.
An advantage of OA over traditional publishing models is a higher impact and visibility of research, since that research reaches a wider audience. Research that is open access can therefore result in increased collaboration opportunities and citation impact.
Publishing
There are two routes to publishing Open Access:
Green OA
Green OA is when the author publishes in a journal and then deposits a version of this article into a subject or institutional repository, such as Strathprints. Depositing scholarly work in Strathprints can be achieved through Pure, the University's Current Research Information System (CRIS). Most journals comply with Green OA policies. Sherpa/Romeo provides compliance information for publishers' self-archiving policies.
Gold OA
Gold OA is when the author makes their article openly accessible in a journal, sometimes for a fee or Article Processing Charge (APC). This journal may be exclusively OA or it may be a hybrid, with a mixture of OA and subscription-only articles. The University library manages the UKRI (formerly RCUK) and formerly the Charity Open Access Fund (COAF)** for the payment of Gold OA APCs. Sherpa/Fact is a funders & authors compliance tool to help researchers check if their chosen journals comply with their funder's requirements for open access to research.
**The Charities OA Fund has now been disbanded (see the Funding Open Access page) but Strathclyde is still receiving some funding from some individual research funders that used to be part of COAF, namely the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK (CRUK)
Whichever route is taken the University requires that authors deposit their accepted manuscripts in Pure.
This enables research outputs to be eligible for submission in the next REF.