Open Access & Institutional Repository: Introduction

If you are funded by a UKRI Council or a COAF charity, you can apply for your Open Access charges to be paid out of a block grant. We will not pay for any extra publications charges.  Apply at point of submission please

APC Application Form

Upload your manuscript into PURE for REF2021. 

Don't wait  - find out what you need to do

ePrints Soton is the University's Institutional Research Repository. It contains journal articles, books, PhD theses, conference papers, data, reports, working papers, art exhibitions and more. Records are created in PURE and automatically pushed through to ePrints.

The University has a policy that all research is recorded in our institutional repository, and that Accepted Manuscripts are uploaded and made available where possible.

ePrints Soton promotes research by making it available worldwide. It also feeds the publications section of the University staff web pages.

Return to the Research Support guide.

You may also be interested in our Research Data Management guide.

 Open Access refers to material that is freely available online to all readers at the point of use. There are two routes into Open Access - gold or green.

 Gold Open Access is where the author makes their article Open Access in a journal, sometimes for a fee. This journal may be exclusively  Open Access, or it may have a mixture of Open Access and subscription-only articles.

Green Open Access is where the author publishes in a journal and then deposits a version of this article into a subject or an institutional repository.

• Open Access makes your research available to far more people than a subscription-only journal article does. There is evidence that this can lead to an increase in citations of your work.

• Open Access encourages public engagement with research, which is often paid for out of public money.

• Your funding body may have a mandate which requires you to make your research available in an Open Access source.

• The University of Southampton has a Open Access Policy which requires you to upload a version of your article into our institutional repository where possible.

• REF2021 policy states that, to be eligible for submission to the REF2021, authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts (journal articles and conference proceedings) must have been deposited in an institutional or subject repository on acceptance for publication. This policy applies to research outputs accepted for publication after 1 April 2016.
• Plan S is an initiative for open access publishing launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders including UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and The Gates Foundation. The main principle (updated 31/5/19) is that “With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.”  Revised guidance about the Plan S principles and implementation was released on 31/5/19.

For help or advice with any Open Access or Institutional Repository queries please email eprints@soton.ac.uk

We are running Open Access training sessions via GradBook and StaffBook. If you would like any other help, please email eprints@soton.ac.uk