Oxford University open access policy

Researchers may publish in their choice of publication, provided funder and REF requirements are met and in the context of the University’s principles for maximising the use of OA block funds (see Annex 1).

This includes:

• administration of monies from funders to meet publishers’ OA charges;
• provision of training, information, and platforms (see below);
• and advice on OA matters to researchers in order to make their work open and accessible.

ORA makes research outputs openly available as soon as possible (subject to the authors’ and/or publisher’s permissions and any confidentiality or commercial constraints), and to promote widespread discovery, dissemination and maximise citation of works.

New publishing models will be supported and sustained by institutional block grant funds, where possible and, in collaboration with divisions and departments, through savings made from existing library budgets.

The Bodleian Libraries provides a hosting platform for shortform outputs, which is open to applications from staff and student-run publications.

Efforts will be made to influence publishing policies, costs, and practices that affect Oxford authors. The Bodleian Libraries collaborates with Jisc and other UK HEIs to reach cost-effective publishing deals and influence national OA funding policy.

1. The block grants that the University receives from research funders annually to support open access are managed with the aim to maximise Open Access publishing across the University. These are managed by the Bodleian Libraries.
2. No central budget is currently available for open access publishing costs beyond that provided by funders.
3. The following principles apply in maximising the use of the open access block grants:
   1. Researchers will be encouraged to use the green route to open access, including through the use of rights retention statements;
   2. Priority will be given to outputs published in venues that are covered by Read & Publish deals. The Bodleian’s Open Publishing Review Group (in consultation with relevant Divisions and Departments) will approve a deal where, according to set criteria, where it is considered to offer good value to Oxford;
   3. The payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs) will be prioritised for outputs published in fully open access journals (as indexed in DOAJ).
4. Funders do not permit certain publishing costs to be paid from block grants. These are: cover images, editorial assessment fees, extra page and colour charges, personal membership fees, reprints, submission charges, supplemental data publication fees, third party copyright charges.
5. All funds are allocated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. Funds cannot be reserved for future use, so this approach corrects for the varying lengths it can take for a paper to pass through a publisher’s workflow.
6. A proportion of Oxford’s block grants will be ringfenced, where possible, to support diamond, community-led, and mission-led open access services and infrastructure.
7. Spend on the block grant is monitored regularly by the Bodleian. Once each block grant reaches a certain capacity, new measures may be introduced to conserve funds. For example, it might be decided that only publishing charges for fully open access journals, and below a certain APC threshold, will be paid.
8. Where the University is engaging in negotiations for a publishing deal, a decision may be taken to suspend the payment of publishing charges with a particular publisher, or for certain titles, to influence a positive outcome to the negotiations.

The following grant of rights is provided in Statute XVI: Property, Contracts, and Trusts, Section B, concerning intellectual property:

9. (1) The University operates an Open Access Publications Policy which promotes making peer-reviewed research outputs available on an open access basis to increase their availability and use by others. Pursuant to the Open Access Publications Policy, those persons covered by the circumstances in section[s] 5(1)(a)[, (c) and (d)] automatically and in advance grant to the University a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, sublicensable licence of the copyright which they own in certain peer-reviewed research outputs, to make those outputs publicly available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence, or alternative licence terms if requested, provided that such licence complies with any applicable funder requirements. The peer-reviewed research outputs licensed by those persons to the University are: articles, reviews and conference papers, which are accepted for final publication in a journal, conference proceeding or publishing platform.

(2) Those persons to whom section 9(1) applies shall, upon request by the University, take any steps and/or sign any documents necessary in order to give effect to the licence set out in Section 9(1).

(3) Sections 9(1) and 9(2) of this statute do not apply to student members of the University, even if the criteria set out in section 5(3) of this statute are met, and/or if any of the circumstances set out in sections 5(1)(a), (c) or (d) apply to student members.