Your open access questions | RESEARCH NEWS from Swansea University Library

"Our open access briefing sessions have led to some interesting questions. Here are a selection: If I am publishing with someone from another university who has made their work open access do I still need to put my work in RIS? You do still need to put your work in RIS for it to count to Swansea University’s REF submission. Does the university have money to pay article processing charges? ISS has money to pay for RCUK funded research. Other funders may allow you to bid for funds within a grant and it may be worth checking with your college whether any funding is available. Details of RCUK funding are on our APC page and we will add information about any other funding we hear about. When do I need to start uploading my research to RIS? The deadline for the REF is April 2016 – anything published from then on has to be open access to be eligible for the next REF. However, the university policy is for people to start now so that any problems can be ironed out and everyone knows what to do by the time of the official deadline. How do I find out about embargo periods and when do they start from? The embargo periods for most publishers are listed in Sherpa Romeo. HEFCW allow up to a year’s embargo for STEM subjects and 2 years for other subjects. The embargo is usually counted from the date an article is first made public, whether this is online or in print. Is there a preferred format for documents? It is best to convert your manuscripts to the widely used PDF format. This avoids your work being inaccessible to those without the correct version of Word. Can I add book chapters to RIS? You can certainly add book chapters to RIS provided your publisher allows this. At the moment there is no central source for information on book publishers so you would have to approach them directly. Book chapters are not included in the open access requirements for the next REF so this is a matter of personal choice."