Answered By: Stephen Street
Last Updated: 01 Feb, 2024     Views: 184

The University encourages all research staff authors to publish research outputs via open access mechanisms to maximise the visibility and impact of their research.

Brunel's policy and the open access policy for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) apply to all research staff. In addition, many funders - notably UKRI and Wellcome Trust - have further open research requirements as a condition of funding. Detailed information on funder requirements is available on our website linked below, though if you have any questions about your funder's open access requirements please email openaccess@brunel.ac.uk.
 

Before Submission

Whenever Brunel authors have hope or expectation of Brunel covering a paper's open access costs, they should fill out the standard open access funding form. This should be completed once a prospective venue for your work has been selected, but before submission. We will respond as soon as we can indicating whether Brunel can fund open access for the paper (either by individual payment or "transitional agreement") and whether this venue will comply with any funders - and what to do if it does not.

 

Transitional agreements (A.K.A. Transformative agreements, Read & Publish deals)

These agreements struck with between institutions like Brunel and academic publishers combine subscription and publishing costs. They are seen as providing a transition period before the publisher converts their roster of journals to a fully open access model. In practice they mean that eligible articles will be published open access in a way that meets the requirements of funders, and without incurring any further costs.

These deals vary from publisher to publisher, and determining eligibility can be complex. Not all articles submitted to "transitional agreement" journals will be covered. We recommend that the the standard open access funding form be filled out whenever a Brunel author has any expectation of Brunel covering the costs of open access but it should be filled in for "transitional agreement" journals without fail in those cases where the funder is Plan S aligned, or the journal is question is fully open access.

Whether a paper acknowledges a cOAlition S funder or not, journalcheckertool.org can be used to see whether Brunel has a "transitional agreement" with a prospective journal's publisher to cover any open access costs. If your funder doesn't appear in the dropdown list, or you have no funder, simply enter UKRI.

Ultimately you should choose the venue that you consider the best fit for your work, but when comparing two equally appropriate journals, the presence of a "transitional agreement" means that the article - if eligible and accepted for publication - will be published open access without incurring open access costs. We also maintain an indicative list of journals that should be covered by transitional deals, which can be requested from openaccess@brunel.ac.uk.


UKRI open access requirements

If you are a member of staff and receive funding from a UK Research Council (UKRI), you are expected to publish Gold open access where possible, in line with the Plan S principles.

You should request funding via the usual form prior to submission. 

Students on an UKRI funded studentship are also expected to meet the open access requirements. The Brunel academic co-author or supervisor is responsible for uploading the research output in BRAD and applying any open access publishing funds. 
 

University and REF requirements

On acceptance for publication staff should upload the final peer-reviewed manuscript for all journal articles and conference papers to BRAD, the University internal research database.  The manuscript will be automatically released in BURA, the institutional repository, after the expiry of the publisher embargo period.   

This applies also to articles intended to be published as Gold Open Access.
 

Embargo periods and licences 

Not all embargo periods or licences are compliant with REF and funder open access policies, so it is important to check that your paper will meet the acceptable embargo period for REF and any funders acknowledged in the publication.  You can check embargo periods and journal compliance with funder and REF requirements using the databases Sherpa REF,  Sherpa FACT and Sherpa ROMEO, linked below.

For further information, see our website or contact Open Access.