Guidance for Researchers: Open Access

Open access logo, originally designed by Public Library of Science.

Open access (OA) means making research publications freely available so anyone can benefit from reading and using research.

Open access can be more than making research available to read, but also allowing others to re-use that research. For example, allowing the content to be analysed using text mining or reused for commercial purposes.

Research data and books are also increasingly made available openly. Open access is part of a wider ‘open’ movement to encourage free exchange of knowledge and resources in order to widen access and encourage creativity (Jisc 2019).

BCU Open Access Repository, the BCU Institutional repository, is a digital archive of research and innovation outputs of many forms produced by BCU staff, PhD students and their research collaborators. The archive is fully searchable so feel free to browse and explore similar items in "View Item" section connected with CORE.

This archive is an important component of Birmingham City University's commitment to Open Access of research outputs to enable discovery and re-use. All researchers need to ensure that their author's accepted manuscripts are added to BCU's OA Repository or/and Pure within three months of their acceptance by a journal. One-to-one assistance is available to do this or you can follow their online guidance (PDF). General guidance around research submissions is also available from Research England. Any correspondence concerning the use of the BCU OA Repository should be sent to oa@bcu.ac.uk.

BCU Open Access Repository

BCU Open Access Repository provides electronic access to previous BCU theses dating back to 2008. They are searchable by author or you can browse by refining your search by Division and then selecting the Doctoral Thesis collection. Theses published prior to 2008 were in the form of physical copy only and can be searched for via the Library Search, by limiting your search to the material type of dissertations. The 481 hard copy reference only theses dating from 1976 are held within the Records and Archives Centre in Curzon Library, which can be viewed by appointment.

EThOS is the UK’s national thesis service to maximise the visibility and availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses awarded by over 120 institutions. It aims to provide:

• A national aggregated record of all doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions
• Free access to the full text of as many theses as possible for use by all researchers to further their own research.

Electronic access to the full text thesis can be obtained either via download from the EThOS database or via links to the institution’s own repository. Other physical copies of theses dating back to at least 1800 are available to be ordered for scanning through the EThOS digitisation-on-demand facility. 

Ethos

The Library and Learning Resources created a Library Guidance to help researchers understand open access and explore the useful resources and tools in order to maximise the use of open access materials available on the internet. Check the Library Guide on Open Access for detail.

Open Access guide

The Library and Learning Resources subscribed to several Read and Publish deals with certain academic publishers to enable our researchers (staff and PhD students affiliated with BCU by using BCU email addresses during paper submission to an eligible journal) to use the prepaid credits to pay towards the article processing charges (APCs) so that their research articles can be published as gold open access. Check the Read and Publish Library Guide for information. 

Read and Publish guide