Institutional Open access policy

In order for the University and researchers to disseminate research publications as widely as possible, maintain choice of publishing venue, and facilitate compliance with funder requirements, the University has introduced a new policy to support researchers to retain and use their author rights in research publications.

This policy aims to harmonise the latest requirements from research funders and provide greater support to our researchers, as well as ensuring alignment with the open research objective in the University strategy to "make our research findings widely available for local, national, and global benefit".

The core elements of the policy are:

•  The University will require Accepted manuscripts for Articles published in Journals and Conference Proceedings to be deposited in Pure. Deposited manuscripts will be made available without embargo and with a Creative Commons CC BY licence.
• The University will also require manuscripts for Books and Chapters to be deposited in Pure, but only where there is a funder mandate in place – for instance for Wellcome Trust or UKRI. Here a 12 month embargo is permissible as are alternative Creative Commons licences (although CC BY is preferred).
• The full policy contains details on exceptions as well as ‘alternative options’.
• The policy will be in effect for research outputs submitted after 01 February 2023.

Read the full Open access publications policy.

Rights Retention is a primary support mechanism for the University of St Andrews Open Access policy. Find details and practical guidance on our Rights Retention Strategy web page.

You can also read our blog post about the launch of the OA policy.