Open Access Publishing at UCL

The Finch report on expanding access to research publications was released today and has been widely reported in the press. The report recommends the UK  should “embrace the transition to open access, and accelerate the process in a measured way.”.

UCL is already making efforts to ensure that its research is openly available:

UCL Discovery

UCL’s 2012 Publications Policy includes a mandate that UCL researchers must deposit their research in our institutional repository UCL Discovery, as far as copyright restrictions allow this.

Discovery is a large database of UCL research including journal articles, books chapters, theses, digital web resources and more. For further information including instructions on how to deposit your own research see http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/.

New journal publishing software

UCL has also developed its own software platform to support academic colleagues who wish to publish their own journals. This new software is being successfully tested with the Journal of Bentham Studies.

The software scheme is known as overlay journal software.  A presentation layer sits on top of UCL Discovery (where the papers are stored) and allows the academic editors of the journal to select papers and publish issues of the journal in the normal way.

There is no charge for using this service, which is offered by UCL Library Services to support research, knowledge transfer and public engagement in UCL. If you are interested, or would like a demonstration of the new software tools, please contact Paul Ayris.

Recovery of Open Access publishing costs

Academic colleagues can recover costs for Open Access publishing from research council grants. These costs can be recovered whilst the grant is still active. It should be noted that it is not possible to recover publication costs once the grant has ceased.

Special arrangements are in place for meeting the Open Access publication costs of those academic colleagues who are funded by the Wellcome Trust.

For further information on claiming open access fees please contact us.