Research & Scholarly Publications Team: What is Open Access?

How does Open Access impact me?

As previously mentioned, there are a number of benefits that come from Open Access, including wider outreach, higher citation rates and impact in areas beyond academia. As well as the benefits, both for your own research profile and for the broader research environment, there are also an increasing number of Open Access requirements you need to meet.

Both the University and REF have Open Access policies in place, whereby your research must be Open Access via either the Green or Gold Route. A number of funders also have policies around Open Access, that vary in their specific requirements. As a result, you will need to ensure you make your research Open Access.

What do I need to do?

Throughout the publication process, you will reach different stages where you will need to take action. Two key stages are at Submission and Acceptance, which is why we advice that you need to "Sort at Submission" and "Act on Acceptance".

Sort at Submission:

• Check any OA requirement you have to meet - as a member of staff at Coventry University, you must meet the University Open Access Standard; you should also meet the REF Open Access requirements; you may also have requirements based on your funder.
• When you're choosing a publisher, you should keep open access in mind - we have Read and Publish Agreements that allow you to publish OA without paying an APC; the internal APC fund and the UKRI Block Grant only cover Gold or Transformative Hybrid journals; some publisher policies may conflict with your OA requirements.
• You may need to include a Rights Retention Statement and/or a Data Statement to your article before submission - Some funders do require these to be applied, and can sometimes be difficult to apply retrospectively.
• Our Read and Publish Agreements only apply if the corresponding author is from Coventry University, and some publishers check this by looking at the corresponding author's email address, therefore we encourage you to use your university email when you submit articles for publication.
• Whilst it will not meet the requirements for OA, in many fields it is good practice to post your Submitted Version to a pre-print server like ArXiv or PubMed.

Act on Acceptance:

• You must deposit the Accepted Manuscript into Pure within 3 months of acceptance - even if the manuscript has to be embargoed for longer than three months, it needs to be deposited into Pure in order to meet the REF requirements. The Research and Scholarly Publications team can then manage the record to ensure it meets both the REF requirements and the Publisher's Policies.
• You must inform us of the Accepted Date - in order to monitor REF compliance and address any accidentally non-compliant publications, we need the Acceptance Date.
• Usually APCs will be charged after acceptance, as such you will need to coordinate the funding you have planned to cover the APC at this point.

Publisher's Proof:

• At the proofing stage, publishers often apply their own typesetting and aspects for which they hold copyright, and as a result will not allow this version to be archived. If you have archived your Accepted Manuscript but need to apply changes that arise from the proofing stage, please contact oa.lib@coventry.ac.uk.

At Publication:

• Once the article is published, you can inform us and we will update the record in Pure. If the article is published OA, we can also replace the accepted manuscript with the final published version.

Types of Open Access

There are four main types of open access that you may hear about: Diamond (or Platinum), Gold, Green or Bronze (or Free) Open Access.
 

💎 Diamond (or Platinum) Open Access 

Diamond Open Access is similar to Gold Open Access, where the research is Open at the point of publication, except that there is no charge for publishing.
 

🟡 Gold Open Access (with Creative Commons Licences)

Gold Open Access makes the final version of an article freely and permanently accessible for everyone, immediately at publication. Copyright for the article is retained by the authors and most of the permission barriers are removed. Gold Open Access typically occurs as a result of publishing in an open access or hybrid journal. There is usually a fee (called an article processing charge or APC) associated with this option which the author or their institution will be asked to pay. Articles published Gold OA will usually be published with a Creative Commons Licence. 

🟢 Green Open Access (self-archiving)

When authors publish with a journal and deposit a version of the article for free public use in their institutional repository (e.g. Pure) and/or a central subject-based repository (e.g. Arxiv or PubMed Central​), this is known as self-archiving and is often referred to as Green Open Access.  Depending on the publisher's policies, the version archived is often an author's accepted version rather than the published version. Most Open Access requirements will consider Green Open Access routes.
 

🟤 Bronze (or "Free") Open Access 

Sometimes publishers may release an article under a Free licence, which is sometimes called “Bronze Open Access”. Whilst this research would be freely available like most open access, this may not always be reliable and could revert to a more restrictive licence. As such, this will not meet any Open Access requirements.

Please note that we are not qualified to provide 'legal advice' around copyright and intellectual property. The information provided here is for guidance and information purposes only.

What is Copyright?

Copyright law grants exclusive rights to creators of original works of authorship. National laws usually extend protections to such works automatically once fixed in a tangible medium, prohibiting the making of copies without the rights holder’s permission, among other things. On the internet, even the most basic activities involve making copies of copyrighted content. As content is increasingly uploaded, downloaded, and shared online, copyright law is becoming more relevant to more people.

More information on copyright is available at the following LibGuide: https://libguides.coventry.ac.uk/c.php?g=669069

What are Creative Commons Licences?

Creative Commons licences ensure that the final version of a research output remains freely and permanently accessible for everyone at the point of publication, and copyright for the article will be retained by the authors.

There are six different Creative Commons licences, varying in restrictiveness, all of which allow a work to be open access.

CC BY – Creative Commons Attribution. This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. It is recommended that you use this licence wherever possible.

CC BY-SA – Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

CC BY-NC – Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial. This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.

CC BY-NC-SA – Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike. This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

CC BY-ND – Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives. This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.

CC BY-NC-ND – Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives. This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.

Other Types of Open Licence

Open Government Licence (OGL): Can apply to works which are ‘crown copyright’ and produced by UK government bodies. An Open Government licence is equivalent to a CC BY licence in allowing a user to:

•  ‘copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information’

• ‘adapt the Information’

• ‘exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application’

Above uses are permitted on the condition that due acknowledgement and attribution is provided.

CopyLeft Licensing: Most commonly applied in the field of software, Copyleft principles permit the free distribution and modification of the original work under the proviso that the same rights be applied to any derivative work created from the original. This is equivalent to the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) licence.

Support for any copyright related queries

For copyright queries related to teaching materials, the relevant Academic Liaison Librarian for your department can provide advice.

For researchers looking to re-use copyrighted material in a publication, the Research & Scholarly Publications team can be contacted for guidance in the first instance.

Predatory Publishers

Predatory Publishers/Journals are a rising challenge to the international research environment. Essentially, predatory publishers are publishers that are involved in deceptive practices, including misrepresenting the quality of their peer review, usually with the aim of acquiring researchers' publishing fees.

The practices of predatory publishers vary widely, which has often made them difficult to identify. In 2019, a group of academics, publishers, research funders, academic institutions and policy makers met to establish a definition of predatory publishers:

Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.

Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K.D., et al. (2019) ‘Predatory Journals: No Definition, No Defence’. in Nature vol. 576 (7786). Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 210–212. available from <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y >

When assessing journals, there are a few things to look out for to avoid falling for a predatory publisher:

• False or Misleading Information: Often predatory publisher will have fake metrics numbers or memberships, false addresses and/or misrepresent their editorial board. Sometimes metrics from Google Scholar will be used over more reputable sources like Scopus, in order to misleadingly boost numbers.
• Publishing a Wide Scope: If the journal covers a wide scope of research topics, this can often be an indicator that it is a predatory journal that is simply aiming to have as many authors as possible publish with them.
• Offers of Quick Peer Review and Turnaround: Quality peer-review takes time; as such, journals that offer turnaround within days or even hours are unlikely to be ensuring that proper peer review is taking places.
• Lack of Transparency: It can be a warning sign if all the contact details go to the same or similar email address, or the only point of contact is a web form. Also, if processes such as peer review and turnaround are not clear, this may be because they are being misleading about how they are undertaken.
• Poor Spelling and Grammar: Low quality journal websites and publications can be an indicator of a quickly produced or cloned website without due care and attention to quality research practices.
• Aggressive, repeated and indiscriminate solicitation: Even it is through flattery, referring to the author's previously published work, predatory publishers will target authors with excessive emails inviting them to publish in their journal.

This is not a definitive list - there are other practices that might make a journal predatory, and vice versa a trusted journal may seem to be doing one of these things (e.g. a new or under-resourced journal may be easily confused with a predatory journal). This list should, therefore, be used as a guide to help you begin to assess a journal. If you are ever in doubt about a journal, please contact the Research and Scholarly Publications teams (oa.lib@coventry.ac.uk) who will be able to advise.

Further Resources

• Think. Check. Submit. - A checklist created by representatives across the research sector to help academics identify predatory publishers.
• Cabells - A searchable list of predatory journals that lists aspects that make the identified journal a predatory one. Access should be provided with your Coventry University credentials.
• Beall's List - A list of publishers and journals that have been identified as undertaking predatory practices.
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - A list of trusted Open Access journals that are regularly monitored to remove any titles that no longer meet its quality criteria

Glossary of Open Access Terminology