Publishing Open Access is ALWAYS the best option for you and your research. The process of making the outputs from research available online for free with limited reuse barriers has so many benefits and increases the reach and impact of scholarly output on a global scale. By its very nature, Open Access is concerned with equity and increasing the dissemination of scholarly literature to a world wide audience. Making your research accessible via Open Access enhances your online visibility and significantly increases the readership of your work. This is especially important for those who are in less privileged positions who may not have the means to access paywalled journal articles, for example.
Fundamentally, information should be seen as a public good and Open Access seeks to ensure that all those who seek to engage with the outputs from research can do so. Open Access helps to create and sustain an inclusive, collaborative and Open research culture.
For more information on Open Access, please see the Open Access LibGuide.
| Article Processing Charge (APC) | the fee that is paid to the publisher by the author, their employer or their funder to allow immediate (gold) Open Access |
| Creative Commons Licence | a system of licensing that allows copyright owners to specify different levels of rights protection for their work |
| Double dipping | an institution pays twice for a Open Access journal article; firstly through the institutional subscription and secondly the APC if an author wishes to make their particular article open access |
| Embargo period | the length of time before a publisher will permit the posting of the postprint of an article into an Open Access repository. See Sherpa/Romeo for more details of embargo dates for individual journals |
| Institutional repository | an Open Access archive, organised and maintained by a higher education institution, giving access to the research outputs of staff within that institution. UDORA is the institutional repository at Derby. |
| Post Print | or accepted manuscript. The version of the paper which has been through peer review and has been accepted for publication. See Sherpa/Romeo for details of which version of the article you are able to upload for a particular journal/publisher |
| Preprint | or author original/author version. The version of the paper as submitted to a journal for peer review. See Sherpa/Romeo for details of which version of the article you are able to upload for a particular journal/publisher |