Imperial College London has been disseminating its research as widely as possible and encouraging all academic and research staff and students to make their output available through open access (OA)
Authors are choosing to make their research available on open access because:
- it means anyone anywhere in the world can read, use and cite your research, encouraging wider impact, collaboration and visibility of work
- authors retain more control over and rights to distribute and re-use their intellectual property
- funders require outputs for their funded research to made available on open access
On 31 March 2014 HEFCE published its policy on Open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework. The policy states that from 1 April 2016, in order to be eligible for the post-2014 REF, journal articles and conference proceedings must be deposited in a repository within three months of acceptance for publication. They must also be discoverable (e.g. via a search engine) and accessible no less than a month after this deposit.
The HEFCE policy includes a range of exceptions to ensure that you can still publish in the most appropriate journals, even if these do not currently have open access policies.