Open access publishing
Plan S
Plan S is an initiative for open access publishing, that is supported by cOAlitionS, a consortium of research funders, which includes UK Research and Innovation.
Plan S requires authors with research funded by public grants to make their work open access on publication by 2020. This can be one of three routes: publication in an open access journal, publication in an approved subject or institutional repository or in a “hybrid” open access journal that is taking steps to become fully open access.
In addition, all published work must be given a Creative Commons licence – CC BY, which allows others to distribute, remix, tweak and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as the original author is credited.
Find out more about Plan s >
Funding for article processing charges
- The University of Sussex has a number of deals and membership with several publishers which provide discounts, including Royal Society Publishing, PeerJ, Sage, Springer and Taylor and Francis. These deals can change on an annual basis, so it is best to check the institutional gold open access deals and discounts section of the University of Sussex library website.
The University of Sussex also administers funding for Article Processing Charges (APCs) where the research is funded by UK Research Councils or the Wellcome Trust. Please see the University of Sussex library website for details.
BSMS has small Open Access fund available to support the payment of Open Access fees once the principal BSMS author has explored all other Open Access routes offered by the University of Sussex and prior to submission of paper. Please refer to the revised Open Access flowchart for guidance. Only outputs suitable for submission in REF2029 will be considered. Request for OA funds is open all year round. Please email d.massey@bsms.ac.uk to request details on guidance and application form (view it on SharePoint here).
The University of Sussex has a very small PGR Open Access Fund to support Sussex/BSMS PGRs in publishing their work Gold Open Access when no other funds are available.
See details on the University of Sussex library website >
Further resources on open access
- Sherpa/Romeo. Provides details on publisher copyright and self-archiving policies and conditions.
- Sherpa Fact. Provides a database of research funders open access policies.
- Sherpa REF. A web service – funded and endorsed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) – that allows authors and institutions to quickly, accurately and easily check whether a journal they wish to publish in complies with open access (OA) policy for the Research Excellence Framework (REF).
University online repositories
BSMS primarily uses the SRO to ensure that all published research is made available open access, copyright permitting.
Find out how to submit items to SRO via Elements >
What can I make open access?