There are several ways to obtain Gold Open Access funding from the Library.

The most straightforward one is when a just accepted manuscript (i) carries an acknowledgement to a research project funded by the research funders that are subsidising Gold OA via block grants allocated to Strathclyde* and (ii) the manuscript has been accepted in a fully Open Access journal with mandatory Open Access publishing fees or APCs (Article Processing Charges).

On top of these requirements, in order for the Library to approve the Gold Open Access funding for a specific accepted manuscript, a Pure record must be available for the publication with the date of manuscript acceptance and the full-text accepted manuscript. This is so that we can check that the funding acknowledgement is correctly worded (i.e. with the full grant number) and if there is a data statement in the paper.

See additional FAQs below for 'unfunded manuscripts'.

* These are mainly (i) the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), formerly known as Research Councils UK (RCUK) and specifically the EPSRC, and (ii) the so-called Charity Open Access Fund (COAF), an association of biomedical charities led by the Wellcome Trust.

The best choice in this case is to submit your manuscript to one of the titles covered by the various R&P deals, see the read & publish deals above. If none of these were suitable for your submission, please get in contact with us to see if your manuscript could be funded under the IOAF.

Potentially, yes. Please see previous FAQ.

If the manuscript has been accepted in a journal issued by a publisher with whom Strathclyde has a so-called 'Read & Publish' agreement (pdf), this will allow the Library to grant Gold OA to an unfunded manuscript at no cost for the authors.

The main R&P agreements Strathclyde has at the moment are the Springer Compact with Springer Nature and the ACS R&P deal with the American Chemical Society.

In order for an accepted manuscript to be eligible for Gold OA under these R&P deals it will typically need the Strathclyde author to be the submitting corresponding author for the paper.

A few months ago, Strathclyde started operating its own small Institutional Open Access Fund (IOAF) that aimed to cover Open Access publishing fees, especially in cases where no other possible source of funding is available (which tends to be the case for unfunded manuscripts).

Besides this unavailability of other possible Open Access funding sources, the main criteria for granting Open Access funding from the library to specific manuscripts under this IOAF is that the paper needs to be aligned with the REF submission profile for the Department or School.

The way the evidence for this relevance is expected to be provided is via a specific message from the appropriate Director of Research confirming their agreement with funding this specific publication.

As per the requirements for Gold OA funding stated in FAQ no 1 above, a manuscript needs to have been accepted in a fully Open Access journal (i.e. with mandatory OA publishing charges) in order to become automatically eligible for funding from the library.

If the journal in which your manuscript has been accepted is a 'hybrid journal' where the APC is optional, it may well be the case that your Gold Open Access request is turned down even if the manuscript carries an eligible funded project acknowledgement. This is the so-called 'no hybrid policy' that the majority of research-intensive University libraries are applying across Scotland.

The reason why this policy is so widely applied is that there are far too many EPSRC-funded papers being published at Strathclyde, and the limited amount of Open Access funding provided by research funders like the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)/RCUK is unfortunately not enough to cover the payment of Open Access publishing fees for all of them.

In previous UKRI/RCUK block grant management exercises, we started by funding all eligible papers (i.e. those that carry an acknowledgement to an RCUK-funded project). We discovered that by mid-November we had already spent the full RCUK block grant (which is supposed to last from April 1^st to March 31^st the following year).

This meant that the Library had to effectively go into the red in order to cover the eligible mandatory fees in the period from mid-November 2018 until the end of March 2019. As a consequence, it was decided that the Open Access funding eligibility would be restricted when the new block grant arrived on April 1^st, 2019.

The no-hybrid policy applies solely to the RCUK/UKRI block grant. If your accepted manuscript is funded by the Wellcome Trust or any other biomedical charity in the COAF, the Gold Open Access will be granted regardless of the journal title.

The REF Open Access policy requirements are met by depositing the full-text accepted manuscript with a specifically created Pure record as soon as possible upon acceptance and no longer than three months from that point in time. This is also required for Gold Open Access papers, which means that Gold Open Access should not be seen as the default route to comply with the funder mandates. Gold Open Access is aimed to increase the visibility and subsequently the number of citations for strong papers.

Publishers receive a significant amount of income every time an accepted manuscript is selected for Gold Open Access publication. It's therefore in their interest for as many to be selected for this publication model as possible.

When they state that Strathclyde has an agreement with them, they mean that they have an agreement to apply a discount to the Article Processing Charge the Library will pay for eligible papers.

The decision on which papers to fund lies ultimately with the Library. It is not recommended to directly select Gold Open Access for an accepted manuscript without previously checking the possible funding eligibility with the Library.

Publishers cannot take Gold Open Access funding requests directly from the authors. They will need to validate every direct request with the Library, which will turn down such requests unless the requirements described in item 1 above are met by the time the request is received.

Additional confusing messages regularly issued by specific publishers state that the funder favours Gold Open Access for the dissemination of the publications stemming from their funded projects. This is not for a publisher to judge but for the institution and its research library.

Please check with us at openaccess@strath.ac.uk before directly selecting Gold Open Access for your accepted manuscript.

Mirror journals are the response that the publisher Elsevier has come up with in order to try and meet the requirements of Plan S. This is an initiative calling for full Open Access to all publicly-funded research outputs by 2021 led by a coalition of European research funders (Coalition S). This includes the Wellcome Trust and the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Research funders are pressing for quick transitions during which journal titles become fully Open Access.

The way Elsevier are approaching this business model transition is by dividing titles like their International Journal of Pharmaceutics into two different titles with the same editorial boards.

Before this move, the Int J Pharm was a so-called hybrid journal. This was a 'closed' journal in which individual papers could be made Gold Open Access by paying an APC. After the division, there are effectively two different titles:

• the 'original' Int J Pharm, which is now a fully closed journal with no Gold Open Access option available, and
• the 'new' fully Open Access title called 'Int J Pharm X', where Gold Open Access is mandatory (and subsequently, also the payment of Open Access publishing fees).

'Int Pharm X' is a mirror journal.

Elsevier is creating mirror journals for many of their titles, see the full list of mirror journals on Elsevier.

The publisher asks corresponding authors to specify upon manuscript submission whether they want to target the original (now fully closed) title, in which case no Gold Open Access option will be available. Or, whether they'd wish instead to have their manuscript published in the 'mirror journal', in which case the Open Access payment will be mandatory.

Another reminder about this is sent to the corresponding author upon manuscript acceptance. Unfortunately, such messages from the publisher are often going unnoticed. Failing to make a choice will result in the accepted manuscript being allocated to the original, now fully closed journal.

If we receive a Gold Open Access request for a paper in this situation, we will not be able to process it, as there is no option to select Gold Open Access for a manuscript accepted in the now fully closed original title. The option is simply not there in the online Rights & Access form.

We have tried previously to have an accepted manuscript switched from the 'closed' journal to the 'mirror' journal, but by the time we were contacted, it was unfortunately no longer possible, meaning the paper was finally not published Gold Open Access.

The recommendation is then to contact us for any query about this as soon as possible in the publishing cycle. Ideally, right after manuscript acceptance in order that we are able to provide advice. Otherwise, it may be too late.

The term 'suitable title' may not be the most appropriate one to describe this kind of advice, but the answer is yes.

Authors are typically targeting the highest-JIF titles without often taking into consideration any other factors. However, the (expected) number of citations may not be the sole aspect to be taken into account, especially where the research may be socially impactful.

From the Library, we can provide an indication of which titles we will be able to cover the Open Access publishing fees for (or, in the case of R&P agreements like the Springer Compact, see item 2.1 above, titles where a paper can be published Gold Open Access at no cost for the authors).

The area of alternative metrics (aka next-generation metrics) is an increasingly important one for research funders like the Wellcome Trust, UKRI, or the EU, and listening to the library's recommendation could make sense regardless of what the final decision looks like.

Wellcome is committed to making sure that when we assess research outputs during funding decisions we will consider the intrinsic merit of the work, not the title of the journal or publisher. All Wellcome-funded organisations must publicly commit to this principle

(Updated Wellcome Trust Open Access Policy 2021).

As part of the movement towards responsible metrics, research funders are trying to move away from the Journal Impact Factor as the sole criteria for evaluating research quality.

A number of alternative, article-level indicators are gradually being introduced aiming to also measure societal impact for research results (see Next-generation metrics: Responsible metrics and evaluation for open science”.

The most widespread of these indicators is the Altmetric score, which many publishers (and also platforms such as Strathprints) are already embedding in their article webpages.

An Altmetric score provides an estimation of the general impact of a research publication on social media. This includes the impact on platforms like Twitter or Facebook. Plus, more importantly, the mentions of papers in news outlets, policy papers, or patents among others.

A look at the highest Altmetric scores for Strathclyde papers offers a hint at research topics with a very large societal impact, such as gravitational waves, the human papillomavirus vaccine, or pollution by microplastics.

In most cases, the Open Access funding eligibility will require a Strathclyde corresponding authorship.

However, there may be exceptions depending on the route that is followed to fund a paper (i.e. via the research funders’ block grants, the Read & Publish agreements, or the Institutional Open Access Fund).

Because several factors will be relevant for potential funding eligibility, the best option is to contact the Open Access support service at openaccess@strath.ac.uk to check the situation for a specific manuscript.

In order for us to provide advice on a specific paper, it is preferred that a Pure record is available with the full-text accepted manuscript uploaded by the time the funding eligibility query reaches us. This is because key factors, like the co-author network or where a specific funded project is led from, will be easier to ascertain in view of such a full-text file.

As per the research funders' requirements, we cannot process an APC payment if the full grant number for the funded project is not referenced in the manuscript acknowledgements.

Publishers will, however, normally allow the author(s) to update this manuscript section at the proof stage in order that the funders’ requirements are met prior to the online publication of the paper.

Yes. The Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) partnership of six health research charities created on 1^st October 2014 to enable Open Access (OA) to the published outputs of the research they support ended on the 30^th of September 2020. These charities were:

• the Wellcome Trust
• Arthritis Research UK
• Bloodwise
• the British Heart Foundation (BHF)
• Cancer Research UK (CRUK)
• Parkinson’s UK

Following the discontinuation of the COAF block grant, individual research funders formerly grouped under the COAF banner have provided Charity Open Access Fund support for Open Access costs in this table (pdf) their specific instructions for their funded authors to follow.

Please contact the Library for more information for a specific manuscript.

Strathclyde authors are encouraged to deposit full-text copies of their pre-peer-reviewed manuscripts in a preprint server for a wider and quicker dissemination of their findings. Preprint servers like bioRxiv and ChemRxiv are seeing a growing number of Strathclyde researchers regularly deposting in them. 

Funders like the Wellcome Trust strongly encourage their funded authors to post preprints of their completed manuscripts and to publish them under a CC-BY licence. Furthermore, when there is a significant public health benefit to preprints being shared widely and rapidly, such as a disease outbreak, these preprints must be published:  

• before peer review
• on an approved platform that supports immediate publication of the complete manuscript
• under a CC-BY licence

Guided Open Access is a new pilot publishing model for Nature Physics submissions launched January 2021 by Springer Nature. Given the number of such manuscript that do eventually get cascaded to the sister journals Nature Comms and Comms Physics, the process involves the production of an Editorial Assessment Report (pdf) – a kind of early peer-review process – by the journal that will result in a recommensation to revise and resubmit to one of the sister journals.

The advantage of this Guided OA mechanism is two-fold: reviews are portable across journal titles and the aggregate APC fee will be significantly lower than the default £8,500 for Nature Physics. However, authors will be requested to pay for a £1,890 Editorial Assessment Charge, due after passing Guided Open Access suitability check. A Top-up Article Processing Charge is then payable on manuscript acceptance, whose fee will depend in the final title the manuscript gets accepted in. 

From the perspective of the library covering the APC fees for specific manuscripts, we’re happy to cover the full fee once a specific manuscript has been accepted for publication, but we cannot commit to paying for the £1,890 Editorial Assessment Charge at a time when there’s no guarantee yet that the paper will be published. Authors should hence take this £1,890 first payment themselves, that will be later reimbursed to them if/when the paper gets finally published. The library will then also take the Top-up Article Processing Charge on behalf of the authors. 

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you’re planning to submit under Guided Open Access so we can keep a close eye on the progress of the submission.

Research funders increasingly require all research papers, if applicable, to include a statement as to how underlying research materials, such as data, samples, software or, models, can be accessed.

However, the policy guideline is “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”, i.e. the policy does not mandate open research data. Where there may be compelling reasons to protect access to the data, such as commercial confidentiality or legitimate sensitivities around data derived from potentially identifiable human participants, these should be included in the statement.

Strathclyde has a policy of data deposit in Pure that allows Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to be minted for them in order that they may be used in manuscript data statements. The data deposit procedure is often carried out in parallel to the Gold Open Access funding process. Both areas can be part of a single conversation with the research support team within the library upon manuscript acceptance.

The RRS is a policy promoted by the cOAlition S group of research funders, which includes the Wellcome Trust and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). This cOAlition S previously issued (in Sep 2018) their Plan S for making Open Access the default option in scholarly communications.

Transformative (also known as Read & Publish) agreements with publishers of hybrid journals are the cornerstone of Plan S implementation, but not all publishers are offering these. The Rights Retention Strategy is a complementary policy that allows researchers funded by a cOAlition S Organisation to meet their research funders’ Open Access (OA) policy via the Green OA route, i.e. by depositing (for free) a copy of their accepted manuscript in Pure under no embargo period and under a CC-BY licence.

In order to follow the RRS*, action needs to be taken prior to manuscript submission: authors need to let publishers know that an Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) arising from their submission carries a CC-BY licence, in accordance with their grant conditions. In the case of the Wellcome Trust, who already included the RRS in their updated OA policy as of Jan 2021, they require their funded authors to include the following text in all manuscript submissions (with submission date after the 1 of January 2021):

This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

There is more information on the RRS on the cOAlition S website. Please check with the Open Access Team at openaccess@strath.ac.uk if you think this could be applicable to your manuscript submission.

*The RRS is not a mandatory strategy for meeting the cOAlition S funders’ OA policies, but it only applies where no compliant Gold Open Access option is available (i.e. a fully Open Access title or a hybrid title covered by a transformative agreement). The Journal Checker Tool has been made available to check whether the RRS needs to be applied for a specific title.