University fund for open access publication launches

Researchers at the University of Essex can now make use of an institutional open access fund to publish their journal articles, chapters, and monographs open access.

Open to all researchers at Essex, the new fund will enable as much Essex research as possible to be published open access. Publishing open access means that anyone with internet access can read and download the full text of the research output, with few limits on reuse. 

By enabling more research to be published open access, the visibility of both Essex publications and researchers will increase. This is important within academic networks and more broadly, as open access allows both practitioners and the public to access crucial research findings.

“It’s a very exciting time to be publishing open access. With more and more opportunities available, this fund now means there shouldn’t really be any situation where our researchers can’t make their outputs open access if that’s what they’ve chosen to do,” explained Hannah Crago, Open Research Development Librarian.

Jim Jamieson, Open Research Governance Manager, added: “open access publishing has become increasingly important within the context of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). By embracing open access, we can maximise the dissemination and impact of our research, potentially improving performance in the REF and attracting greater funding opportunities.” 

Both Hannah and Jim are passionate about open access and are looking forward to providing more opportunities for researchers in this area.

Professor Chris Greer, Pro-Vice Chancellor Research, is also backing the fund, and with the University’s open research position statement stating that research at Essex should be ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’ the open access fund provides a key mechanism for achieving this: “publishing open access is fundamental to increasing the visibility of the fantastic work our researchers are producing. With this new fund, we’re hoping to remove as many barriers as we can to ensure that research published by Essex authors reaches as wide an audience as possible”.

Researchers can make use of the fund by contacting the open research team on oapublish@essex.ac.uk. 

More information about publishing open access is available on the open access publishing webpage.

Any questions or comments on the new open access fund can be sent to oapublish@essex.ac.uk, and you can stay up to date on all matters open access at Essex by following Library Services on LinkedIn.