Know your open access options

Find out more about the benefits of self-archiving and going “green” 

If you are publishing research at Durham University, it is likely that you’ve had some contact with the ‘DRO team’ (i.e. the staff who manage Durham Research Online). 

One of the DRO team’s main responsibilities is supporting academics to self-archive their outputs.  You may receive email reminders, or receive a notification from us on Worktribe, reminding you to deposit your accepted manuscript – but what is an accepted manuscript and why is it so important to deposit? 

To put it simply, what the DRO team are looking for when we ask (beg?) for your accepted manuscript is the version that has been accepted and through peer-review but has not yet been through any copy-editing from the publisher – basically any copyright statements are a no-no. However, the important bit – the content – should be identical to the published version. You may also see the term ‘author accepted manuscript’ or AAM being used.  If you are unsure about a version, please get in touch with us at dro.admin@durham.ac.uk so we can help. 

REF 2021 – the carrot or the stick? 

Looking back to REF 2021, there were strict deposit and access criteria for your accepted manuscripts.  Academics were required to deposit the accepted manuscript for any journal article or conference paper, within 3 months of acceptance – and the DRO team had to make sure the file was opened within 3 months of any embargo period ending.

In the run up to REF 2021, the repository was subject to a flurry of activity – academics really got on board to make sure they met the open access requirements.  As a result, our REF Open Access compliance was 98.82% overall – a figure we are proud of.

Following REF 2021, we’ve noticed that there’s been a slight decline in the number of accepted manuscripts being deposited in Durham Research Online.  There’s a few potential reasons for this including post-REF 2021 fatigue; changes in the team and the fantastic work being undertaken by our ‘gold’ colleagues in promoting publisher deals, the institutional fund and our funder Block Grants 

This isn’t to say that accepted manuscripts and green open access no longer have a place though – far from it. Some of the (many) benefits of self-arching your work include: 

• Improved discoverability of your work as harvesters, such as Google Scholar, will recommend your work to interested researchers 
• Commitment to a more equitable research environment – green open access models do not lock articles behind a paywall, meaning anyone, anywhere in the world can access your research 
• In relation to this, there’s no fee to make your research green open access like there is with ‘gold’, so all researchers can benefit from self-archiving their work, regardless of their own or their institution’s ability to pay  
• Long term preservation of your work – Durham University are invested in making sure that Durham research is made available – but there is no guarantee that external publisher platforms will remain available long term 

Funder Policies  

The recognition of the benefits of green open access and self-archiving are reflected in funder policies. UKRI and Wellcome have both established policies which use self-archiving of the accepted manuscript, (with rights retention for journal articles) as an option to meet funder requirements. Both have recently extended their policies to include self-archiving of monographs and book chapters as an open access option too.  

To support funder requirements, Durham University, alongside partners from N8 universities, have adopted a ‘Research Publications Policy’.  You can read the details on our guides, but to summarise, for the DRO team, this involves making sure all journal articles, submitted after the 1^st April 2023, are made available with a CC BY licence. 

DRO Team – here to help

• You may start to receive more friendly reminders from the DRO team to prompt you to deposit your accepted manuscript.  We aim to make this as easy as possible for you – really, all you need to do is email it to us at dro.admin@durham.ac.uk and we will take care of it for you.  
• Book an online training session with us through Oracle.  These won’t take more than an hour of your time and will give you the opportunity to learn about how to use Worktribe, the benefits of open access and ask any questions you may have about green open access. We’d love to meet you! 
• We are also happy to pop to your department for a chat or training.
• Remember we are always just an email away if you need any support with depositing your outputs.  
• We enjoy promoting your work – let us know if you’d like to do a library blog post.
• You may see us sharing your work on X (formerly known as Twitter) too!

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