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Open access and rights retention

Where to look

Many research funders have policies in place to ensure that the results of the research they fund are openly available. All research outputs arising from externally funded research at the University must abide by their funders’ policies. It is therefore important that you are familiar with the terms and conditions of your research grant or contract.

The majority of research funders’ open access policies are available via the Sherpa Juliet database. You should also refer back to the terms and conditions of your grant or contract and to any other project-specific agreements, such as collaboration agreements with project partners.

NIHR

The NIHR Open Access policy for publications submitted on or after 1 June 2022 applies to all peer-reviewed research articles, including reviews not commissioned by publishers and conference papers, submitted for publication on or after 1 June 2022.

Monographs (with the exception of NIHR Journals Library publications), book chapters,  edited collections, or forms of non-peer-reviewed material, such as pre-prints are NOT in scope.
 
 

What is required

 

How to ensure your article meets the requirements

  1. If you follow the SHU checklist to make your scholarly articles open access, your article will compy with NIHR requirements. Please make sure that you include the Rights Retention Statement in your submission.
  2. Additionally, you must deposit your paper to PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC on publication.

 

Deposit your article immediately upon publication in Pubmed Central and Europe Pubmed Central

The publisher of your chosen journal may automatically deposit papers to PubMed Central on publication.  Check the information about the journal on the journal's website to find out if this is the case.

If a publisher does not automatically deposit papers, it is possible to self-archive copies of your papers using Europe PubMed Central Plus. This option is only available for eligible research. Please see the Europe PMC Plus user guide.

NIHR compliance checklist

  • Is the article in-scope of the NIHR open access policy?
  • Will the article be made immediately and freely available on Europe PMC and PubMed Central from publication date?
  • Will the article be assigned the correct licence (CC BY, OGL, or CC BY-ND by exception)?
  • Has the NIHR’s licensing requirement statement (or the SHU rights retention statement) been included within the acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission?
  • Does the article include a data sharing statement? Read more about the NIHR position on the sharing of research data.
  • Does the article contain appropriate acknowledgement of NIHR funding? Read more on how to acknowledge the NIHR in research outputs.

This is based on the NIHR checklist which also provides further detail.

UKRI

The new UKRI Open Access Policy affects researchers who are publishing work that acknowledges funding from one of the seven UK Research Councils (AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC, STFC) or Innovate UK.

 

What is required

  • open access on publication under the CC BY licence (or, exceptionally, CC BY-ND subject to request and approval) for articles and conference papers submitted on or after 1 April 2022, and accepted for final publication in either a journal, conference proceeding with an International Standards Serial Number (ISSN), or publishing platform. 
  • open access no later than 12 months after publication for monographs, book chapters and edited collections resulting from a grant from one of the UK Research Councils, published on or after 1 January 2024. 

 

How to ensure your article meets the requirements

  1. Follow the SHU checklist to make your scholarly articles open access. Make sure that you include the rights retention statement in your submission. 
  2. Deposit your paper in Europe PubMed Central on publication if you are funded by MRC or BBSRC.
  3. Include a Data Access Statement in your paper.

 

Deposit in Europe PubMed Central if applicable

If your article or paper is MRC- or BBSRC-funded it must also be deposited in Europe PubMed Central. This is in accordance with the MRC’s additional terms and conditions and the BBSRC’s safeguarding good research policy.

The publisher of your chosen journal may automatically deposit papers to Europe PubMed Central on publication.  Check the information about the journal on the journal's website to find out if this is the case.

If a publisher does not automatically deposit papers, it is possible to self-archive copies of your papers using Europe PubMed Central Plus. This option is only available for eligible research.   Please see the Europe PMC Plus user guide.

 

Include a Data Access Statement in your paper

The UKRI expect you to include a Data Access Statement in your paper, even if you have not collected or produced any new primary research data (see page 10 of the UKRI Open Access Policy).

Wellcome

Published outputs that arise from Wellcome funding must be open and accessible to everyone.

 

Research articles

From 1 January 2021, all original, peer-reviewed research articles that are supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must be:

  • made freely available by the official final publication date
  • published under a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY), unless Wellcome have agreed, as an exception, to allow publication under a CC BY-ND licence.

 

Book chapters and monographs

All original scholarly monographs and book chapters authored or co-authored by Wellcome grantholders as part of their grant-funded research, must be:

  • made freely available through NCBI Bookshelf PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC as soon as possible and no later than within 6 months of the official final publication date
  • be published under a Creative Commons licence where a fee has been paid to the publisher to make the work open access. Our preference is for a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY), however, researchers may choose to publish their work under any of the Creative Commons licences including non-commercial and non-derivative licences (CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND).

The Wellcome Open Access Policy provides further details.

Wellcome also provide a page with detailed practical guidance on complying with the Wellcome open access policy.

Help with your funder requirements

For help with identifying if a journal is compliant with your funder requirements, please contact the Library Research Support Team:


Email: library-research-support@shu.ac.uk
Call: (0114) 225 3852