RSP - OA

Articles published online as soon as they have been fully copy-edited and proof-checked, ahead of the final, ‘printed’ version. Embargo periods start from this date. Also known as Early or First online publication.

Fee paid to the publisher to publish an article via the gold open access route. The term Book Processing Charge (BPC) applies where an equivalent charge is made to publish a book / monograph open access.

The bibliographic description of a digital publication often used by search engines to find documents. High-quality metadata ensures documents are easily discoverable. Also known as Publication record or Metadata.

See "Types of Open Access".

Agreement signed by authors upon their work being accepted that usually transfers copyright from the author to the publisher. This will often outline the author's rights concerning re-using and re-distributing the publication. For authors seeking to negotiate or amend the terms of a CTA, the SPARC Author Addendum can provide an alternative framework. Please also note that some research funders (The Wellcome Trust from 1st January 2021 and UKRI from 1st April 2022) require that authors utilise a standard Rights Retention Statement in place of signing a Copyright Transfer Agreement.

The author contact for the publisher, responsible for manuscript correction, correspondence, handling of revisions and re-submission of the revised manuscript and co-ordinating the payment of the Article Processing Charge (APC) where applicable.

See "Copyright and Creative Commons Licences"

A unique identifier for an online document, used by most online journal publishers. As the DOI is unique to the publication, linking to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL. See "Persistent IDs".

a period during which access to an archived research publication in a repository is restricted, typically to protect the revenue of publishers who rely on subscription payments to cover the costs of publication.

A life sciences and biomedical research subject repository. The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and most other UK biomedical funders require copies of funded articles to be deposited in Europe PMC within 6 months of publication. The USA-based PubMed Central is the repository containing global content.

See "Types of Open Access".

See "Types of Open Access".

Online digital archive of an institution’s research publications. Coventry University's Institutional Repository is Pure.

See "What is Open Access".

A new Open Access policy initiative due to come into effect from 1st January 2021. The terms of Plan S will apply to authors in receipt of funding from a Plan S affiliate, who include major UK research funders UKRI on behalf of UK Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust. Funders will maintain their own Open Access policies and may implement their Plan S aligned policy at different times, though they will be based on the common principles established by Plan S. Please see the Plan S tab of this LibGuide for further details.

See "Types of Open Access".

The final draft author manuscript, as accepted for publication, after peer review changes are incorporated but before copy-editing and proof correction. The postprint version should be deposited in Pure in order to meet the REF and funder requirements, if the final published version will be restricted to subscribers.

This is a contested term, but publishers accused of predatory practices typically charge Article Processing Charges (APCs) and in return fail to provide the necessary quality checks expected of reputable publishers. Such publishers may misrepresent who sits on their editorial board, the journal impact factor and lack a rigorous peer review process. To avoid inadvertently submitting to a predatory journal we would advocate following the principles outlined by Think Check Submit to help identify if a journal is reputable. Please see our guide to Predatory Publishers.

The author's final draft of a paper before peer-review. Many publishers allow authors to place the preprint in a repository, including preprint servers; however, the deposit of a preprint version does not normally satisfy funder and research assessment requirements. The post-print / accepted manuscript usually needs to be deposited to meet the minimum requirements

A purpose built repository developed to host and make available pre-peer reviewed versions of research articles. Preprint servers tend to be subject / discipline specific in terms of the content they host. For a listing of Preprint servers, see the Open Science Foundation directory.

The final formatted PDF file that appears in the journal. This version will be the publisher's copy-edited PDF with final page numbers, typesetting and journal branding included. Most publishers will not allow you to self-archive this version unless you have paid an APC to make the paper openly available immediately.

See Copyright Transfer Agreement

The version after acceptance but before the Final Version of Record has been produced. Typically the Proof version cannot be hosted through Pure due to publisher copyright considerations.

Coventry University's Institutional Repository. The public facing Portal can be accessed here and outputs can be deposited here.

A research assessment exercise which is designed to assess the quality of research in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The exercise takes place approximately every 6 years. The Open Access policy for the REF exercise, first introduced in April 2016, remains in effect. Details are available here.

A statement applied that allows authors to retain additional rights over the accepted manuscript (Postprint) version of their work. For more please see our guide to Rights Retention and the Plan S Rights Retention Strategy information.

Subject specific repositories that often contain predominantly Preprint material (such as Arxiv), although some also contain accepted manuscripts or final publications. Prominent subject repositories include PubMed (for Medical and Biosciences), RePEc (for Economics) and Arxiv (used by researchers in various fields such as Physics, Computer Science and Mathematics). To ensure REF Open Access compliance always record publications in Pure even if it is recorded in a subject repository.

An agreement where a publisher / journal commits to adjust their business model over a period of time to shift from one based around revenue from subscription access charges, to one based around open access publishing charges. At the end of a transitional period the journal(s) are to become fully open access publications. Under these agreements, researchers at Universities that are part of these agreements can both access restricted research (the Read part) and publish Gold Open Access at no additional cost (the Publish part). Please see our guide to Read and Publish Agreements.