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. Outputs which comply with the Mandate also meet funder and REF open access requirements for publicly-funded research.
To help authors meet the conditions, the University has introduced a pre-submission procedure for all journal articles irrespective of publishing route.
Authors who are publishing peer reviewed research articles, should first use the Journal Checker Tool, before submitting a journal article manuscript for publication to check whether the preferred journal and route will allow the corresponding author to meet REF and funder open access requirements.
Secondly, the Brunel corresponding author must , and identify the next steps.
These include a new University pre-submission procedure for all new articles to verify author and output eligibility and apply for publishing funds via read and publish or fully open access routes. Authors should wait for confirmation that funding is available before submitting articles for publication, the University will be unable to support publishing
These include a process for all authors to verify author and output eligibility for open access publishing funding, All authors must also verify that the output and corresponding author meet eligiblity requirements, and that funding is available for the chosen journal and publishing options before submission, as
If the journal chosen reqthey submit their manuscript to a journal for publication which allows them to check whether the journal complies with open access requirements and offers guidance on how to proceed.
Where a journal doesn't comply with the conditions, but is the most suitable venue for the research, authors are now required to include standard wording during the submission process to retain 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. This means there won’t be any delay in accessing the research. Authors who are not citing specific grant funding or where there are multiple funders should seek advice from Open Access, Library Services.