BHF Open Access Policy – October 1 2020 – 31 March 2021
Swansea University is in receipt of a small block grant to support the BHF Open Access policy. The Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) support has now ended and the BHF has allocated £2,507 to support researchers to comply with their Open Access policy.
This small fund is available on a first come, first served basis for payment of article processing charges until the end of March for any Swansea University corresponding author.
From January 1 2021 until December 31 2023 publication fees for open access will be automatically covered by the flat fee publisher agreement with Swansea University Library for the following titles:
To be eligible for full payment of publications fees, the corresponding author must be affiliated with Swansea University. Please ensure that you use your Swansea University email address and identify your affiliation in the publisher submission system.
All article types in the five eligible journals are covered under the flat fee deal.
Articles will be automatically published with a Creative Commons CC-BY Attribution license. PLOS articles are archived in LOCKSS and syndicated to PubMed Central/EuropePMC. PLOS requires data sharing where not subject to legal or ethical restrictions and has adopted the CRediT taxonomy.
PLOS reserves the right to accept or reject applications for financial support. If PLOS or the institution choose to reject the payment for Article Processing Charges (APCs), PLOS will invoice the authors individually, who retain full payment responsibility.
Further details on all open access publisher agreements and discounts for Swansea University researchers are listed on our Open Access Financial Support for APCs webpage.
Often we assume that new researchers are already aware of how the process of submitting an article to a journal goes, and how long it takes, so this is a back-to-basics post to take you through the process step-by-step.
First things first: Choosing a Journal
There seems to be a new Journal announced online every other week, and this includes ‘predatory journals’ so how can you tell if a journal you may want to submit to is legitimate?
1. Check their website; does it look professional? Does it link to other sites, for example members of the editorial board and their home institutions? Is the grammar and spelling up to scratch?
2. Are they indexed? To be indexed by the main databases (like Scopus and Web of Science) a journal has to adhere to strict criteria. Google Scholar is not transparent in the way they indexed and therefore can’t be reliable.
To check whether the journal is indexed go to Scopus or Web of Science and search the Journal title.
3. Some Journal titles are very similar so it is a good idea to check the ISSN. The ISSN should appear on the Journal ‘About’ pages, and you can check it on a site like Sherpa Romeo or search the Library Hub Discover for more information about the Journal. If it doesn’t appear on either of them, be wary.
What is a Journal Impact Factor and can it help me here?
The Journal Impact Factor is a measure reflecting the annual average (mean) number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. The JIF can be useful in comparing the relative influence of journals within a discipline, as measured by citations. However, it cannot be used as an indicator of the quality of individual articles or authors
If you’re still not sure, just get in touch and email me; e.c.downes@swansea.ac.uk
Submission process
The turn around time between submitting your article, having it reviewed and acceptance varies between discipline. It can take weeks or months so check the journal’s submission information for an estimate
Open Access and Copyright
The point at which decisions on Copyright and Open Access have to be made varies between journals but is generally around the Acceptance stage.
You need to know a few things;
1. If you intend to publish the ‘traditional route’ or in ‘subscription articles’, this means that you do not pay any publishing costs, but your article will be behind a paywall for anyone outside of a university, or in a university which doesn’t have a subscription to that journal. In this case you will be asked to transfer copyright to the publisher.
In this case, to comply with Swansea OA Policy, you will need to upload the Accepted Manuscript into RIS as ‘Green Open Access’
2. If you intend to publish Gold Open Access with the journal, this tends to result in the journal requiring an ‘APC’ – Article Processing Charge usually £2500+. More information about APCs and financing them are found on our Open Access page.
If this is the route you choose, the article is assigned a ‘Creative Commons‘ license which allows you to keep the copyright. The article is then freely available to anyone whether they subscribe to the journal or not.
What do I need to do after the article has been accepted?
1. Create a record in RIS following the guidance. This ensures that your paper complies with REF rules if it is eligible. If you don’t have the full details to fill in the record, that is fine. You or our team can fill in the details later, when information like the DOI, Volume and Issue number become available.
2. Share your work! If you don’t promote your work, who will?
Subscription journals Corresponding authors publishing an article in 900+ subscription journals in the current SAGE Premier package which offers hybrid open access publishing (SAGE Choice) can be published open access at a highly discounted rate of 200 GBP.
Authors do not need to take any action to benefit from this offer. SAGE will contact all eligible authors to inform them of the agreement and invite them to the SAGE Open Access Portal to take any additional steps needed to make their article open access under the terms of this agreement.
Gold open access journals Corresponding authors publishing an article in a gold open access journal are also entitled to a 20% discount on the prevailing article processing charge (APC) for that journal. Click here for the participating Gold journal title list. This discount will be applied automatically in the SAGE Open Access Portal. Where an author is eligible for more than one discount, discounts cannot be combined but the highest discount available to the author will be applied to the APC due.
Eligible corresponding authors should use their Swansea University email address in all applications.
The Author(s) can then accept or reject Open Access Publishing, and if selecting Open Access, digitally sign the publishing agreement. The Author(s) have 14 days to make the selection, otherwise the article will continue to be published in subscription format.
The Author(s) then select a billing method for the £200 fee. They can pay directly by Credit Card or Invoice; or they can assign a third party bill-payer.
Please note: this discount cannot be applied retrospectively (after the 14 days has elapsed).
Some titles are excluded from this agreement and are listed here.
Corresponding authors who are funded by UKRI can apply for Swansea University financial support by completing the online application form at the point of acceptance. Full details are on the Open Access Library Guide.
IOP Publishing (IOP), Jisc Collections and Swansea University Library Service have come to an agreement which enables researchers to publish their work on an open access basis at no additional cost in the majority of IOP’s hybrid journals. The agreement balances the cost of hybrid article publication charges (APCs) against journal license fees for 2020 onwards.
All corresponding (submitting) authors can publish in eligible journals open access without barriers, without additional cost, and be certain that they comply to any open access requirement. Eligible hybrid titles are available from this list.
Research articles and reviews (letters, papers, reviews and special issue articles) accepted for publication after 1 Jan 2020 are eligible, IOP will automatically identify qualifying articles and inform authors of their inclusion.
Included in the agreement are all subscription journals, owned by IOP Publishing, which offer a hybrid open access option. In addition, the agreement also includes selected journals which are published by IOP Publishing on behalf of our society partners.
1. Identify yourself clearly in the article submission form and the article itself
2. Use a Swansea University email address
3. Follow the IOP submission instructions
Articles are published with a Creative Commons CC-BY licence at no cost to you.
Discounted APCs
Corresponding (submitting) authors at subscribing institutions can also benefit from a 70% discount on the standard APC of hybrid journals not included in the above list that are published with some of our partner societies. Please visit IOP for further details. This discount is not available for any journal that is funded by page charges or submissions fees.
Publish Your Open Access Research Articles with Wiley From March 2020 Swansea University is a participating UK institution in partnership with Wiley and the JISC Open Access Agreement for Institutions. This researcher support is provided by the Swansea University Library Service.
Author’s may publish articles in any of Wiley’s fully Gold Open Access, or OnlineOpen hybrid (subscription) journals with no open access costs to the author*. A list of Wiley’s Open Access and hybrid subscription journals is available from the Open Access Author Dashboard together with access to an Author Compliance Tool so you can check if you meet your funder obligations.
To publish without having to pay additional Article Publication Charges (APCs), the corresponding author must be from a participating UK institution and the article must have been accepted on or after 2 March 2020.
Eligibility criteria:
Your manuscript must have been accepted on or after 2March 2020
You must be the corresponding author who is affiliated with aparticipating UK institution at the point of acceptance
You must publish open access in a fully gold OA journal or a hybrid (subscription) journal that offers OnlineOpen
If publishing in a hybrid (subscription) journal, you must order OnlineOpen at the point of acceptance by using the Wiley Author Services workflow
As the Wiley Open Access Account holder, the Library Research Support team will authorise your request provided you meet the eligibility criteria. Please use a Swansea University email address to help us authenticate your application. We will contact you directly if we need additional information before approving your request
This agreement cannot be used to cover additional charges (e.g. cover, color, and page charges), which individual journals administer separately
Please ensure that you acknowledge your funder and provide details for any supporting data in the published article. This is a requirement for research articles supported by many funders, including UKRI
The British Library are running a series of webinars throughout May that may be of interest to many of you.
How to access digital resources: a free webinar for researchers Friday 1st May, 10.30-11.30am Researchers working from home may find now, more than ever, that they cannot access all they need to do their research. This webinar will introduce the concept of open access, and the various tools and resources that enable access to the resources researchers need. Details and sign-up here:https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4784745156984703756
The British Library’s Shared Research Repository Thursday 7th May, 2.30-3.30pm Creative and cultural organisations require repositories that look good, are attractive to users and support a wide range of non-text research outputs. Join us to learn more about our shared repository for UK cultural heritage organisations. Details and sign-up here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5003834943448442636
Introduction to research data, data services and DataCite at the British Library (and beyond) Thursday 14th May, 2.30-3.30pm This webinar will provide an introduction to research data and how to use persistent identifiers such as DOIs to make research data and other digital outputs like theses and grey literature findable and citable online. This webinar will also provide an introduction to DataCite, an international non-profit organisation, which enables the ability to create DOIs for digital objects. Details and sign-up here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6958681955238901260
Introduction to EThOS: the British Library database of UK theses Thursday 21st May, 2.30-3.30pm The British Library service known as EThOS is effectively a shop window on the amazing doctoral research undertaken in UK universities. With half a million thesis titles listed, you can uncover unique research on every topic imaginable and often download the full thesis file to use immediately for your own research. This webinar will offer a guided walk through the features and content of EThOS, and the research potential for making use of EThOS as a dataset. Details and sign-up here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1072813692823727372
Project FREYA: How persistent identifiers can connect research together Thursday 28th May, 2.30-3.30pm This webinar will showcase the latest developments from the EC-funded FREYA project, including the PID Graph which provides a method to discover the relationships between different researchers and their organisations and find out the full impact of research outputs. It will also describe upcoming developments planned in the final year of the project such as a Common DOI Search. Details and sign-up here:https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6895938324199891724
Please join the team at the BL for as many of these as you can. They will all last approximately 25-30 minutes with time for questions.
The Library Research Support Team (Anna, Ellie and Caroline) are working remotely and are still available to support Swansea University researchers with queries about Research Outputs in RIS & Cronfa, Open Access, Publishing, Copyright, Open Research, Research Impact, E-Thesis Deposit, Post-graduate training etc.
If you would like to talk directly, then we can use Zoom or TEAMS. Please contact us to arrange a suitable time for an online meeting.
Meanwhile in other news…
Our open access APC online form is currenly closed but should be back up and running after April 1st when we expect new funds to support requests for financial support for UKRI supported research.
The recent update to the Research Information System (RIS) still figures quite prominently in our workflow and we are working closely with the developers as tweaks and final development moves towards a close at the end of March. If you want to report issues you can still use the ‘Feedback’ tab on the RIS screen.
We are an institutional online publisher of Open Access electronic journals. Our catalogue of titles allow readers to access and use the content free of charge under a Creative Commons licence.
We are growing this service and welcome enquiries from Swansea University researchers considering starting an academic journal. We do not charge the editors of journals for publishing with us on the Open Journal Systems platform (OJS). Editors wishing to transfer established journal titles to Swansea University are welcome to apply.
If you would like to find out more why don’t you come along to the next Academic Publishing Coffee Morning?
At this event, you can:
Speak to experienced academics and professional services staff who already publish journals
See what is really involved in editing and publishing academic publications
Learn about OJS, the journal publishing platform supported by Swansea’s Digital Humanities team
Find out what support we can offer you to set up your own peer-reviewed academic journal as part of Swansea’s digital press
Wednesday February 12th, 11:00 – 13:00 – Nanhyfer Workzone Sem Rm 01 on the Bay Campus
Swansea University Digital Press – Open Access Journal Proposal You can provide information about your prospective publication by completing the online form.
The Game of Open Access is a board game developed by staff at the University of Huddersfield. The aim is to engage researchers with the key concepts and tools required to meet Open Access mandates. Through the use of playful learning, it aims to develop an understanding of the role of Open Access through the initial idea for an article to its acceptance for publication.
In essence, you play as a researcher making your way through the research process landing on square where you pick up a card with a question about Open Access at Swansea University, then discuss and answer the questions to make your way around the board.
The Game is ‘customizable’, so if there are specific questions relevant for your department, we can include them.
Why should you take part?
The Game of Open Access is a fun way of getting to grips with points of confusion around open access (the difference between Green and Gold for example, or which type of manuscript to upload to RIS), in contrast to sitting listening to me talk for an hour. Also there are sweets.
Who is it for?
The game is relevant to researchers at any stage of their career, whether it’s your first introduction to open access or you need a refresh on Swansea’s specific policy. It can also be useful for professional services staff who support researchers. We have previously run the session in the College of Engineering, and the main feedback was not enough questions!
Interested? Get in touch with us to arrange a session in your college by emailing Ellie Downes, Research Librarian at e.c.downes@swansea.ac.uk
Image credit: @IOPPublishing
