A comprehensive guide outlining the steps and options for publishing journal articles open access (OA) is available on our Publishing open access journal articles intranet page (login required). This page provides a summary of the available choices.
Open access via a publisher agreement
Library & Learning Resources fund agreements with a wide range of commercial and society publishers, enabling University-affiliated staff and students to publish open access at no additional cost to themselves.
Our Library OA agreement search tool lets you check whether a journal is covered by a publisher agreement. The link in the ‘Who Pays’ column of the search results takes you to a dedicated page with eligibility criteria and instructions on how to proceed.
Open access by self-archiving in Pure
Under Rights Retention, University staff can make their accepted manuscripts immediately open access via self-archiving at no cost. Rights Retention also applies to PGR students who opt into the University’s Research Publications Policy (DOCX - 96 KB).
While the published version of your manuscript will be accessible only to the journal's subscribers, the full text can be accessed publicly through the accepted manuscript.
Open access by paying an Article Processing Charge (APC)
The guidance below explains when Library & Learning Resources may or may not provide assistance with an APC payment.
If you have your own funds or your funder provides direct support (for instance, most NIHR grants include a dedicated ‘open access’ envelope), you will be responsible for making the payment yourself.
We recommend thoroughly checking the publisher before proceeding to prevent scams or fraudulent publishing practices. For more details, see our guidance on Finding a suitable journal for your manuscript (login required).
No support for APCs in hybrid journals
Library & Learning Resources does not allocate funds for individual APCs in hybrid journals, which publish both open access and subscription-only articles.
Support for APCs in fully open access journals
Library & Learning Resources has limited funds for paying individual APCs in fully open access journals, where all content is published open access. This is guided by the University's open access funding framework (login required). In brief, an APC will be paid only if all the following conditions are satisfied:
- The research acknowledges funding from BHF, UKRI or the Wellcome Trust (with funds remaining in the relevant block grant budget).
- The applicant will acknowledge the University of Birmingham as their primary affiliation.
- The journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
To apply for APC payment support, you must complete the Staff Open Access fee payment request form and await approval before submitting your manuscript.
Under exceptional circumstances (login required), an APC payment may be made for an article submitted to a fully open access journal by an author without funding. Such applications will be forwarded to the relevant college Director of Research (or their delegate) for approval.