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Open Access: What is OA?

Guide to Open Access Publishing at Ulster University

Contact Us

If you are an Ulster University researcher looking for help or advice with Open Access, please email Library-OpenAccess@ulster.ac.uk

Making your work available through Pure

The Research & Impact Open Access Website provides flowcharts of the essential steps within Pure for REF OA compliance. You will also find a short videos for Depositing items and Editing items in Pure. There are additional pertinent resources available on the website to help guide you through the process of making your research OA.

What is Open Access?

Open Access refers to material that is free to all readers at the point of use. There are two routes into Open Access - gold or green.

Gold Open Access is where the author makes their article Open Access in a journal, sometimes for a fee. This journal may be exclusively  Open Access, or it may have a mixture of Open Access and subscription-only articles.

Green Open Access is where the author publishes in a journal and then deposits the the accepted version of their article into a subject or institutional repository, such as Ulster University's Pure Repository.

 

         Why Should I Make My Research Open Access?
  • Open Access makes your research available to far more people than a subscription-only journal article does. There is evidence that this can lead to an increase in citations of your work.
  • Open Access encourages public engagement with research, which is often paid for out of public money.
  • Your funding body may have a mandate which requires you to make your research available in an Open Access source.
  • Ulster University requires you to deposit (copyright permissions allowing) a copy of all forms of published research in Pure so as to support OA and meet the requirements of the growing number of research funders in the UK (and internationally) who now encourage or mandate OA. See the Open Access Institutional Repository Policy here.
  • REF 2021: UKRI policy states that, to be eligible for submission to the REF 2021, authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts (journal articles and conference proceedings) must have been deposited in an institutional or subject repository within three months of the date of acceptance for publication. This policy applies to research outputs accepted for publication after 1 April 2018.