We have added new guidance to our Research Support Website on how to ensure your eThesis is created in an accessible format. Covering:

• What accessibility is
• An accessibility checklist
• How to check your eThesis is accessible
• How to convert your eThesis to a PDF file
• PDF accessibility evaluation

We also have included downloadable Word and PDF documents for you  to print and read offline. To find out more head over to Creating an accessible eThesis.

We’ve also included a subpage which offers guidance on creating accessible tables in Microsoft Word. Any tables used in your ethesis also need to follow accessibility guidelines, to find out how head over to How to create and accessible table.

Have you seen our eTheses page on our Research Support Website?

The page offers guidance in a range of areas related to your eThesis including:

• How to deposit your eThesis
• Personal information
• Depositing a PhD by published work
• Embargoes
• Guidance on issuing take down requests for theses being sold on third part sites including suggested text for the request
• Copyright and your theses
• Underlying materials and data

To view electronic copies of OU theses on ORO follow this link.

If you need any further help or can’t find what you’re looking for, please get in touch with the Research Support Team at library-research-support@open.ac.uk

cOAlition S is committed to implementing the necessary measures to fulfil Plan S’s main principle: make full and immediate open access a reality. In their continual efforts to monitor the effects of Plan S on Research and Scholarly Communication, they have launched a pulse survey asking researchers if and how Plan S has affected their publishing practices and their views on Open Access.

The survey is accessible here and will be opened periodically throughout 2021 (first round ends on 16th March, 2021). All responses will remain completely anonymous.

Find out if you can publish gold open access at no cost to you

You may be aware that the Library has deals in place with several publishers which allow OU authors to publish gold open access (where the final journal article is immediately freely available to read or download from the publisher’s website) at reduced or zero cost to the author.

These deals, known as offsetting deals, transformative deals or Read and Publish deals, are exploratory models in the shift from pay-to-read (the journal subscription) to pay-to-publish. The costs of open access are part of an overall OU payment to the publisher covering both subscriptions and open access publishing. The open access charges are part of the agreement.

We are now pleased to announce that the Library has invested in several new offsetting deals with publishers starting from 1^st January 2021, including Cambridge University Press, the Company of Biologists, Future Science Group, Geological Society, PLOS, and the Royal Society.  Existing deals also cover major academic publishers such as Wiley, SAGE and Springer, as well as several smaller and society publishers. See the Library Research Support team’s webpages for full details of all the deals we have in place, along with their eligibility requirements.

These deals all vary – some will give you discounts on the full article processing charge (APC) and some waive it altogether; some deals cover only hybrid journals and others cover fully open access journals too. Most of the deals are only available to OU corresponding authors, and there may be restrictions on the types of paper covered (e.g. research and review articles only). Please ensure you check the details of the relevant publisher deal on the website before placing an order with a publisher and ensure you follow any instructions for authors to make sure eligibility for the deal is identified.

Where a discount applies, the Library is unable to pay the remainder of the APC, so these will need to be funded from a Faculty or other budget. The exception to this is articles from UKRI funded projects, if this applies please check the  requirements and complete the request form and the Library will advise you whether the  APC cost can be covered.

It’s a good idea to keep an eye on the deal webpages, since these agreements can change at short notice and new deals are being negotiated all the time.

On the 20th January 2021 we are hosting an OA Books ToolKit seminar. In this seminar Sotiria Psoma will give an introduction to the Open Access books toolkit. Sotiria is a member of the editorial advisory board and a lecturer at The Open University.

The OAPEN Foundation has launched a new open access (OA) books toolkit for researchers and academic book authors. The toolkit is a free-to-access, stakeholder-agnostic resource that aims to help authors better understand OA for books, increase trust in OA book publishing, provide reliable and easy-to-find answers to questions from authors, and to provide guidance on the process of publishing an OA book.

A broad and diverse Editorial Advisory Board is involved in the development and maintenance of the toolkit, including authors, publishers, research support staff, funders and other key stakeholders. The Editorial Advisory Board provides editorial support, which includes identifying new resources, suggesting changes and maintaining regular update cycles.

The seminar will be followed by discussion, questions and answers.

To sign up follow this link to Eventbrite and click ‘Register’.

Below are some points authors may like to consider before the new policy comes into force, for articles submitted for publication from 1 January 2021. Full details of the new policy can be found on the Wellcome Trust website.

What is the new Wellcome Trust OA policy?

All research articles submitted from 1 January 2021 must be freely available in PMC/Europe PMC at the time of publication and with a CC-BY licence. The 6-month embargo will no longer be permitted. OA publication costs in hybrid journals will no longer be funded.

What research is affected by the new policy?

The new policy will apply to all research articles supported in whole or in part by Wellcome.

Will I still be able to use Wellcome Open Research Platform?

Yes. If you haven’t used the Wellcome Open Research publishing platform before, you may like to check if it will suit your needs as it is still a compliant option under the new policy.

Will Wellcome continue to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs)?

Under the new policy Wellcome will pay APCs for articles published in fully open access journals (ie not subscription journals with an OA option or hybrid journals) which meet the CC-BY and PubMed Central/Europe PMC requirements.

How can I check that my chosen journal is fully open access (i.e. all articles are published immediately OA in the journal) and therefore WT compliant?

• If your chosen journal is listed in the Directory of OA Journals it means it is fully OA.
• Before 1st January 2021 Wellcome Trust will publish further guidance on which journals are compliant with its policy, and which will include compliant journals that may not be listed in DOAJ (e.g. BMJ Journal which publishes all research articles open access, but charges for access to other content such as editorials and commentaries – this type of journal is not considered to be hybrid by Wellcome).
• Wellcome mentions eLife, PLoS journals and Wellcome Open Research as compliant.
• Contact library-research-support@open.ac.uk for further help.

My chosen journal is not fully OA. Will I be able to publish in it and still be compliant?

You can publish in a subscription journal and be compliant with the new policy providing:

• You can self-archive your Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in Europe PMC.
• Your AAM is made immediately available (no embargo) under a CC-BY licence.

Examples of already ‘green compliant’ publishers: Royal Society, Microbiology Society.

Will Wellcome pay page and other non-OA publication charges?

No. Wellcome will not provide funds for non-OA publication costs, e.g. colour, page charges etc. Note that since 1st March 2019 you may not include such charges within grant applications or claim them back. This policy will continue with the revised OA policy. WT states that “Where these costs apply, researchers must use other funds to meet these costs.”

The Open University Open Access Policy, approved by the Research Committee in 2015, has been updated.

The purpose of the policy is to identify the Open University’s position with regard to open access publishing and to outline the responsibilities and requirements of the University and its researchers. 

For further inforamtion or to read the updated policy, head over to the Library Research Support website.

Now it’s 13^th year, Open Access Week is an international event which offers the opportunity to engage with the research community about the benefits of open access, and to help inspire wider participation to help make Open Access the norm for research and scholarship.

To mark the second day of Open Access Week, we’ve put together a short video to help you to get to grips with open access publishing – what it is, how to do it, and importantly, how to fund it (where a fee is charged).

We discuss the move away from the traditional subscription model of publishing towards an open access model, the difference between green and gold open access, and where you can look to fund ‘gold’.  Did you know that the OU has a whole host of new deals with publishers that allow you to publish gold at no or reduced cost? Watch the video to find out more, and see our website for full details of these transformative agreements (also known as offsetting deals), along with eligibility requirements.

Access the transcript.