Q. What is Open Access?

A good place to start locating Open Access publications is DOAJ (the Directory of Open Access Journals) which indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. These are known as Fully Gold Open Access journals. ​

Our page How to make your work open access has a step-by-step guide to assist you.

Making book chapters or monographs available Open Access works differently than journal articles or other types of research outputs. 

In most cases, authors sign their copyright over to the publisher so they cannot make chapters or monographs available via Green Open Access i.e. depositing it in Liverpool Elements to be made available in the University's Repository.  However, this is not always the case so please check with your publisher. You can also speak to your publisher about changing the licence under which the work will be made available to allow you to make it openly available. A ready-made licence addendum has been produced which you can use.

Publishers are increasingly offering the option to publish monographs via Gold Open Access by paying a book processing charge (BPC). The prices for this vary hugely depending on the publisher and can range from £2000 to over £10,000.

If making book chapters, monographs or other long-form research outputs Open Access is a requirement of a grant, make sure you factor in these costs when you initially apply for the grant. For other options, please contact the Open Access Manager. 

Please note that book chapters and monographs are not currently within the scope of the REF Open Access policy, so although we encourage you to make them openly available where possible, it is not compulsory.

To apply for funding for a Gold Open Access payment please complete the form which can be found on our open access funding pages.

Please note: You must submit your request for funding before you submit your article to the journal of your choice. We cannot fund articles which have already been submitted/accepted.

The Research Publications and Copyright policy has been implemented by the University to ensure that University of Liverpool researchers retain the rights to make their scholarly journal and conference papers available on an open access basis. Some funders require a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence instead of more restrictive licences (CC BY NC or CC BY NC ND). The Open Access team can advise you on which licence to choose.