Gold Open Access (OA) allows immediate access to the published article via the publisher's website or via an online publishing platform. Subscription journals which offer an OA publishing option to enable OA on publication are known as hybrid titles. In both cases, in order to achieve immediate open access the publisher will require the payment of a fee (Article Processing Charge or APC) from the author, their employer, or their funder. These fees can range in cost from £500 to £9000 per article! Gold OA has come under a significant amount of scrutiny in recent years, particularly as the business model has become a commodity of the commercial academic publishing industry and often becomes conflated with misconceptions around prestige and what constitutes a high quality journal (Khoo, 2019).
Whilst the status of the University is Green, and we are committed to this route to achieve Open Access via our institutional repository, UDORA, we can still support your choice to publish Gold Open Access via the Read and Publish Agreements which the institutions has access to. There are also limited funds available via the University central fund for Gold OA. To request access to these funds, there is an application process in place. See more below for further details.
There is limited funding available for researchers at the University of Derby to request funds for the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Gold Open Access. This funding is available on a first come, first served basis. For more details, please see the Open Access pages on the staff intranet. Please be aware that this funding is determined yearly and is not guaranteed to be available every year. Unfortunately this fund has now closed for 2023 / 2024. More information will be added when arrangements for 2024 / 2025 are in place.
Please ensure that you have permission from the Unviersity in advance for the payment of APCs. Invoices for the payment of APCs from the publisher should detail the name of the author/ payee. Under no circumstance should any invoice be addressed to the Library.