Open Access Publications Policy

1. Introduction

City St George's, University of London is committed to open sharing of research outputs, as part of broader open scholarship practices, for the purposes of increasing visibility, accessibility and impact of our scholarly activity to the academic community and wider society. This policy formalises the Library Services' commitment and outlines what steps authors are expected to take to facilitate the open dissemination of research outputs and enable them to meet City St George's and funder requirements.

City St George's supports a mixed model of 'green' and 'gold' open access:

Green open access is achieved via 'self-archiving' the author accepted manuscript (AAM) by depositing for free in an institutional or subject repository.
Gold open access can be achieved by making the final published version (the Version of Record) immediately available on the journal's website or an open access platform, which may incur a fee commonly known as an article processing charge (APC). This fee is often in addition to any other publication costs, e.g. page or colour figure charges.

2. Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to support authors in making their research open access as best practice across City St George's, whilst ensuring compliance with any intellectual property, copyright, and/or contractual funder requirements. It aims to facilitate an up to date and comprehensive record of staff and student research outputs via City St George's Current Research Information System (CRIS) Symplectic Elements and ensure full text copies are available as open access via the institutional repositories City Research Online (CRO) and St George's Online Research Archive (SORA).

3. Scope

This policy applies to all research outputs, including journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and other output types arising from research authored by contracted City St George's staff or postgraduate research students. It is recognised that open access requirements change in response to policy changes from funders or the UK higher education funding bodies for the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and the scope of this policy will change accordingly. Working papers and discussion papers, whilst they can be deposited, would not be considered in scope.

Research data management is covered by its own policy [coming soon].

4. Author responsibilities

4.1 Authors must maintain up to date records of their scholarly publications in the Symplectic Elements CRIS.
4.2 The author accepted manuscript (AAM) version of all peer reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings should be uploaded to Elements for deposit in City Research Online (CRO) or St George's Online Research Archive (SORA) within three months of acceptance for publication.
4.3 An accepted manuscript version of other research outputs, such as book chapters or working papers, should also be deposited where copyright permits unless there are technical or legal reasons preventing it.
4.4 Publication embargo periods on release of full text may be applied where it is a requirement of publishers' terms and conditions. Authors are expected to consider embargo periods permitted by the Research Excellence Framework (REF) when making decisions about where to publish.
4.5 PhD candidates should deposit a full text copy of their thesis to the CRO or SORA in line with the City St George's Senate Regulation 25: Submission Format and Retention of Thesis. Embargo periods for theses may be requested on submission, to be granted at the discretion of the Director of Library Services. This can be requested from the embargo request form within the online system for managing thesis submissions.
4.6 Newly appointed academic and research staff should deposit research outputs that have been published within the current REF publication period.
4.7 All journal articles and conference papers in a proceedings with an ISSN to be submitted to the REF outputs review exercise should comply with this policy.
4.8 City St George's encourages the retention of author copyright, whether through publishing agreements or other mechanisms. The application of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to research publications is encouraged and should be applied to the AAM and/or Version of Record where possible. A CC BY licence is required by many funders and allows for maximum re-use of the published material whilst still providing appropriate credit author.
4.9 Authors are encouraged to apply a CC-BY licence to journal articles or conference papers published via the agreements for open access publishing available to Clerkenwell and Moorgate authors and Tooting authors.
4.10 Authors must comply with their grant funder's requirements for Open Access. Such requirements may include: proper acknowledgement of funding; specified copyright licences; permitted embargoes; and APC funding mechanisms.
4.11 Authors should include acknowledgements of any internal funding and/or core services that supported the work, e.g. Image Resource Facility (IRF), Biological Research Facility (BRF).
4.12 Authors should observe any requirements with regards to research data management and include a data access statement. Data access statements typically contain information on where the data can be accessed with a unique persistent identifier and details of any restrictions.
4.13 City St George's encourages the use of ORCID, a persistent identifier for individual researchers; ORCID identifiers should be linked to Symplectic Elements profiles.
4.14 Authors should include an author contribution statement in the submitted manuscript. It is recommended to use the CRediT format where possible, which outlines specific contributions across a wide range of author roles.
4.15 All research outputs should acknowledge affiliation to City St George's, and the relevant School in full to ensure they are correctly attributed for the purposes of citation counts.
All affiliations should be submitted in the following format: 'City St George's, University of London, Name of School, School Address'. Where joint affiliation exists with St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (SGHT) this must be included alongside the City St George's affiliation.
4.16 If conducting a Clinical Trial sponsored by SGUL or SGHT, ensure you meet the publication requirements of the Clinical Trial Transparency policy.

5. Institutional responsibilities

5.1 City St George's is responsible for supporting authors to comply with this policy and publish open access through the provision of appropriate systems infrastructure online guidance and relevant training.
5.2 Library Services will ensure publisher terms and conditions are adhered to when making any research outputs openly available on CRO and SORA.
5.3 Library Services will provide periodic reports to City St George's Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and other relevant staff across the institution, highlighting levels of academic engagement and open access compliance. Data may additionally be used for auditing purposes (e.g. grant reports, REF).
5.4 Library Services will investigate any alleged copyright infringements and may remove outputs from the repositories in line with Library Services Takedown Policy.
5.5 Non-compliance with this policy will be reported to Associate Deans for Research, as appropriate.

6. Open access funding

6.1 Funding for the payment of open access APCs should be taken from grant awards, where available and where this is an eligible use of funding.
6.2 Library Services has a number of open access agreements for Clerkenwell and Moorgate authors and Tooting authors that cover open access APCs in whole or in part. Authors should familiarise themselves with eligibility conditions prior to submitting to a journal.
6.3 Block grant funding to cover APCs is available for authors funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and Wellcome Trust. Applicants should ensure their chosen journal meets the terms and conditions for use of the funds. For further information about this contact openaccess@sgul.ac.uk or publications@citystgeorges.ac.uk.
6.4 Authors should liaise with the appropriate research support team to identify available grant funding for payment of open access APCs.

7. Further information and help

Research funder open access policies

Open access publishing

Clerkenwell and Moorgate researchers should contact publications@citystgeorges.ac.uk. Tooting researchers should contact openaccess@sgul.ac.uk.

Last update August 2025