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Colours of Open Access

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International Open Access Week 2018 celebrates 10 years of promoting open scholarship worldwide. Let’s go back to basics and see how the publishing landscape has changed over the last decade.


Open Access was defined in the Finch Report (2012) stating that ‘research outputs arising from publicly funded research should be freely accessible at the point of use with minimal if any limitations on how they can be used’. In fact, Open Access is all about reaching wider audience and increasing the impact of your research. According to Universities UK Report on transition to Open Access (2017) the proportion of UK-authored, open access articles increased from 12% in 2012 to 30% in 2016. Currently 37% of research outputs in UK and 25% worldwide are freely available at the publication date.

The movement supporting discoverability and accessibility of research outputs sparked a change in policies of the HEI, funders and most scholarly publishers. Two options for making publications open were set out:
  • Gold – requires payment of article processing charge (APC), the article becomes freely available at the publication date and is published under the most permissive copyright licence (CC-BY). Some funders like UKRI, COAF and Wellcome Trust provide additional pots of money (block grants) to support their researchers in making research outputs open access via gold route.
  • Green – no payment required, authors deposit accepted version of the manuscript (not a publisher version) in Institutional Repository (such as Leicester Research Archive) ensuring its discoverability, but there is usually delay in making the manuscript accessible (embargo period). The length of embargo period is specified by the publisher/journal.

The journals can support one or both options of open access described above and depending on their policy they can be classed as:
  • Open access only journals – supporting gold OA only (without green option). Authors must pay the APC, but there is no need for subscription to the journal for anyone willing to access the articles. 
  • Hybrid journals – supporting both green and gold OA, leaving the choice to the author and funds available. The downside is the articles published as green OA will be hidden behind paywall for the length of the embargo. Please bear in mind that most HEI will have subscription packages which remove the need to pay for access.

OA guidance, requirements and policies can be (and are) confusing and information overload for many of us but the good news is – there is help available! The Research Services team at the University of Leicester provides support for all researchers across the institution, if you have OA related query - please do not hesitate to contact us or visit our Open Access Website for more information.

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