Research Support

The Gold Open Access publishing model involves the authors paying for article publication (article processing fee or APC) in a journal but articles are then freely available to readers with no additional subscription charges. Providing the appropriate licence has been agreed, the article may then be shared and re-used. Many journals now offer complete or partial OA or hybrid publishing options. BioMed Central is a major OA publisher in medicine and healthcare. See the Directory of Open Access Journals to identify journals using this model.

RCSI Library has negotiated gold open access agreements with a number of publishers, details of these can be found here.

Also known as self-archiving, the Green Open Access route satisfies open access mandates by funding agencies such as SFI, HRB and HEA. This model allows you to deposit a version of your article in an institutional repository such as the RCSI Repository, the RCSI's publications repository. Benefits also include:

• preserves your work publicly and indexes on Google Scholar
• categorises RCSI research output

Permitted versions can be the final published pdf (if it has been published via the gold route), the original submitted manuscript or the accepted manuscript which incorporates changes from the peer review process. The Library team are happy to advise you on publisher permissions – contact us at repository@rcsi.com

Plan S is an initiative by a group of research funders to make publicly funded research outputs fully and immediately open access.  The international consortium (cOAlition S) is coordinated by Science Europe and includes Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), UK Research and Innovation, Research Council of Norway and others and is supported by the European Research Council and the European Commission. cOAlition S aims for a new model of publishing, characterised not only by immediate, free online access to, but also by largely unrestricted use and re-use of scholarly publications.

The key principle of Plan S is:

After 1 January 2020 scientific publications on the results from research funded by public grants provided by national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.

Ten further principles apply, including:  

• Authors retain copyright and should publish under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence CC-BY .
• Open access publication fees (APCs) should be standard across Europe and capped.  Fees should be paid for by funders or institutions and not authors.
• Outputs should be made immediately available in compliant open access journals or platforms.  Hybrid journals (which mix open access articles with subscriptions) are not acceptable. Embargoes are not acceptable.  Examples of open access platforms are HRB Open Research and Wellcome Open Research.
• Depositing in institutional repositories in addition to OA journals or platforms is encouraged, immediately on publication (Version of Record, or Author’s Accepted Manuscript) without embargo.
• Publishing open access with a CC BY licence in a journal which is covered by a transformative agreement is acceptable.  Transformative agreements have clear and time-specified commitments to a full open access transition.

Full details of the principles here.  

Implementation guidance has been provided by cOAlition S to flesh out the details of the principles and to include technical requirements.  Feedback was sought from interested parties and based on this feedback, a new edition of the guidance is expected in Spring 2019.

CONUL (Consortium of National and University Libraries) Response to Guidance on the Implementation of Plan S

The Office for Scholarly Communication in the University of Cambridge have published a blog post called Plan S – links, commentary and news items, which attempts to compile a list of discussions and documents around Plan S.

cOAlition S recognises that the new model calls for research funders, institutions, researchers, learned societies, librarians and publishers to work together towards a system of scholarly publishing that is more accessible, efficient, fair and transparent.

Plan S Update

Following a wide consultation exercise revisions have been made to Plan S, the Science Europe-led funder initiative launched last year to push for more open access publishing.

Unpaywall

Unpaywall Is a project of Impactstory, a not for profit company that aims to  make scholarly research more open, accessible and reusable. This is a free service that locates open-access articles and presents papers that have been legally archived and are freely available as open access. Unpaywall harvests content from over 50,000 journals and open-access repositories from all over the world.

How to install Unpaywall

1. Open Chrome
2. Click on three dots in top right hand corner
3. In the drop down menu, click on more tools
4. Then click on extensions

Search for Unpaywall and turn it on by sliding the swipe to the right.  When you browse to a paywalled paper and an open access version is avaliable Unpaywall’s grey ‘lock’ icon turns green and ‘unlocks’, clicking on the icon will then bring you to the open access version of the paper.

Agreement period: 1 January 2021 – 31 December 2025

RCSI is now part of a IReL agreement with the American Chemical Society. The IReL-ACS agreement allows eligible corresponding authors to publish peer reviewed articles open access upon publication at no extra cost.

• Eligible authors: the corresponding author must be a current staff member or student of a participating member institution at the time an article is accepted for publication in an ACS
• Eligible journals: all peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication in any ACS journal

Agreement period: 1 Jan 2021 — 31 Dec 2021

IReL , which includes RCSI, is participating in Annual Reviews’ “Subscribe to Open” initiative which will make all articles published in the five pilot journals OA from 2020, regardless of the author’s affiliation. 

• The five titles in the pilot are

            i. Annual Review of Cancer Biology

            ii. Annual Review of Environment and Resources

            iii. Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science

            iv. Annual Review of Political Science

            v. Annual Review of Public Health

Further information is available at https://www.annualreviews.org/page/subscriptions/subscribe-to-open-faq

Agreement period:  1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2023

RCSI is now part of an IReL agreement with the BMJ.  The IReL-BMJ agreement allows eligible corresponding authors in participating institutions to publish original research open access upon publication at no extra cost.

• Eligible journals: 27 journals in the BMJ Standard collection. 11 journals must use the CC-BY-NC licence for OA publication unless CC-BY is specifically mandated by funders. 
• Eligible authors: at the time an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author must be a current staff member or student with a participating institution. 
• For articles accepted from 04 May 2021: eligible corresponding authors will be invited to make their articles open access on acceptance.
• For articles accepted between January 2021 and May 2021: eligible corresponding authors will be contacted by BMJ in mid-May 2021, inviting them to make the article open access retrospectively. 

Note: RCSI does not currently subscribe to BMJ’s Institutional Fellowship, so RCSI staff and students submitting cases to BMJ Case Reports will need to pay the fees involved.

Agreement period: 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2025

RCSI is now part of an IReL agreement with Cambridge University Press.  The IReL-CUP agreement allows eligible corresponding authors in participating institutions to publish research open access upon publication at no extra cost.

• Eligible authors: the corresponding author must be a current staff member or student of a participating institution at the time the article is accepted for publication. The corresponding author must ensure their correct affiliation details are known to the publisher at this time.
• Eligible article types: a research, case report, brief report, review or rapid communications format article. 
• Eligible journals:  almost all CUP hybrid and fully open access journals. As detailed in the linked sheet, note that a small number of journals either do not offer OA or require authors to transfer copyright. 

Agreement period: 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2021

This agreement provides acces to these titles

• Genes & Development
• Genome Research

Authors from IReL subscribing institutions, which include RCSI, will receive a fee waiver of any potential APCs and/or OA-related costs for publishing articles in these journals.

Agreement period: 1 Jan 2021 — 31 Dec 2021

Authors from RCSI may publish unlimited open access in ECS journals (Journal of The Electrochemical Society and ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology) without charge.

To avail of this, authors must select 'ECS Plus' under 'Step 6 – Open Access Waivers, Charges and Credits' At the time of manuscript submission to take advantage of an article credit.

This IReL agreement is in place until the end of 2021.

Limits UPDATE Sep 2021 - The 2021 RCSI allocation of APCs has been used up. Corresponding authors with articles accepted during the rest of 2021 will need to either find other sources of funding to pay the APC fee, or (if publishing in a hybrid journal)  publish without a fee to subscribers on the publisher site while making a version of your article available through the RCSI Respository. 

RCSI is now part of an IReL agreement with Elsevier.  The IReL-Elsevier agreement allows eligible corresponding authors in participating institutions to publish research open access upon publication at no extra cost.

• Limits:  there are limits to the number of APCs (article processing charges) granted per year and it is expected that not all requests will be fulfilled.
• Eligible authors: the corresponding author must be a current staff member or student of a participating institution at the time the article is accepted for publication.
• Eligible journals: A list of eligible journals can be found at: http://bit.ly/irelOAjournals.  The Elsevier Journal Finder, which assists in identifying relevant journals prior to submission, provides details of whether journals are included in the Irish agreement or not.  Note: journals like The Lancet and Cell Press titles are not included in the deal because the publishing costs of these journals are significantly higher than the per article publishing costs of other journals.

Further information on the deal at: https://irel.ie/open-access/sciencedirect/

Agreement period: 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2023

RCSI is now part of an IReL agreement with Emerald.  The IReL-Emerald agreement allows eligible corresponding authors in participating institutions to publish original research open access upon publication at no extra cost.

• Eligible authors: at the time an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author must be a staff member or student with a participating institution. 
• Eligible journals: all Emerald journals. See Emerald journal list. 
• For articles accepted from 1 April 2021: eligible corresponding authors will be invited to make their articles open access on acceptance.
• For articles accepted between 1 January 2021 and 31 March 2021: Emerald will contact eligible corresponding authors, inviting them to make the article open access retrospectively. 

RCSI affiliated authors receive a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges in all MDPI journals. This is through MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) agreement, renewed annually.

For any manuscript where at least one author is from RCSI, MDPI will grant a 10% reduction on the published APC for the journal. Only one discount is permitted per paper, and the discount cannot be combined with other available discounts.

Agreement Period: 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2023

All eligible corresponding authors affiliated with participating IReL institutions to publish open access articles in these titles:

• International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology  
• Journal of General Virology    
• Journal of Medical Microbiology         
• Microbiology   
• Microbial Genomics   
• Access Microbiology (2516-8290)

Instructions for authors

Microbiology Society’s Read and Publish agreement is designed for simplicity, minimising administration for librarians and to provide a frictionless OA experience for authors. They have provided the following information for authors submitting articles: Author Journey. 

Agreement period: 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2023

RCSI is now part of a IReL agreement with Oxford University Press. The IReL-OUP agreement allows eligible corresponding authors to publish original research and review articles open access upon publication at no extra cost.

• Eligible journals: all OUP published open access journals and hybrid journals (subscription journals which include open access content).  Title list to follow.
• Eligible authors: at the time of an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author must be a current staff member or student with a participating institution. 
• For articles accepted from April 2021: eligible corresponding authors will be invited to make their articles open access on acceptance.
• For articles accepted between January 2021 and March 2021: eligible corresponding authors will be contacted by OUP in late April 2021, inviting them to make the article open access retrospectively. 

Agreement Period: 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2023

All eligible corresponding authors affiliated with participating IReL institutions to publish open access articles in these titles:

• Biology Letters
• Interface Focus
• Journal of the Royal Society Interface
• Notes and Records of the Royal Society
• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
• Proceedings of the Royal Society A
• Proceedings of the Royal Society B
• Open Biology
• Royal Society Open Science

Instructions for authors

Royal Society aim to provide straightforward publishing with Royal Society Read and Publish. They have provided the following instructions on for authors submitting articles: Author Journey. 

Limits UPDATE Oct 2021 - The 2021 RCSI allocation of APCs has been used up. Corresponding authors with articles accepted during the rest of 2021 will need to either find other sources of funding to pay the APC fee, or (if publishing in a hybrid journal)  publish without a fee to subscribers on the publisher site while making a version of your article available through the RCSI Respository. 

Agreement period: 1 Apr 2021 – 31 Dec 2024

RCSI is now part of a IReL agreement with Springer. The IReL-Springer agreement allows eligible corresponding authors to publish articles open access upon publication at no extra cost.

Details of the agreement including lists of eligible journals available at www.springer.com/OAforIreland

Agreement period: 1 January 2021 – 31 December 2023

RCSI is now part of a IReL agreement with Taylor & Francis. The IReL-T&F agreement allows eligible corresponding authors to publish articles open access upon publication at no extra cost.

Eligible journals for OA publishing: over 1,900 T&F Open Select journals (hybrid journals) – included and excluded journal lists are available. Fully open access (Gold) journals are not included.

Eligible authors: at the time an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author must be a current staff member or student with a participating institution. Eligible corresponding authors will be invited to make their articles open access on acceptance.

Agreement period: 1 January 2021 – 31 December 2024

RCSI is now part of an IReL agreement for open access publishing in Wiley journals.  This agreement allows RCSI corresponding authors to publish open access articles without charge but with certain conditions.

• Eligible article types: original research and review articles. 
• Eligible titles: almost all Wiley hybrid and gold titles, with the exception of a small number of subscription-only journals. 
• Eligible authors: current staff and students of RCSI at the time of article acceptance and where RCSI is the primary affiliation

Full list of included titles (.xlsx)