Open Access at Cardiff

What is Open Access?
Why should you make your work Open Access (OA)?
The Finch Report
Support for Open Access at Cardiff
University contacts for further information
Further links

What is Open Access?

Open Access is an alternative publishing model that enables peer reviewed articles to be freely available for anyone with access to the Internet to read, rather than limiting readership to subscribers only. It is seen as a way of opening up academic research to everyone to read and use.

Why should you make your work Open Access (OA)?

The research councils and other funding bodies such as the Wellcome Trust are requiring their grant holders to ensure that all outputs from their grants are made OA. They see advantages to society and the economy as a whole of making work visible to all researchers including those outside academic circles. RCUK have made funds available to Cardiff University to pay for some Gold and Hybrid OA publishing - see below for details.

HEFCE has indicated that it will require all outputs submitted to the post-2014 REF to be published on a OA basis.

The European Commission is likely to require OA for Horizon 2020 funded outputs.

OA publishing increases readership of your work. It widens access to your work and may increase both its impact and citations.

Cardiff University staff members can find more information in this University Town Hall meeting presentation on OA (January 2013):

Open Access town hall meeting January 2013 [2.9 Mb]

The Finch Report

Dame Janet Finch was recently asked by the UK Government to set up a working group which would investigate and report on options for OA publishing for UK universities. The resulting report "Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications" recommended that the UK government should support universities in pursuing OA publishing. There are three main ways in which authors can ensure that their work is published using an OA model: Gold, Hybrid and Green.

Gold

Gold open access publishing refers to fully "author-pays" funded OA.

Publish in an OA journal (e.g. BioMed Central, PLOS) and pay an author fee
Articles are peer-reviewed
Articles are available to anyone to read without further charge

Hybrid

Hybrid open access publishing refers to paying a fee to a conventional publisher to make a particular article OA when it would otherwise be available only to subscribers.

Publish in a conventional journal
Pay an author fee to have your article made openly available, without subscription
The publisher receives both library subscriptions and author fees

Both gold and hybrid routes require the author to pay a fee to the publisher (Article Processing Charge or APC), usually in the region of £1,000 - £2,000. In order to rapidly increase the volume of OA publications, and on the recommendation of the Finch Report, the government has provided funds to UK universities, including Cardiff University, to pay the author fees for Gold and Hybrid publications.

Green – self-archiving

Green open access self-archiving differs from Gold and Hybrid in that it is free for authors. Where their publisher allows it, authors can deposit a copy of their work - usually into their institutional repository, which in Cardiff's case is ORCA – which is then freely available to anyone to read. Occasionally a publisher will allow their own published version (publisher's pdf) to be copied into a repository, but more usually it is the author's own final copy (their post-print) that is allowed. To check on a publisher's policy, see the Sherpa ROMEO database.

Publish in a conventional journal, but provide/archive post-print in OA repository (e.g. ORCA)
Articles are peer-reviewed
Publishers often apply embargoes
Often the publisher's version is only available to subscribers

Support for Open Access at Cardiff

Gold/Hybrid route

Funds from RCUK and the Wellcome Trust to pay for the Gold and Hybrid OA routes are managed by RACDV. The University will be taking out various membership subscriptions in order to reduce the charge for individual authors and we will be adding a list of publishers where the charge is reduced to this page as soon as this is finalised.

If you are a grant holder, check the conditions of the grant and where applicable apply to RACDV for funds. Remember to consider how to pay for for OA publishing in your grant applications in future.

Green route

You can deposit your post-print in Cardiff University's institutional repository, ORCA.
You can add publications via the Manage My Publications tool under the Research tab in Cardiff Portal.
Watch our video tutorial on how to add your publications to ORCA.

Resources and Guides

Cardiff University has prepared a number of resources and guides (accessible only to Cardiff University staff) to assist researchers in making their work available in an OA format - these include Open Access and Self-Archiving Journal Guides by School and a suggested letter template to use when contacting publishers.

University contacts for further information

Please email openaccess@cardiff.ac.uk for more information about the RACDV OA Publishing Fund.
If you would like further advice on ORCA please contact orca@cardiff.ac.uk
The University's copyright team is available at copyright@cardiff.ac.uk
Your Subject Librarian will also be able to assist you with queries.