A scientist's notebook and pens What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) refers to the online availability of scholarly work, free of charge to anyone. Open Access facilitates the discovery and sharing of knowledge, giving your research more impact by increasing readership and citations. Many research funders now require outputs to be Open Access while journal articles and conference proceedings must be made Open Access to be eligible for the 2021 REF and beyond.

There are two ways to make your publications open access:

  • "Green" Open Access - Deposit a copy of the peer-reviewed manuscript in a repository such as Spiral; there is no cost involved.
  • "Gold" Open Access - Make the article open access immediately upon publication, through the publisher; usually this involves paying an Article Processing Charge (APC).

Since July 2015, the College has made a workflow available that allows authors to make their work Open Access (“green” and “gold”) to meet related funder requirements by completing a single form within Symplectic.

For more information visit the College's Open access page.

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