If you have a question that is not answered here, please contact the Open Access team in the Library.
All staff and students at University of Reading can apply for funding for Open Access fees.
Eligibility for the publisher deals is normally determined using the email address of the corresponding author. Student and staff email addresses are recognised by the publishers during the publication process.
In all cases, you should not agree to pay an APC for Open Access without checking first that it will be covered by the Library's Open Access budgets.
Yes, as long as there are no funds available elsewhere via grants or any other source, and as long as the publication is to be published in a pure Gold Open Access journal (i.e. the journal does not charge a subscription fee and is freely available online to all). Following the imposition of a 'fair use' cap on applications to the University Gold Open Access fund in January 2023, authors can now only apply for 3 APCs to be paid per University financial year (August to July). An exceptions appeal procedure is in place. Contact oarequests@reading.ac.uk for more information if you think this cap will affect you. In some cases we will pay the fee for journals which do charge subscription fees (hybrid journals), but only if the APC is below £1000 excluding VAT.
Yes, as long as the publication shows that you are affiliated to the University.
If the journal that you are publishing in is part of a transformative agreement with a publisher, only the corresponding author is eligible for Open Access. If you are not the corresponding author, it is not possible to fund the APC outside the remit of the deal. In this case, you should check with the corresponding author to see whether their institution has signed up to the relevant publisher deal.
You are expected to choose the most open of the creative commons licences for your work. This is the CC BY 4.0 version of the licence. If you are funded by the UKRI or other external funders, you must choose this version of the licence or you will not be compliant with your funder's policy. For papers submitted after 1 April 2022, the UKRI will only permit the CC BY version of the licence to be used. Any exceptions will have to be applied for on a case by case basis.
If the APC for the hybrid journal is under £1000 (excluding VAT), you should complete the Open Access request form. It is not possible to apply for a 'top up' of funds from the University's Open Access fund. Only APCs of £1000 or less will be considered to prevent 'double dipping' by the publisher whereby they charge libraries for subscriptions and then also charge high APCs to authors for Open access.
If you have UKRI funding, you must first check that the journal is listed as a 'Transformative journal' using the Journal Checker Tool. Any hybrid journal not included in a transformative/transitional available to University of Reading authors must comply with the licencing and immediate access requirements as described in route 1 or route 2 of the UKRI policy.
You must deposit the author final manuscript of your article into CentAUR as soon as it is accepted for publication in order to comply with the University Open Access Policy, and with the HEFCE policy for Open Access in the REF.
You can check publisher policies in advance using the SHERPA/ROMEO website which summarises publishers’ copyright and self-archiving policies. Versions prior to peer review are out of scope for CentAUR and not compliant with UKRI requirements. The terminology for versions varies between policies:
| Status | Alternative terminology | Action |
| Pre-refereed paper as submitted | Author pre-print, Submitted manuscript under review | Out of scope for CentAUR |
| Final draft incorporating peer review corrections | Postprint, Author post-print, Author accepted manuscript, Author final manuscript, Author's final draft. NOT yet copyedited or typeset by the publisher. NOT a publisher proof. | Deposit in CentAUR as soon as accepted for publication |
| Final published version | Publisher's PDF, Version of record | Can be deposited in CentAUR in addition to the above version (if permitted by the publisher |
Sometimes publishers may not have had this request before, so attempt to negotiate terms with the publisher.
If your journal of choice neither allows paid Gold Open Access, nor deposit in an institutional repository (Green Open Access) with compliant embargo periods, and publication elsewhere is not appropriate for your work, you can proceed but your article, but:
Use the SHERPA/FACT web tool to check whether your journal is compliant with UKRI policy
The SHERPA/JULIET database lists many more funders. Search this to find out whether your funder has a policy about making publications Open Access. Then search the SHERPA/ROMEO database to find your journal's self-archiving and Open Access policies; read the summary of these on the ROMEO site to see if they are offering options that are consistent with the funder policies.
Yes, there may be limited funding available – please see the Research books and chapters section of this guide for more details.
If you are a staff member at University of Reading you can log into CentAUR with your usual credentials. If you are a student you will need to ask a staff coauthor to add it for you or ask the CentAUR team to upload the article on your behalf.
If you have linked your ORCID iD to CentAUR, you may be able to add your output from your ORCID record.
There are guides on how to deposit your article on the CentAUR website.
A transformative or transitional agreement is a deal between institutions (or often large groups of institutions or consortia) and journal publishers. The agreements aim to change the business models of publishers and help them transition to a fully Open Access model. They are often referred to as 'Read and Publish' deals as they incorporate journal subscriptions and the ability of authors to publish their work Open Access with the publisher. The idea of the agreements is to reduce the costs for institutions and lead to a shift in publisher business models towards Open Access.
A transitional/transformative Journal (TJ) is a subscription (hybrid) journal that has actively committed to transitioning to a fully Open Access journal.
In addition, a Transformative Journal must agree to:
gradually increase the share of Open Access content; and
offset subscription income from payments for publishing services (to avoid double payments - often called 'double dipping').
Publishing your work open access means that it will have a larger audience as it will not be behind a subscription paywall. Other benefits include:
Most publishers now offer some fully Open Access journals so check the publisher's website. A good source of reputable Open Access journals is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Tools such as Scimagojr and Scopus also allow you to filter journal searches to only show Open Access journals.
In general, it is never a good idea to respond to unsolicited emails asking you to submit your work to a journal or publisher. Often these emails are from less-reputable, so called 'predatory' Open Access journals. The emails are often very flattering and will offer very quick publication in an 'international' journal. You should always check out any journal carefully before you submit your work to them. There is a good checklist of things to look out for on the Think Check Submit website. If in doubt, contact the Open Access requests team in the Library for advice.
An article processing charge (or sometimes referred to as the article publication charge) is a publication fee that is charged to authors in order for their work to be made open access. Most fully open access journals levy an APC. Hybrid journals will also charge an APC for an author to make their work open access in a journal that is usually only open to subscribers. The APC should be clearly stated on the journal website.
A hybrid journal is one that charges subscribers for access to the content published in the journal and then also charges authors to make their work open access.
Plan S is an initiative with the aim of accelerating the transition to open access publishing. The plan was launched in September 2018 by an international consortium of research funding organisations and organisations that conduct research. Signatories to Plan S require that scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant open access journals or open access platforms. Some funders, for example, Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have adopted Plan S and require the beneficiaries of their grants to comply with the conditions when publishing research. It is important to check your funder's requirements on open access if you have external research funding.
The UKRI Open Access policy is available on their website. The new policy applies to journal articles submitted for publication from 1 April 2022.
Humanities in general, but especially Art History, rely on images. Reproducing images from museums and galleries often involves significant licensing fees, especially if online. If this is not possible, Green Open Access with images removed is an option, in which case the article can be deposited in CentAUR. If removal of the images significantly affects the sense and quality of the article, a redacted version should not be deposited. Contact the CentAUR team for advice.