Open access for journal articles

Make your work openly accessible while retaining copyright. 

• The article is published in a subscription journal usually for free.
• Include the Rights Retention Statement (RRS) with your submission to ensure you retain copyright.
• After acceptance the author can deposit the accepted manuscript in a repository. 
• The deposited version can be made freely available, use RRS to ensure immediate open access under an open licence with no embargo .

• The author publishes in a journal that provides an immediate open access option (fully open access journal or hybrid).
• After acceptance the author or institution pays an article processing charge (APC) or the APC is covered by an institutional agreement with the publisher.
• The author selects a Creative Commons licence to set out how the article can be shared and reused.
• The version of record of the article is made available to anyone on the publisher website on publication. Copyright remains with the author. 

Diamond Open Access removes APCs entirely. Funding from alternative sources supports the publication costs. 

• The author publishes in a journal that provides immediate open access option (fully open access journal)
• There is no article processing charge (APC) 
• The author selects a Creative Commons licence to set out how the article can be shared and reused.
• The version of record of the article is made available to anyone on the publisher website on publication. Copyright remains with the author

Funded Research

Funders such as UKRI, Wellcome Trust, etc., require research outputs to be made open access immediately on publication under a licence that permits sharing and reuse.

It is researchers’ responsibility to select a compliant journal. Visit our webpage ‘Funder open access policy’ to find information, links and tools that will help you.

Publication in a gold or diamond open access journal that allows immediate open access under a CC BY or other open licence permitted by your funder meets funder requirements. 

Publication in a subscription journal may require that you apply the Rights Retention Statement at submission to ensure that you can deposit the accepted manuscript in a repository that meets your funder requirements.

Definitions for the above terms can be found on our glossary of open research key terms. 

Non-funded research & REF

The REF open access requirements are currently under review. Although the requirements have not yet been finalised it is expected that research outputs will be required to be open access after publication. Following the advice above for funded research will ensure that research outputs are eligible for submission to the next REF. 

Until further notice the REF2021 open access requirements remain in place. 

Publication Costs

If a Publisher Agreement isn’t already in place contact the Open Research Team to see if support is available to cover the cost of publishing. The team will offer further guidance if there is no central budget available.  If you proceed and place an order without confirmation, then you may be held liable for costs.  

Page and colour charges – Look on the journal webpages to see if the publisher charges any extra costs. *These extra charges are not covered by the Publisher Agreements or the open access fund and can also apply to Green Open Access print copies.    

Confirm your school has money available to cover these extra costs.  

Please contact openresearch@abdn.ac.uk if you have any queries about our agreements, open access funds and journal compliance with funder policies.

Inform co-authors about University of Aberdeen’s requirements to share the accepted manuscript upon publication with a CC BY or other appropriate licence. Do this at the earliest point possible as action is required on submission to a publication. If you are not the corresponding author, please request the RRS to be included in the manuscript. 

If for any reason, one of the co-authors raises this as an issue, please contact the Open Research Team   

APCs for Gold Open Access vary extensively depending on the journal with an average price around £2,000. There is no direct correlation between APC cost and the prestige of a journal. Hybrid journals cost on average more than fully open access journals. You may be able to publish gold open access with the costs covered by one of our publisher open access agreements.

Block grant funds can only be used to meet the open access requirements of the relevant funder. Please contact openresearch@abdn.ac.uk to make sure there are available funds to cover publication costs prior to submission.

Journals usually use indexes based on article citations to promote themselves (the most popular is the ‘impact factor’). The University of Aberdeen is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA); as such it recognises that research outputs should be recognised on the merits of those individual outputs, rather than on the metrics of the journal where the article is published. 

With so many journals available choosing the right one for publication can be overwhelming. We recommend asking your colleagues or supervisor for advice. Think. Check. Submit. is a helpful resource to ensure that you pick a trustworthy publication.

Add the following Rights Retention Statement (RRS) in the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission:  

“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.”  

*[or other appropriate open licence]

Research outputs should include a data availability statement regarding accessibility of the data underlying the research. It is important that data is available to other researchers to ensure transparency and make your work reproducible. If no data was used in writing the article this should be stated. 

• Read more about open data on our webpages. 
• Read about the University open research statement.

Authors’ listing of scientific scholarly output does not provide enough information about the actual individual contributions to the work. The Contributor Roles taxonomy (CRediT) comprises 14 contributor roles, including conceptualisation, project administration, data curation, software, visualisation, as well as writing, which allow different contributions to a research paper to be formally recognised. Some publishers, such as Elsevier and PLoS, have already adopted this system and require authors to describe author contributions using CRediT.

You can find more about CRediT on our webpage.

As soon as you have a research output (journal article, conference contribution, blog, book, chapter, etc.) accepted for publication please send: 

• Acceptance email  

• A copy of the accepted manuscript (AM)  

to paperaccepted@abdn.ac.uk and we will deposit the article in Pure/AURA in accordance with any applicable open access policies including REF.  

After your article is accepted for publication the publisher usually sends you a link to complete their online forms.   

You may need to tick a box that says you are giving the publisher copyright to complete the form. As Rights Retention is a pre-existing agreement that takes precedence over this agreement, we advise you to tick this box so as not to delay publication.  

If you do not have funding in place, you should select the green route and self-archive.  

If your chosen journal specifically prohibits immediate open access of the AM and has contacted you to say this route is not possible then please contact the Open Research Team. They will assist you and will speak to the publisher on your behalf to ascertain the next step.  

Please note that if you have a UKRI/ Wellcome Trust/ ERC grant (or other funder that requires immediate OA) then your publisher may be preventing you from complying with your funder’s requirements.  

To arrange an open access APC payment previously agreed with the open access team, please contact openresearch@abdn.ac.uk for advice on how to proceed with payment. 

Applies to Wellcome, UKRI, British Heart Foundation funded authors only. 

When your output is published and available online, please send notification to the Open Research Team, or update your Pure record with the publication dates, so that the AM can be made open access as soon as possible with the correct final publication details.  

Deposit in Pure is not sufficient to ensure compliance with most medical funders’ OA policies (e.g. MRC, BBSRC, Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK, BHF). If required by funders, and you have taken Route 2 (Green OA) route then you may need to organise deposit in Europe PMC. This can be easily and quickly done by using the Europe PMC manuscript submission system. 

Current practice in academic publishing requires corresponding authors to sign over their rights to publishers. This means that the author cannot share or reuse their work without permission from the publisher. Meanwhile the publisher retains an exclusive right to publish and sub-license the rights to the work as they see fit.   

The policy supports authors in retaining their rights to the peer-reviewed manuscript allowing immediate open access and re-use from the date of first online publication under an open licence. The Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence is encouraged, but the CC BY-NC licence may be used where there is a need to prevent commercial re-use. However other open licences as permitted by funders may also be used. Depending on your funder you may choose a different CC licence for longform publications, please check your funder requirements to ensure compliance.   

The open access policy enables authors to submit their work to the publisher of their choice, while remaining compliant with funder open access policies. 

This policy applies to journal articles and conference proceedings authored or co-authored by staff currently employed by the University of Aberdeen and submitted for publication from 1st May 2023. The policy also applies to longform publications where a funder mandate is in place. 

When publishing a research article you retain your rights to the author’s peer-reviewed accepted manuscript (AM) by including a statement notifying the publisher of your intention to apply an open licence to any resulting AM with the submitted manuscript and accompanying cover letter. 

We already encourage this approach to enable compliance with the UKRI Open Access policy.  

Co-authors should be informed about the requirement to share the AM upon publication with a Creative Commons licence. If issues are raised, it is possible to opt out.  

The AM is deposited in Pure/AURA under the CC BY Creative Commons licence or other licence that meets funder requirements.  

The new policy aligns with the University’s 2040 strategy of being ‘open to all’ and our position on open research.  

Your research reaches the widest possible audience without restrictions such as publisher embargoes or paywalls.   

You retain the rights to your own work, ensuring that you can disseminate your peer-reviewed accepted manuscript in any way you choose, without publisher restrictions.   

You are enabled to submit your work to the journal or publisher of your choice, while remaining compliant with funder and future Research Excellence Framework (REF) open access policies.   

Creative Commons licences allow the author to retain copyright whilst allowing others to copy, distribute and reuse the work under the terms of the individual licence. Many funders, including UKRI, now mandate their use.   

CC BY allows any reuse, as long as the creator is attributed.   

CC BY-NC prohibits commercial reuse. 

CC BY-ND prohibits any derivative works being produced. 

The Library Open Research Team can provide support and advice on licences, and guidance is available on the Open Research webpages.   

The University of Aberdeen encourages the use of the CC BY licence but will also apply a CC BY-NC licence to articles where the author wishes to prevent commercial use. Where there is a funder requirement for a specific licence, the author is expected to abide by this to ensure compliance.  

While a publisher is under no obligation to consider a manuscript containing a rights retention statement, they should decline to publish such outputs at the earliest possible opportunity and allow you to submit to another venue. In such cases, your choices are to (a) opt out and publish under the publisher’s terms, which may not be compliant with funder policy, or (b) select another output.  

If your chosen publication specifically prohibits immediate open access of the AM and has contacted you to say this route is not possible then please contact the Open Research Team. They will assist you and will speak to the publisher on your behalf to ascertain the next step.  

Please note that if you have a UKRI/ Wellcome Trust/ ERC grant (or other funder that requires immediate OA) then your publisher may be preventing you from complying with your funder’s requirements.  

The only legal risk relates to any inadvertent signing of a publisher copyright transfer agreement that contradicts the University of Aberdeen’s prior retention of non-exclusive rights.  

The University of Aberdeen has sought legal advice on this and is confident that the risk in relation to this policy is low, as long as it follows the guidance that has been provided by the legal team. Wherever possible, any risk in relation to this policy will be borne by the University of Aberdeen and not by the individual researcher. As long as you include the rights retention statement provided above, there is no legal risk.  

Check if your funder has an open access policy that you must comply with. If your funder is not included on our webpage, check your grant terms and conditions. Contact the Open Research Team if you are unsure.  

The REF open access policy is currently under review. You must follow the REF2021 open access policy until further notice. 

The REF open access policy is currently under review. You must follow the REF2021 open access policy until further notice. 

In order to be eligible for submission in the next REF, all journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN number that have been accepted for publication on or after 1 April 2016 must be publicly accessible through an institutional or subject repository within 3 months of acceptance for publication.  

Use of the Rights Retention Statement will ensure the accepted manuscript can be deposited in Pure/AURA without restriction, thus ensuring REF compliance.  

There are currently no open access requirements for longform publications in the REF policy. This may change after review but any changes to the policy will be widely circulated. 

Explain your requirements to your co-authors and the benefits of making research open access. It is possible they will have similar requirements from their own institutions and funders.  

If any co-author objects to use of the RRS and cannot be convinced contact the Open Research Team. 

Research students who are authors of scholarly articles associated with this policy are subject to it. Taught students are not subject to this policy, however the University of Aberdeen encourages them to use an individual open access licence instead of signing a publisher agreement. The Library Open Research team can support them to do so.  

You may opt out of this policy on an individual article basis. We ask you to notify us by completing this form, stating your reason, but you will not be required to gain permission.  

Only long form outputs required to be open access by a funder mandate are required to be open access so you can’t opt out unless you are eligible for an exemption from your funder. Discuss exemptions with the Open Research Team.  

Even if you opt out, you are still required to deposit your AM in Pure/AURA. Check the publisher self-archiving policy of the journal you wish to publish in. An embargo may be applied to the AM meaning you can’t comply with funder or Research Excellence Framework (REF) open access policies.    

When considering opting-out contact the Library Open Research Team who will advise on funder requirements and available options. If in doubt about the terms and conditions of your grant please contact the Research Policy and Strategy Team in Research and Innovation. It is important to be clear on this at the very outset, to plan accordingly.

The Library Open Research team will provide support for all aspects of this policy. Where there is a need for advice on the specific terms and conditions associated with a research grant, the Research Policy and Strategy Team in Research and Innovation will be able to advise.