At last week’s meeting of the University’s Research and Enterprise Committee, members approved a new open access policy for the University.  Aligned with, and supporting, HEFCE’s open access policy for the REF, the University policy states:

The University supports the principle of open access and expects researchers to share their research outputs freely, subject to legal, ethical, commercial or contractual constraints.

From 1st April 2016:
• All researchers will record bibliographic details of their research outputs in NECTAR within three months of the date of acceptance for publication, presentation or other dissemination in the public arena.
• The authors of journal articles and conference proceedings will upload the accepted full text copies of their work to NECTAR within three months of acceptance for publication.
• The full content of other research outputs should be deposited In NECTAR as soon as possible.
• All full content will be made openly available immediately or following the expiry of an agreed embargo period.

Why is this policy necessary?

In March 2014, HEFCE announced that, from April 2016, “to be eligible for submission to the post-2014 REF, outputs must have been deposited in an institutional or subject repository on acceptance for publication, and made open-access within a specified time period”.  The Northampton policy and the corresponding amendments to NECTAR workflow are designed to ensure that no University researcher is excluded from the next REF through lack of compliance with HEFCE’s open access policy.

What do I need to do?

Act on acceptance.  As soon as you have had a journal article or conference paper accepted for publication, simply enter as many details as you can into NECTAR and upload the accepted version of your paper.  The NECTAR team will do the rest.

We have three months from the date of acceptance to comply with the policy so please try to put your work in NECTAR as soon as possible.  We recognise that at this stage you will not necessarily have all the information needed (such as volume, issue and page numbers); these details will have to be added later.

Note: the full deposit workflow is described by Nick in his post: The NECTAR journey: from acceptance to compliance.

Further information

The policy document contains additional guidance on compliance with funders’ open access policies (including paying for ‘gold’ open access); uniquely identifying yourself and the University; publishers’ self-archiving policies and embargoes; the importance of keeping different versions of your paper; and the deposit process in NECTAR.  Please do take a look at this and if any of it is unclear then please contact Nick or Miggie for help.