Act on Acceptance!

Open Access Week is an annual, international event to promote open access to research publications and data as a public good.  Openly accessible publications reportedly achieve a greater number of citations, and are viewed more often than those behind a paywall.

Many authors do already make their research available via e-print archives such as arXiv, institutional respositories such as Heriot-Watt’s Research Gateway, and data archives such as Dryad or the UK Data Service.

However, most funders now require publications and data to be openly accessible as a condition of the grant.

Open access and the next REF

All researchers should be aware that in order for a paper or conference paper to be submitted to the next REF, their publication must comply with the UK HE Funding Bodies Open Access Policy.   You must deposit your accepted manuscript in Pure no more than three months after acceptance.  The Policy applies to all journal articles or conference proceeding (with an ISSN) accepted for publication after 1st April 2016.  The Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is the version of the paper after peer-review but before any typesetting or proof-reading process has been carried out.

Support and guidance

Heriot-Watt University Information Services Research Support Team, based in the Library, can support you when you wish to make your paper, data or other publication open access. We are running sessions this week and in November at the Edinburgh Campus to answer your questions and provide key information. Sessions for other campuses will be timetabled in November.    We also have support pages.

Understanding Open Access
The session will covers funders’ policies on open access publications and data , including the OA policy for the next REF. 
 12:15 – 13:15, Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Anderson Room, Edinburgh Campus Library
Booking:  http://hw.ac.libcal.com/event/2917710

Open Data and the Impact on your Research
In this session we will: consider the challenges and opportunities that the open data agenda presents, discuss how best to meet these challenges and explore the support available to researchers at Heriot-Watt.

14:15 – 15:15, Friday, October 28, 2016
Anderson Room, Edinburgh Campus Library
Presenter:          Dr Rob Daley
Booking:  http://hw.ac.libcal.com/event/2918374

Open Access and the REF
This session concentrates on the REF and on how to add your publications to Pure.
15:15 – 16:15, Friday, October 28, 2016
Anderson Room, Edinburgh Campus Library
Booking: http://hw.ac.libcal.com/event/2918367

Understanding Open Access
 15:15 – 16:15, Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Anderson Room, Edinburgh Campus Library
http://hw.ac.libcal.com/event/2918372

Applying for open access fees/APCs.
As a reminder, if you are RCUK-funded,   any paper resulting wholly or in part from that funding should be made open access by either the Gold (by paying an open access fee) or Green (self-archiving in a repository) route.   The Library looks after the RCUK Open Access Grant.  Get in touch with us via open.access@hw.ac.uk  before you submit your paper to request funding.

You can check if your funder has open access requirements using the Sherpa Juliet service.

For more information see the open access support pages   or contact open.access@hw.ac.uk