Open Access (OA) comprises principles and practices that allow research outputs to be made freely available to anyone with access to an internet connection. Open access allows the potential for increased citations and impact and is vital to underpinning REF policy. All journal articles and conference items must be deposited in the university's repository, Pure, no later than three months after accepted for publication in order to comply with funder requirements including REF eligibility.
University of the West of Scotland is committed to aid in the dissemination and accessibility of research and library colleagues can be contacted at pure@uws.ac.uk with any enquiries.
Gold Open Access involves a research output being made available at no cost to the reader by being published immediately on the publisher's website, in addition to being deposited in an institutional repository. A CC BY license should be applied where possible in order to facilitate redistribution and re-use in further research.
Gold OA often involves an article payment charge (APC) paid to the publisher. UWS has a number of arrangements with publishers where the cost of the payment is covered through subscriptions paid for by the library, further information can be found here.
Green Open Access involves a copy of an author's accepted author manuscript (AAM) being deposited in a repository and made available immediately or after a set embargo period. The AAM is a copy of the paper with any peer-review comments implemented but prior to any publisher copyediting or typesetting; it is important that the intellectual content is equal to that of the final version. The final published version is normally published for free however only made available behind a paywall through individual payments or institutional subscriptions.