March 1, 2019, by Julie Baldwin

Open access milestones

2018 marked great some achievements in open access publishing for the University. Elle Malcolmson, from the Research Support Team shares more…

2000 open access funding approvals

Just before Christmas 2018 a significant gold open access (OA) milestone was reached: 2000 approved applications for gold OA funding since records began in January 2015.  Making a publication gold OA means that it is permanently, immediately and freely available, for anyone in the world with an internet connection. Much research is still locked behind publisher paywalls – only open to those who’ve paid for access. Therefore over the last four years, at least 2000 publications by University of Nottingham researchers have been published entirely free of barriers, benefiting researchers, the economy and society.

Information on how to apply for gold OA funding can be found here. Researchers with OA charges who usually pay through schools or faculties using school/faculty operational or project codes are invited to process these charges centrally through the Libraries Research Support Team. This offers a number of benefits to researchers:

  • Deposit of Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) into RIS as part of the application process
  • Access to discounts on open access charges through prepayment accounts or benefiting from institutional agreements with publishers
  • Review of AAM to determine if other funding sources are available
  • Support from an expert team with established publisher relationships
  • Support with compliance and acknowledging funding for UKRI/COAF funded outputs

Over one million repository downloads

2018 similarly proved a significant year for green OA with the achievement of another significant milestone. 2018 signalled the first time there were over one million downloads from our repositories in a year, reaching people across the world. You can search for this research here.

New open access funding web form

We also have exciting news that we are trialling a new online form to replace the current PDF funding form. If you would like to know more, then please get in touch at openacess@nottingham.ac.uk. The launch of the new form; following researcher feedback, will represent another great OA milestone – so watch this space! 

Posted in AcademicsNew StuffResearch Support