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RPS and REF open access policy training sessions

By Patrycja, on 27 September 2018

This academic year, UCL Open Access Team is introducing a programme of regular training sessions on RPS and the REF open access policy.

All UCL authors are required to maintain a list of their publications in UCL’s Research Publication Service (RPS). To comply with the REF open access policy, they must also upload the final accepted manuscript version of their research articles and conference proceedings to RPS. This needs to be done no later than three months after first online publication. The Open Access Team review the manuscript and make it open access through UCL Discovery, UCL’s open access repository.

Our training sessions will explain the REF open access policy and what to do to comply with its requirements. They will also show you how to, in RPS:

  • set up name-based search settings
  • use all the advantages of RPS’s automated claiming tool (including linking RPS to your ORCID ID)
  • record a publication
  • upload a file

The sessions will be a good opportunity to ask questions about RPS and the REF open access policy, and they are open to all UCL staff and interested research students. New members of staff, and anyone who is unsure about any of the features mentioned above, are strongly encouraged to attend. Regular reports on compliance with the REF open access policy, and on academics’ use of RPS, are sent to Faculty Deans and Heads of Department. 

Upcoming sessions

Tuesday, 9th October, 14:00 – 15:00
Engineering Front Building, room 104

Tuesday, 16th October, 12:00 – 13:00
IOE, 20 Bedford Way, room W2.06

Tuesday, 23rd October, 10:00 – 11:00
Engineering Front Building, room 104

To book, and if you have any questions, please email: open-access@ucl.ac.uk
Also let us know if you would like to organise group training or drop-in sessions in your department.

 

REF submission guidance: what it means for open access

By Catherine Sharp, on 26 July 2018

The new draft REF submission guidance includes two sections on open access: paragraphs 107-116 on the intent of the REF open access policy, and paragraphs 213-245 on the detail of the requirements. For the most part, the new provisions restate the requirements that will by now be familiar to all academics. One or two changes and adjustments may be helpful for UCL authors, though.

1. A key change that will affect UCL’s REF submission as a whole is that a small percentage – 5% – of the total number of articles and conference papers that an institution submits may be non-compliant. This is very welcome, because it will allow us to submit some older outputs that were accepted before authors were used to the open access requirements. In due course, UCL will introduce guidelines for submitting non-compliant outputs, but these will be selected very carefully. Note that this provision should be treated with caution, and authors should not rely on it for any existing or new papers.

More widely, the new guidance emphasises that the environment section will allow units of assessment to demonstrate where they have gone beyond the REF requirements. This is one of the reasons that UCL’s monthly compliance reports to departments include all articles and conference papers.  Academics should continue to upload all papers to RPS within 3 months of first online publication (ideally within 3 months of acceptance), regardless of whether they will be submitted to the REF.

2. There is a second important change for users of arXiv and other preprint services. Where a paper has been uploaded to a preprint service, and the version in the preprint service is the same as the accepted manuscript, and it was uploaded to the preprint service before it was published online, the paper complies with the open access policy. This is particularly good news for users of arXiv, but it does not mean that all papers in arXiv comply with the open access policy.

UCL’s Open Access Team already assesses papers in arXiv and uploads them to RPS (to demonstrate compliance with the policy) where they are Gold open access, where the arXiv version is identified as the accepted manuscript, or where the publisher allows the published version to be used in RPS/UCL Discovery. This additional provision means that if authors confirm that the version in arXiv is the same as the accepted manuscript/published version, the paper can be marked as compliant in RPS. If this applies to any of your papers, please contact the Open Access Team (open-access@ucl.ac.uk).

3. The guidance restates the exceptions to the policy, including the exception where a new member of staff uploaded their manuscript to their previous institution’s repository. UCL’s advice remains the same: where this exception applies, academics should contact the Open Access Team (open-access@ucl.ac.uk) so that we can check whether the paper complies and record the exception if not.

4. There is no change to the timing requirements. The strict requirement is that papers are uploaded to RPS within three months of acceptance (defined as the “’firm’ accepted date”), but there is an exception (which UCL’s Open Access Team will apply) for papers that do not meet this deadline, but that are uploaded within 3 months of first online publication (the “’early online’ date”). In practice, if a record does not appear in RPS within one month of first online publication, authors are advised to create a manual record, and to upload their manuscript to it. There is a guide to creating manual records on our webpages.

Please contact the Open Access Team for more information.

The work of UCL’s Open Access Team

By Patrycja, on 6 February 2018

UCL’s Open Access Team is part of UCL Library Services. We provide advice on open access issues to all UCL researchers. This includes answering enquires from academics and advising on the most appropriate open access options, taking into account the journal type, authorship and funding that contributed to the article.

Green open access and the REF Policy

Much of our work involves supporting academics in using UCL’s Research Publications Service (RPS), and helping them to comply with the REF open access policy. We answer RPS- and REF-related enquires, provide individual and group training sessions, and compile regular compliance and engagement reports for departments. We also check every new article or conference proceeding record in RPS to ensure that acceptance, online publication and print publication dates are recorded correctly. Where an accepted manuscript is available on the journal’s website, or the journal’s copyright policy allows us to use the published PDF, we upload a file to RPS on the author’s behalf. If the article is published as Gold open access with a licence that allows re-use, it falls under an exception in the REF open access policy, so we add the exception to the article record and make the published PDF openly available in UCL Discovery.

In most cases, in order to comply with the REF policy and benefit from open access, the author needs to upload the accepted manuscript version of their paper to RPS. When we receive a new manuscript through RPS, the Open Access Team checks the publisher’s policy and applies any required delay period before making the manuscript openly available in UCL Discovery. If the author has uploaded a version that cannot be made open access, we contact them to request the accepted manuscript.

Separately, we manage open access for research theses. At present, there are more than 9,000 theses openly available in UCL Discovery.

Gold open access

UCL encourages Green open access. However, in some cases funds are available for Gold open access: where papers are funded by one of the UK Research Councils or the COAF medical charities, or where the article is published in a fully open access journal (where open access charges are mandatory and all papers are made openly available). We check whether papers are eligible for funding, and arrange payment – either by an invoice or via one of our prepayment agreements. Where we have paid for open access, we ensure that the paper is made openly available with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence when it’s published. We also report regularly to RCUK and COAF.

Getting in touch

The Open Access Team is based in the Main and Science Libraries. We can be contacted via e-mail, by phone (020 3108 1336 (internal 51336)), and via our web form here.