Open Access

When you publish open access on the publisher website, the final published version is freely available on the publisher website or publication platform to be read, downloaded, and reused. In many journals, this requires payment to the publisher of an open access publishing fee, these fees can be considerable.

The University or your research funder may pay open access publishing fees, by paying for a Transformative Agreement with the publisher, or paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). However, this is very costly to funders and institutions, consequently publishing open access is not available to all authors equally, as many do not have access to funding to pay. Many institutions cannot afford to participate and where funds are available, they are limited and often cannot cover all outputs.

Rights Retention refers to the accepted manuscript version, which has been through peer-review and is accepted for publication, but which does not have the publisher’s typesetting and formatting (over which the publisher retains copyright). Authors retain the rights to share and reuse their accepted manuscript e.g. by self-archiving in the institutional repository for immediate CC BY open access, without needing to pay a publishing fee. Rights Retention is more equitable as it is available to all authors, regardless of their ability to pay.

This is applicable to all submissions to Open or Hybrid journals and publishers:

On submission: 

Add a rights retention statement to the 'acknowledgement' section of the manuscript (or if this isn’t available upon submission, in the footer of the article) and the cover letter (if applicable):

Rights Retention Statement A

On acceptance: 

Deposit the Author's Accepted Manuscript in Surrey Open Research Repository. The Open Access team will ensure a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) is applied and the manuscript will be released on publication with zero embargo.

If a publisher chooses not to accept your submission because it contains a rights retention declaration, they should decline to publish such articles at the earliest possible opportunity and allow you to submit to another journal. This is why it is crucial to include the declaration in the cover letter and manuscript from the point of submission. 

For articles where compliance with the policy is not possible, an opt out is available via the alternative route listed at the bottom of these FAQs. 

For any additional information, please contact the Open Research team.

The publisher may have misunderstood what you are asking. Reiterate that the CC BY licence applies to the accepted manuscript version, you are not asking to publish the final published version open access on the publisher website (for which a fee often applies).

If the publisher understands that the CC BY licence applies to the accepted manuscript version only, they should not charge a fee for making your accepted manuscript available under a CC BY licence. You retain the rights to do this without any payment to the publisher. If not publishing in a fully open access journal or through a publisher agreement that the University has signed, authors must choose the subscription publication route instead of the open access route as institutional open access funds will not support publication charges in hybrid journals.

If you are not sure on the specific steps to follow, please contact the Open Research Team at openresearch@surrey.ac.uk. 

By including the set text “For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission" at submission, you are notifying the publisher at submission that any future accepted manuscript is licensed with CC BY. As you have notified the publisher of the CC BY licence on the accepted manuscript at submission, they should not subsequently ask you to sign a publishing agreement that is in conflict with this e.g. by imposing an embargo on the accepted manuscript or not allowing CC BY.

Publishers may offer a different publishing agreement to authors who are covered by a Rights Retention policy. If you are asked to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (sometimes called a copyright assignment) that conflicts with the University Rights Retention policy, please contact the Open Research team. The Rights Retention statement should take precedence, and signing such an agreement will affect your and the University’s use of the copyright.  

Many funders now require their funded authors to include Rights Retention statements in manuscript submissions; many other institutions also have Rights Retention policies in place. When your manuscript is covered by multiple Rights Retention policies i.e. funder or institutional, you do not need to include the statement multiple times. It is only necessary to include it once, you can use any variation of wording providing the meaning is retained.

If you forgot to include the Rights Retention statement in your manuscript submission, please contact the Open Research team to check if the publisher has been contacted in advance. If they have not, you should contact the journal office as soon as possible to let them know of your intentions to retain your copyright. If the publisher does not accept it, you may consider opting out of this policy.  

All authors will need to agree to the CC BY licence, or a similar one as specified in this policy, for each paper published. This should be agreed prior to submission and the rights retention wording included in the submitted manuscript. If agreement is not obtained, please consider opting out of the policy on that occasion.  

It is the corresponding author's responsibility to ensure that all authors consent to rights retention, but this doesn't require the signing of a separate contract document. In some cases, the copyright in work created by co-authors at other institutions may already be subject to rights retention policies. Where this is not the case agreement between the authors via email (for example) to use rights retention would be sufficient. Suggested email text to send to co-authors:

Dear co-author(s)
The University of Surrey’s Open Access to Research Output procedure incorporates rights retention. This means that I automatically provide the University with the rights to make the author accepted manuscript (AAM) of my journal articles and conference proceedings available under a Creative Commons (CC BY) 4.0 Licence without embargo.

Please see https://www.surrey.ac.uk/library/open-research/open-access for more information and let me know if you think there is any reason why we cannot make the AAM of our work available on this basis.

Please include the declaration at the point of submission and ensure it is not removed before publication. After acceptance, upload your accepted manuscript (containing the Rights Retention statement) on the Surrey Open Research Repository.

For articles with third -party copyright material, please clearly indicate within the manuscript the terms under which the material is released and state that the CC-BY licence is not applicable to this material. If the article contains significant third-party content which cannot be licensed as CC-BY, and the redaction of which would compromise the integrity of the article, consider opting-out. 

If a situation arises where the standard rights retention strategy meets resistance or calls for additional efforts, the Open Research team will advise authors on potential alternatives. 

The points below are a sequence of options, potential ‘best effort’ solutions and possible outcomes:

Alternative options

1. Add rights retentions statement to cover letter and acknowledgement section of paper, and deposit in Surrey Open Research Repository Repository.
2. If necessary, request amendment to publishing agreement to allow for archiving in an institutional repository with a CC BY Creative Commons licence and zero embargo.
3. If necessary, request separate open access permission from the editors/publisher, to allow for archiving in an institutional repository with a CC BY Creative Commons licence and zero embargo.

Best efforts

If Options 1-3 above fail to reach a satisfactory conclusion, researchers can seek support from the Open Research team, who will agree a best efforts approach which may include:

4. an embargo on the release of the accepted manuscript.

5. a more restrictive licence or complete removal of the Creative Commons licence.

Outcomes

If Options and Best efforts are not successful, the final steps are:

a) submitting and signing a standard publishing agreement, accepting limited open access. This resolution may result in non-compliance with funder policies, making the research output ineligible for submission to a REF exercise.

OR

b) requesting further advice from the Open Research team and Legal Office .

The table below shows how you can make your research articles Open Access.

The table below lists the journals included in our publishers deals and were article can be published at no additional cost.  

Open Access to monographs and edited collections. The term ‘monograph’ is used here to encompass “academic books written on a single subject of an aspect of a subject, typically aimed at, but not restricted to, a scholarly audience” (see OAPEN-UK report). These books can include both single-authored and multi-authored publications.

Several funders (including UKRI and the Wellcome Trust) require Open Access to monographs deriving from their grants. From January 2024, UKRI requires Open Access to monographs resulting from UKRI-funded projects within 12 months of publication.  For more information see funders’ requirements. At present a researcher publishing a UKRI-funded monograph will be able to claim up to £10,000 inc. VAT per monograph. There is no centralised funding for Open Access monograph funding, so any additional funding required will need to be found by the author. Authors without grant funding are encouraged to use one of the first two options listed below if they cannot find funds themselves and want to publish Open Access.

The community has put together a spreadsheet of publishers and costs, where you can see individual publishers polices and costs available at Open Book Environment (OBE) Dashboard - Google Sheets. A similar resource had also been created by JISC with their Open Access for Books.

Currently there are several business models supporting Open Access monograph publishing:

• Open Access publishers with no charge for the author. There are a growing number of fully Open Access publishers which use funding models whereby they do not charge the author a fee for publishing. However, where funding is available (e.g. UKRI funding), authors are encouraged to pay a fee. UKRI will also pay a subscription/membership/supporter cost up to £6,000 to Open Access publishers in this category if authors publish with them.
  • Examples in this category include:
    • Language Science Press
    • Open Book Publishers (£5,000 for funded works)
    • MIT Direct to Open
    • Punctum Books ($6,500 for funded works)
• Open University Presses. There are several University Presses which are established as fully Open Access publishers, and their charges are much smaller than either traditional university presses or commercial presses. All of these will be well under the £10,000 UKRI funding limit.
  • Examples in this category include:
    • UCL press
    • Scottish Universities Press
    • White Roses Press
    • Huddersfield Press
• University and Independent Presses. Several university and independent presses have Open Access options. Costs vary according to the length of monograph, but shorter ones are likely to be just under the UKRI £10,000 limit, and longer ones a little over the limit, but still normally under £12,000.   
  • Examples in this category include:
    • Bloomsbury
    • Boydell & Brewer
    • Bristol University Press/Policy Press
    • Edinburgh University Press
    • Liverpool University Press
    • Manchester University Press
• Commercial presses These are established commercial presses, and costs can vary according to the length of the monograph. Some shorter monographs may come under the £10,000 UKRI limit, but on the whole, these are likely to require significant additional funds, costing somewhere between £12,000 and £16,000.
  • Examples in this category include:
    • Cambridge University Press
    • Oxford University Press Springer
    • Palgrave
    • Routledge
    • Brill
    • De Gruyter
• Library-subsidised and crowdfunding models rely on communities to fund the costs of open monographs. Examples include the Open Library of Humanities library-subsidy model and the Unglue initiative to make books openly available.

Sharing book chapters in repositories

Some publishers, including Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Palgrave and Taylor and Francis, have policies allowing you to share your book chapter in your University’s repository, usually after an embargo period.

The University strongly encourages you to upload your book chapters in the repository. The Library will check the publisher’s policy for you and make the chapter available where possible.

Doctoral theses are a key outcome of research. We are committed to making past and current doctoral theses Open Access. Since 2015, all doctoral and MPhil students must deposit the final version of their thesis as approved by the examiners in the University’s Open Access repository.

In 2016 the University embarked on a project to make doctoral theses available to the wider public. All of our past theses have now been digitised.

Our doctoral theses can be accessed from the University’s Open Access repository. They can also be found via the British Library’s e-theses online service, EThOS.

View more information on open access to theses.

We continue to offer a fully-mediated service, where you send us your papers for us to deposit in the University’s Open Access repository. However, now you also have the option to create your own publication records and upload the corresponding author’s accepted manuscript directly in the repository.

• Please make the accepted version of your papers available as soon as you receive the final acceptance communication from your journal
• Where possible, please also deposit any research data, code and other materials associated with your publications. You can upload your data sets in the repository or create a record indicating where the datasets are stored (e.g. a discipline-specific repository). For more guidance, please see open data.

Option 1: Deposit directly

You are strongly encouraged to upload your publications directly in the repository. The Library will still check copyright and other information before making your paper live.

To deposit directly:

1. Visit the Open Research repository
2. On the top right corner, select Surrey Researchers sign in (use your university username and password)
3. Once logged in, select the 'add content' button (top right corner)
4. Select 'asset type.' By 'asset’ the system means type of research output (for example, article, book etc).

Tips:

• Check if the output is already in the repository; for example, already added by a co-author. This will save you time and avoid creating duplicates
• Entering an active DOI will automatically populate some fields
• By adding a PDF file, the platform can extract some information from it.

Should you wish to get more familiar with the platform, watch the 5-minute video on how to add a research output to your profile in the repository.

Option 2. Send your publications to the Library for uploading

Email your publications to the Library at openresearch@surrey.ac.uk. For recently accepted papers, please send us the file of the accepted manuscript as soon as the article has been accepted for publication.

Important: The version of the article to upload or send to us must be the accepted manuscript.

Agreements with publishers include 'transitional agreements' and prepayment or discount arrangements. 

Transitional agreements (also known as 'transformative' or 'read and publish' agreements) are negotiated between institutions/national consortia and publishers to enable a transition from a subscription publishing model to a fully Open Access publishing model, with the aim to make all research Open Access, and published under business models that are transparent and sustainable.

Transitional agreements are:

• Compliant with major funders: These agreements are strongly supported by many funders, guided by the principles of cOAlitionS
• Efficient: Having such agreements in place makes it overall easier for you to publish Open Access, as in most cases you no longer need to apply to the Library for an article processing charge (APC). See publishers' list.
• Cost-effective and transparent: Access to subscription content and Open Access publishing costs are part of a single deal, set up in ways that substantial savings are made over the course of the transition compared to paying Open Access costs individually. Costs and other information on the progress of the transition are publicly available and monitored.

The Library also has in place prepayment or discount arrangements. These are not transitional, but have been set up to benefit from discount offers and/or more efficient payment processes.

The Library manages two budgets to pay Open Access publication costs, known as article processing charges (APCs), for articles not already covered by publisher agreements:

• The UKRI Open Access Fund, allocated to Surrey on a yearly basis (running from April until March), covers eligible publications
• The Library Open Access Fund (please note this fund has been paused for the financial year 24/25) supports publications where the funder does not allocate funds to cover open access costs, or where the research is unfunded. If you don't have funds available, please contact your supervisor or the relevant Research Director in your school. 

In these cases, you must submit an article processing charge request form to the Library and receive an approval before you commit to a payment to the publisher.

Conditions

• Both research-active staff and PGRs at Surrey are eligible for the funds
• The paper must be a peer-reviewed research journal article or conference proceeding. The funds do not cover invited articles, monographs or book chapters
• You should normally be the principal investigator and/or the corresponding author
• You must choose to publish the article under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. For more information, please see copyright and licences
• The journal/Open Access option supported must be compliant with your funder’s requirements
• The funds do not cover colour printing or page charges. 

Please contact openresearch@surrey.ac.uk if you have any questions.

The library facilitates applications to the new UKRI Open Monographs Fund. 

More information on how you can request UKRI funding to publish your monographs are available here.

Please note, there is no centralised funding for Open Access monograph funding, so any additional funding required will need to be found by the author. Authors without grant funding are encouraged to use one of the first two options listed below if they cannot find funds themselves and want to publish Open Access.

• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025 

• Eligibility:

  • you must be corresponding author
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey
  • you must select a CC-BY licence

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in eligible Hybrid and Open Access journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.

• Cambridge University Press – full agreement details and eligible journal list .
• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in eligible Hybrid and Open Access journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.

• All the Society’s six journals are covered by our agreement including: Microbiology, Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, Microbial Genomics, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology and Access Microbiology
• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2026.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in eligible journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.

• Open access publishing available at no cost in the following journal: PLOS Biology
• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in PLOS Biology (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.
  • For fully open access journals non included in the agreement (listed as Group A on our Journal List) you must submit an article processing charge request. 

• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.
• You are eligible only if you are the corresponding author. To be eligible, authors must use their University of Surrey email address on submission.
• You do not need to submit an article processing charge form
• Five subscription journals and two full Open Access journals are covered.

• Open access publishing available at no cost in both Royal College of General Practitioners journals: British Journal of General Practice and BJGP Open 
• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2024.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author 
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey 
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in eligible hybrid journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.

• Royal Society of Chemistry journal finder
• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in eligible hybrid journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.
  • For fully open access journals (listed as Group A on our Journal List) you must submit an article processing charge request. 

• You can publish Open Access in the majority of Sage’s hybrid (subscription and OA) journals, without incurring an open access fee (article processing charge).
• The agreement covers articles accepted for publication between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2025.
• A small number of SAGE hybrid journals are excluded from the offer. A list of these titles is available on the Sage website. Some article types are also excluded, for example; book reviews, commercially sponsored articles.
• More information on the agreement is available at the SAGE information page
• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in eligible journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.
  • For fully open access journals (listed as Group A on our Journal List) you must submit an article processing charge request. 

• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author 
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey 
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in eligible hybrid journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.
  • For fully open access journals (listed as Group A on our Journal List) you must submit an article processing charge request. 

Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.

• It covers most of the hybrid (subscription and OA) journals in their Social Science and Humanities (SS&H) and Science and Technology (S&T) journal collections. The deal does not cover titles in T&F’s Medicine collection, or any of T&F’s fully Open Access journals.
• The deal provides a capped number of credits per year across participating institutions in the UK and will end when all credits have been used.
• You are eligible only if you are the corresponding author. You must use your University of Surrey email address and list the University of Surrey as their organisation on submission.
• For fully OA journals, you will need to submit an  an article processing charge form. Please see the Open Access step-by-step process for more details
• Only research articles are covered.

• All fully open access journals and hybrid journals offering Online Open
• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in eligible  Hybrid and Open Access journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.

Journals included: Eligible hybrid journals (listed as Group B on our Journal List)

2025 renewal: cancelled for 2025.

Journals included: eligible Hybrid journals 

2025 renewal: cancelled for 2025.

Journals included: Eligible hybrid and open access journals.

2025 renewal: cancelled for 2025.

Journals included: Eligible hybrid and open access journals.

2025 renewal: cancelled for 2025.

Journals included: the 2024 agreement included all 7 PLOS titles; for 2025 our agreement will include 1 PLOS journal.

• Open access publishing available at no cost in the following journals: PLOS Biology
• Current agreement in place until 31/12/2025.

• Eligibility: 

  • you must be corresponding author
  • your affiliation must be listed as University of Surrey
  • you must select a CC-BY licence 

• Article Processing Charge requests: 

  • You can publish at no cost in the journal part of this agreement (listed as Group B on our Journal List) and you don't need to submit an article processing request.
  • For fully open access journals not part of this agreement (listed as Group A on our Journal List) you must submit an article processing charge request.