Open Access Sub-Policy

This is a sub-policy of the University's Open Research Policy which promotes transparency, accessibility, and inclusivity in research by embedding open practices through infrastructure, guidance, and culture.

1. Updates to this policy

1.1 This policy has been updated to align to the new University of Bristol policy management framework. It has also been updated through copy and line edits to enhance clarity, increase visibility of repository open access options, and update the section on delays or amendments to dissemination related to research security and commercialisation concerns. 

Back to top

2. Introduction

2.1 The University of Bristol’s Open Access (OA) Sub-Policy supports the institution’s commitment to open research by guiding researchers to make their publications open access and enabling them to meet the requirements of major funders and the Research Excellence Framework (REF). By following this policy, researchers will:

1. Ensure their work will be eligible for the REF.
2. Comply with their funders’ OA requirements.
3. Make their work freely available to all who would benefit from it.

2.2 The term must is used to denote actions that are compulsory or necessary, should denotes best practice and aspiration to lead by example.

Back to top

3. Scope

3.1 The Open Access Sub-Policy applies to all staff and students at the University of Bristol engaged in research activity, or activity in support of research across all disciplines, encouraging them to publish in open access – making research publications free to read and reuse from the date of publication, available under appropriate licences, and unrestricted by payment or subscription. While broadly applicable, it acknowledges that in certain cases – such as to address concerns about research security or protecting intellectual property – publications may need to be delayed or amended before submission. However, once a decision has been made to submit materials for publication, there should be no reason to avoid making the publication openly available.

Back to top

4. Definitions

4.1 Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM): the version of a scholarly output manuscript which is the final peer-reviewed text prior to formatting, layout or pagination which is applied by the publisher. It is sometimes called the ‘Accepted Manuscript’.

4.2 Bristol Research Portal: the University’s public-facing repository which displays research output records to users.

4.3 CC BY Licence: one of the Creative Commons licences. Generally considered to be the most permissive as it allows a wide reuse, including derivative and commercial use, but requiring attribution of the original creator. The legal code is available online at CC BY 4.0.

4.4 Pure: the University’s institutional repository system, used internally by researchers to create output records and deposit files, where appropriate, for discovery.

4.5 CRediT, DOI, Export Controls, Open access, Open licences, Preprint, Reproducibility, Research output and Transparency are defined in the University of Bristol Open Research Glossary. The Glossary includes other definitions relevant to Open Research..

Back to top

5. Responsibilities

5.1 Researchers (University Staff and Students engaged in research activity): Must ensure their publications comply with open access requirements, choose appropriate, trusted journals; opt for suitable open licences, deposit the accepted manuscript in Pure, and follow funder OA policies. Detailed responsibilities can be found in Responsibilities of researchers (section 9).

5.2 University of Bristol: Provides infrastructure, systems (like Pure), guidance and training, and negotiated publishing deals to support researchers in fulfilling open access objectives and obligations; monitors best practice in this area. Detailed responsibilities can be found in Responsibilities of the University (section 9).

1. Open Access Team (Research Support, Library Services): Supports researchers by providing advice on open access options and compliance requirements, managing open access deals, and processing Pure output records.
2. Research Compliance Team: Advises researchers in regard to research security matters, including steps to meet any applicable legal and regulatory framework requirements; maintains the Research Compliance Initial Assessment tool.
3. Commercialisation Team: Advises researchers on protecting intellectual property before publication, especially where research may have commercial potential.

Back to top

6. Openly sharing your publications and pre-prints

6.1 Make your research publications open access – free to read and reuse, published under appropriate licences, and unrestricted by payment or subscription.

6.2 The University recognises that content can be made available in open access in different ways – via a repository (green OA) or on the publisher’s webpage (gold or diamond OA) – and takes steps to provide open access routes for all researchers.

1. The University’s Scholarly Works Policy ensures a no-cost green OA option for you when publishing in hybrid journals (where an article processing charge (APC) is optional).
2. The University’s OA publishing deals and externally funded OA block grants can provide funding support for publishing charges in gold (fully OA) journals.
3. The University’s financial contributions to alternative OA models and programmes support diamond OA publishing at no cost to authors.

6.3 You may also wish to consider publishing your Pre-print in an appropriate pre-print server. Pre-print publication allows rapid dissemination of the completed draft manuscript in a freely accessible and citable manner, prior to formal peer review.

Back to top

7. What research publications should be open?

7.1 Researchers must make the following publications open access:

1. Journal articles.
2. Peer reviewed conference papers.
3. Monographs, edited collections and book chapters (when specifically required by funders).
4. Theses awarded by the University of Bristol (unless a permanent deferral is agreed).

7.2 Researchers should also consider whether they can make their other publications, such as reports, open access.

7.3 Trade books (unless they are the sole output of a funding grant), scholarly editions, exhibition catalogues, scholarly illustrated catalogues, textbooks and creative writing are not required to be made open access, though researchers are encouraged to do so, where feasible.

7.4 Other research objects or practices, such as data, code and pre-registration, are covered by separate sub-policies in those areas.

Back to top

8. Why is it important?

8.1 Publicly funded research is a public good. It should be openly available to the public, who ultimately funded the research.

8.2 Making our research open access ensures that it makes the greatest possible contribution to the advancement of knowledge and understanding.

8.3 Open access ensures that researchers everywhere can build on our research, even if they are not part of a wealthy academic institution.

8.4 Sharing under an open licence encourages reuse, allowing people to freely translate the work into different languages, include it in course packs, discuss it in online videos and reuse it in many other contexts.

8.5 Following open access principles helps build an open future for research, creating a more equitable scholarly publishing environment for all.

Back to top

9. What does it mean in practice?

9.1 Researchers must consider the open access polices of any co-authors, not just their own and decide between them who is responsible for ensuring all open access requirements are followed.

9.2 At a minimum, University of Bristol researchers must ensure their publication activity will always comply with their own funder and/or REF requirements.

Responsibilities of researchers

9.1 Before publishing, researchers must:

1. Select the most appropriate publication venue for their work. This will be the place which best allows their research to reach the audiences who need access to it, rather than a journal or publisher selected on their perceived reputation, in accordance with the University of Bristol’s commitments as a signatory to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
2. Ensure they are submitting to a trusted journal or publisher by using an appropriate assessment method, such as ThinkCheckSubmit.
3. Include the funder grant code(s) in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript. Researchers should check any relevant funder policy(ies) including their open access policy to ensure they meet all requirements, in addition to the requirements in this policy.
4. Include the University’s Scholarly Works Policy statement when submitting their manuscript to publishers.
   “For the purpose of open access, the author(s) has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.”
5. Identify how they will make their work open access. The Open Access Flowchart will help researchers navigate these decisions for journal articles. In most cases for both journal articles and monographs or chapters, there will be options that allow open access through paid (gold) and unpaid (green or diamond) routes.
6. If applicable, identify how they will pay any charges for gold open access publishing.
   1. An Open Access Publishing Agreement: The University of Bristol has OA publishing deals with many journals to waive APCs for affiliated researchers.
   2. University of Bristol pays the direct APC: If gold open access charges are not covered by a deal, the University of Bristol can only pay these for researchers funded by certain research funders, who provide a central open access block grant to the University (see thePay an Article Processing Charge (APC) webpage).
   3. Project grant or Funder reimburses the direct APC: some research funders allow these charges to be covered directly from the grant or reimbursed directly. Researchers should consider OA publishing costs at the grant application stage to include in bid costs wherever appropriate. Finance colleagues (Pre- or Post-Award will be able to advise).
   4. If none of the funding options above are available to a researcher the University of Bristol does not have other funding available and will not cover the charge.
   5. Researchers should be mindful of other charges they may be expected to pay (additional pages, colour illustrations, submission fees) which are distinct from gold open access charges. These cannot normally be paid by an open access block grant or project funds, nor will the University pay them. Researchers could request a waiver of such fees (subject to publisher’s discretion), citing that no funding is available to pay them.
   6. If fees will apply but there is no way to pay, researchers must plan a different open access route. This may mean publishing via the subscription route and depositing the accepted manuscript in Pure to be made openly available (hybrid journals only) or choosing a different journal without author-facing fees.
7. When given a choice of open access licence, choose the least restrictive one possible. The University strongly recommends a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.
8. Ensure related research outputs such as data and code are included or linked to the publication to facilitate reproducibility(see References and Further Information).
   1. A Data Access Statement should be included in all published work, including theses, even where there are no data associated with the publication or the data are inaccessible (see the Sharing Research Data webpage).

9.4 Before publishing, researchers should also consider:

1. Releasing the work as a preprint on an appropriate pre-print server, and plan how they will make their work open access when choosing their journal or publisher.
2. Using the CRediT Taxonomy or other contribution acknowledgements to specify how individual’s roles are identified and recognised for their input into the publication or underpinning research activity.
3. Assessing the commercialisation potential and/or potential research security concerns prior to submission to see whether a publication should be delayed or amended accordingly (see Delaying or Amending a Publication).

9.5 On acceptance of their manuscript for publication, researchers must create an output record in Pure, describing their publication.

At a minimum, the researcher must include:

1. 1. The date of acceptance.
   2. The title of the output.
   3. The authors (if the full list of authors is too long to reasonably add manually, the first six University of Bristol affiliated authors will be sufficient).
   4. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or link to the published version of the output (if available at that time).
   5. A copy of the authors’ accepted manuscript file.

9.6 At the point of publication, researchers must update the Pure record with:

1. 1. Date of online publication.
   2. DOI or link to the published version of the output.

This will notify the Open Access team (Library Services) to review and validate the record for public discovery. If the published version of the output is available in open access, the record will point to this version over the Accepted Manuscript file.

Back to top

Responsibilities of the university

9.7 To help researchers make their work open access, the University will provide an Open Access Team that helps researchers to comply with all the relevant OA requirements and reduces the administrative burden of open access policies on researchers.

9.8 The Open Access Team will assist researchers to meet funder and REF compliance requirements, as well as facilitate discoverability of their publications, this includes:

1. Increasing discovery by enhancing the metadata in Pure to include volume and issue numbers, DOIs, etc.
2. Corresponding with researchers to advise whether further action(s) may be required to ensure complete and compliant outputs (e.g. funder requirements) and records in Pure (e.g. REF requirements).
3. Processing the Pure record so it will appear on the Bristol Research Portal at the appropriate time.
4. Facilitating the ‘request a copy’ feature in the Bristol Research Portal for publications that cannot be made freely available due to copyright or other restrictions.
5. Managing open access publishing agreements and externally funded open access block grants.
6. Advocating and negotiating with JISC and publishers on behalf of the institution to ensure researchers have a wide range of OA publishing routes available to them (including publisher and repository routes), and that those routes best serve the needs of the research community.
7. Providing training and guidance to researchers on open access, including monitoring best practice in this area to ensure guidance and training is current and relevant.

Back to top

10. When should research publications be delayed or amended before submission?

10.1 Research security and/or commercial concerns (below) arise prior to submitting a manuscript for publication and should be addressed at that stage. However, once a decision has been made to submit materials for publication, there should be no reason to avoid making the publication openly available.

10.2 In determining whether a publication may need to be delayed or amended before submission, researchers should:

1. Consider Export Control Regulations if they work in a sensitive research area(s) as these may require that a publication be delayed or materials within be amended prior to submitting for peer review or to a preprint server, or for any other dissemination activity.
2. Previously have completed the Research Compliance Initial Assessment for their research activity and review any guidance provided by the Research Compliance team before submitting a manuscript.
3. Consider whether intellectual property protection may be appropriate for materials discussed or included in a manuscript, or for intermediate research objects such as data and code. This may need to be arranged before any dissemination activities occur (including submission for publication). For advice on protecting intellectual property researchers can contact the Commercialisation Team.
4. Apply for deferred access (embargoed release) to their thesis if there is a security risk to the author and/or prior to filing any related patent application(s). Deferred access restricts public access to prevent others from reading the thesis for a period of time.

Back to top

11. How will being open help your research?

11.1 There is evidence that open access publications are read more widely, cited more often, and have a greater impact.

11.2 Allowing wider communities to read our research leads to increased opportunities to work with those communities.

11.3 Demonstrating good open access practices helps demonstrate to funders that we follow their open access policies, making it easier for our researchers to secure funding.

11.4 Engaging with open research practices, including open access, enhances researchers’ credibility, visibility, and career progression. It also strengthens the University’s research culture and forms part of its research assessment and promotion criteria.

11.5 Publishing a Pre-print manuscript provides an opportunity for rapid and transparent dissemination prior to formal peer review. The Pre-print record can be cited by others, increasing visibility of the work and establishing priority of discovery. It also provides an opportunity to refine the manuscript prior to formal publication.

Back to top

12. References and further information

1. University of Bristol Open Access Publishing Guidance
2. University of Bristol Scholarly Works Policy
3. REF and Funder Open Access Policies
4. Guide to Creative Commons Licences
5. UK Reproducibility Network Open Research Primers
6. University of Bristol Open Research Policy and Sub-Policies

Back to top

The University of Bristol’s Open Access Sub-Policy is made available under a CC BY 4.0 License.

The PDF version of the Open Access Sub-Policy available at https://doi.org/10.71706/a3042323-6391-4040-ac0b-0b039a1de982 is the definitive and authoritative version.