Open access
Open Access is a set of principles which makes research outputs available to anyone at no cost
We offer a number of services to help you make your research available open access in line with University, REF and funder open access requirements.
All research articles authored or co-authored by Brunel academic research staff should be made available open access immediately on publication in line with Brunel University London's Open Access Mandate, first introduced in 2009, and last revised in December 2021.
The Mandate aims to make Brunel research free to read and download by anyone, anywhere in the world, with a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY licence preferred. Outputs available under a CC BY licence also comply with REF open access policy and the conditions of award for most grant funders.
Requirements for all Brunel authors
To help authors comply with open access conditions, the University has introduced a pre-submission procedure for all journal articles irrespective of publishing route.
Before submitting a manuscript to a publisher, authors must first complete a pre-submission form to apply for publishing funds. It is then reviewed by Open Access to verify author and output eligibility, check availability of funding for publishing, any discounts or waivers which may apply, and that the chosen licence and publication venue with all applicable REF and funder policy requirements.
Authors must wait for confirmation from Open Access that funding is available before submitting an article to a publisher. The Open Access Publishing Fund will be unable to support publishing charges for non-compliant articles. All authors will be required to verify that the output and corresponding author meet eligiblity requirements, and that funding is available for the chosen journal and publishing options before submission. See our guidance on how to apply for open access publishing funds.
Authors who are publishing peer reviewed research articles, should first use the Journal Checker Tool when selecting a target journal and before manuscript submission, before applying for APC funding, to check whether the preferred journal and route will allow the Brunel corresponding author to meet REF and funder open access requirements. See Plan S and publishing your research.
Where the selected journal and publishing route will not allow the output to meet open access requirements, where the corresponding author is ineligible, or where the budget is fully spent, the Open Access team will seek to advise authors on any necessary steps required to comply with open access policy and publish in the preferred journal, or alternative publishing or funding options.
For example, articles published in hybrid journals which offer a paid CC BY Open Access Licence option, but are not covered by a Jisc-approved Transformative Agreement, will not comply with the terms and conditions of Horizon Europe grants. In this situation, where a journal doesn't allow the output to comply with the conditions, but is the most suitable venue for the research, authors will be required to include standard Rights Retention wording during the submission process to legally reserve author rights. This allows the University to make the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or published Version of Record (VoR) available without embargo in the institutional repository, BURA under a CC BY Licence, complying fully with the funder terms and conditions.