Open Access (OA) generally refers to making scientific and scholarly knowledge and information freely accessible online.
Many of the research articles published by our authors are stuck behind a paywall - only accessible to readers who have subscription to the journal or pay to view the article. By making your research works OA, you increase the visibility and accessibility of your research works, thus allowing an enhanced research impact and could result in higher citations for your article.
There are 2 routes to make your works open access:
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1. Deposit your work in PolyU’s institutional repository (PIRA) By doing so, you can make your work open access with compliance to Publisher's copyright / self-archiving policies. This is known as "Green OA". Read more here. The version of work generally refers to Accepted Manuscript for articles not published in open access. You can also upload non-traditional research output to PIRA. Learn more here. |
2. Publish in OA Journals This way your work will be immediately available to the scientific and larger community after publication. Usually, authors need to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) when the work is accepted. This is known as "Gold OA". Read more here. You can also deposit an additional copy in our repository, PIRA to secure its archival. |
As the majority of researchers and universities are publicly funded, research outputs are increasingly expected to be made openly accessible.
Since September 2010, University has required academics and researchers to "deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings (author's final accepted manuscript) in the PolyU Institutional Research Archive (PIRA) for open access, as of the date of paper publication. Full text of other research outputs should also be deposited where appropriate."
The Library will check publishers' policies to ensure that the manuscripts deposited can be made open access.
Read more from Open Access to Published Research, Research Grants & Contracts (RIO).
More funders require their grant recipients to comply with some level of OA policies. These include Research Grants Council (RGC) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), which are two major funders to PolyU researchers.
► RGC
For publications resulting from research funded by RGC, upon acceptance of a paper for publication, "the PC / PI / Project holder should check whether the publisher already allows (i) full open access to the publisher’s version, or (ii) the author’s depositing a copy of the paper (either the publisher’s version or the final accepted manuscript after peer-review) in the institutional repository for open access".
Read more from RGC's Guidelines on Disbursement, Accounting and Monitoring Arrangements for Competitive Research Funding Schemes (updated Nov 2022), pp. 20-21.
► NSFC
For projects fully or partially funded by NSFC, "the authors of the papers should deposit the final manuscripts, which have been peer-reviewed and accepted by the journals to the NSFC repository for open access in no more than 12 months after publication", if the publisher's version is not available in open access. If the paper is published in Open Access journal, or the publisher allows deposit of the final published PDF version, the published PDF version of the paper should be deposited and open access immediately.
Read more from NSFC Policy Statement on Open Access(OA) to the Research Publications of Its Funded Projects (updated Nov 2022).
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