Open access and rights retention

Open Access (OA) is about making research publications freely accessible online at no charge to the reader, and with any restrictions on re-use minimised. The aim is to give researchers, members of the public, and industry access to all the research they need and to give them the freedom to build upon research already carried out.

Sheffield Hallam University is committed to making the outputs of its research as widely available as possible and supports the principles of open access. 

The new SHU Research Publications and Copyright Policy is effective from the 15th October 2022. To ensure effective scholarly communication and funder compliance, all Sheffield Hallam authors are required to do the following:

1. Deposit a copy of all their research outputs in Elements. These will then be made available to the public via the University's repository SHURA, where possible.
2. Make all scholarly articles in academic journals and conference proceedings available via immediate Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence without delay, i.e. from the day of first online publication. To achieve this, all Sheffield Hallam authors must add the following Rights Retention Statement as part of their manuscript submission to the publisher.

From the 15th of October, you should add this statement to all your submissions to journals or conference proceedings.

The Statement simply announces to the publisher that you have already applied the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to the peer-reviewed manuscript that will arise from your submission. (You can apply licenses to work that does not yet exist.) Once the publisher has accepted your submission for publication in the full knowledge that you have already applied a licence to the peer-reviewed manuscript, this manuscript can be made available from the University’s repository, SHURA, from the day of first publication under the Creative Commons Attribution licence.

"I included the Statement in the last revision of my paper and highlighted it for the benefit of the publisher and my co-authors. Everyone was happy with it. It is great to know that submissions with the Statement are extremely unlikely to be rejected and I am happy to include the Statement whenever possible.” Walid Issa, Associate Professor in Power Electronics, is one of the first Sheffield Hallam authors to publish a paper with the Rights Retention Statement

Whilst you would normally give away the right to distribute your paper to the publisher when signing the publishing agreement, a.k.a. Copyright Transfer Agreement, now you can retain the right to distribute a version of your own work yourself! Hence the term ‘rights retention’. You can now do things you previously could not.

Our new Research Publications and Copyright Policy gives you more rights over your own work.

You will be able to opt-out of the policy if necessary. This may be an option if your publisher does not allow the submission of a manuscript that includes the Rights Retention Statement or if you prefer to apply  another licence than the Creative Commons Attribution licence. Please be aware that our new policy is aligned with the requirements from external funders such as UKRI and next national research assessment following REF 2021 and that opting out will likely mean that you no longer comply with their Open Access requirements.

Full details of this policy are provided in the SHU Research Publications and Copyright Policy document.

This is also in line with the University’s ambition for Open Research.

There are three routes for making your articles and papers published in journals and conference proceedings available via immediate Open Access:

Route A. Green open access  

You publish your article in a subscription-based journal, but you make the Author Accepted Manuscript available to download from the institutional repository, SHURA. If you have included the Rights Retention Statement in your submission, then the article can be made Open Access from the day of first publication under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. 

Route B. Gold open access after payment of a fee 

The Version of Record of your article will be made available to download for free from the publisher’s website, usually but not always after payment of a fee (an Article Processing Charge or APC). Your library has an Open Access Fund available to pay for these charges. You can apply for funding by filling out a form before you submit your paper. 

Route C. Gold open access via a Read-and-Publish Agreement  

You publish your article in a journal that offers both subscription content and Open Access content (a ‘hybrid’ journal). If the university is part of a read-and-publish agreement with that publisher, you will be able to publish your article Open Access in the journal without incurring extra costs. You can find a list of the read-and-publish agreements SHU has with publishers, as well as a list of journals that are part of these agreements (forthcoming).