Funding for open access

The University is committed to making the outcomes arising from publicly funded research as widely available as possible. There are several open access options available to GCU staff and students when publishing their research. They are, in order of preference:

  1. Publish gold open access via one of the Library's publisher agreements
  2. Publish green open access by depositing the author accepted manuscript in Pure at the point of acceptance
  3. Apply to GCU's open access fund

Option 1: Publisher agreements

Corresponding authors who are staff or students at GCU can benefit from the library’s current agreements with a range of major academic publishers. These agreements allow open access publishing of original research articles and review articles at no cost to authors or with a discount.

By publishing open access using these agreements, articles are immediately available with no access barriers. When completing the open access option, authors should select the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) publishing licence where available. This is the least restrictive open access publishing licence and is compliant with open access funder policies and Plan S.

Please refer to the individual publisher sections below for more information on each agreement and the eligible journal titles. Please note that while we aim to make the lists of journals covered by the agreements on this webpage as accurate as possible, publishers may make changes over the course of the agreement. If you have any questions please contact libraryresearch@gcu.ac.uk.

Option 2: Green open access

Green open access (also known as self archiving) is a way to provide access to your research without cost to the authors or readers.

Authors upload a copy of their work to a repository, which hosts it online where their readers can find and download it. Most publishers have imposed rules on this process and only allow authors to upload the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM), also known as the Post-Print. This is the final draft of the work after changes from peer review have been added, but before the publisher has added any typesetting, layout or logos.

Most publishers only allow authors to post an article if it is placed under an embargo, preventing access for a specified period. This is often six months from the first date of publication for Medical papers, 12 months for Science and Technology, and 24 months for Arts and Humanities. Authors can check their publisher's policy by searching the Sherpa/Romeo database.

To publish green open access at GCU upload the author accepted manuscript to Pure at the point of acceptance. The Library Research Team will check the publisher's policy to ensure we meet their requirements. In rare cases it may not be possible to make the manuscript you provide available, often due to publisher restrictions on the type of file they'll allow you to make available. In these situations the team will contact you to explain your options.

Option 3: GCU open access fund

The library research team administers the University's open access fund which can be used to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) for gold open access publishing. The GCU Open Access Publication Funding Policy sets out the remit, eligibility criteria, and decision process for the allocation of open access funds for APCs. Corresponding authors employed at GCU may be eligible to have APCs paid for via this fund if:

  1. Your journal is not included in one of the publisher open access agreements
  2. The green open access route is not available
  3. Funding for gold open access was not included in the grant from your funder
  4. Colleagues from collaborating institutions do not have access to funds to cover the costs of publication
  5. The output aligns with the REF submission profile of the school or department. This will be assessed by the relevant Associate Dean for Research.

If none of the four options above are available then authors can apply to the fund by sending details of their publication, journal and article processing charge to libraryresearch@gcu.ac.uk. Applications for this fund must be made at the point of output submission. Please note any application for funding should be compliant with funder specific requirements and Plan S criteria, namely: