Open Scholarship policies

Open Access (OA) offers free and unrestricted access to research outputs and open research data.

Anyone can read, download and reuse Open Access works (subject to any licence restrictions). You can choose to publish your own research so that it is OA.

Types of Open Access

There are several types of OA:

• Green OA – where a version of a research output is made available free of charge to readers, often through an online repository and usually with an embargo period.
• Gold OA – where published research outputs are made available immediately and free of charge to readers with opportunities to reuse the research according to any licence applied to the work. In return the author or their institution are usually (but not always) required to pay an article processing charge (APC) or book processing charge (BPC) to the publisher.
• Diamond OA – neither author or readers pay any charge and research outputs are published, made available immediately and can be reused according to the licence applied to the work.
• Bronze OA – where published research outputs are free to read and download but are not necessarily licenced for reuse. Publishers may withdraw access to bronze OA research at any time.

Open Access at York St John

York St John University supports the principle of OA and where possible will follow the Green or Diamond OA routes. Please note that if selecting the Gold OA route, the Library and Learning Services team and the Research Office do not have funds for APCs and BPCs. Please contact your relevant academic school for funding information for Gold OA.

The University OA policy applies to all staff and research students who produce research outputs. For more information on publishing, see the publishing your research webpage.

We ask staff and researchers to deposit all research outputs (journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters) into the University's institutional repository, RaY, immediately on acceptance. This should be in the form of an accessible author accepted manuscript (AAM) and includes bibliographic metadata.

For support in producing an accessible AAM, please see the AAM guide section in the Rights Retention Toolkit.

Open Data at York St John University

York St John University supports the principle of OA for research data and encourages the principles set out in Concordat on Open Research Data, UKRI Data Policy, and where possible, the FAIR data principles. 

Under the University's research data policy, research data that supports a research output should be made open access where possible. We ask staff to deposit research data on the University's institutional data repository, RaYDaR.

Rights Retention at York St John University

From Monday 1 September 2025, York St John University will be operating a Rights Retention Strategy for all Open Access work assigned an ISSN on publication (journal articles and conference proceedings).

Rights Retention Strategies provide a new way of utilising the Green Open Access route, allowing authors to make a version of their research output immediately open access without publisher barriers. It focuses on the author accepted manuscript (AAM) which is added to institutional repositories under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY).

For full information about Rights Retention at York St John and author guidance, view the Rights Retention webpage and toolkit.

REF and Open Access

UK higher education funding bodies believe that research outputs should be freely accessible and widely available. The REF 2029 Open Access (OA) policy sets out minimum requirements for open access for in-scope outputs, while encouraging researchers and institutions to go beyond these minimum requirements (where this is the case, this can be included in the People, Culture and Environment element of submissions).

For REF 2029, there continues to be an OA requirement for journal articles and conference proceedings. There is no OA requirement for REF 2029 for any other output types (for example, longform outputs, including monographs, book chapters, and more). 

Outputs in-scope for the OA policy are journal articles and conference contributions that have an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) and were published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028. For full details of the technical requirements and exceptions please contact RaY (ray@yorksj.ac.uk) or visit the REF 2029 OA policy pages.

If York St John University researchers comply with the University's OA policy, your output(s) will generally be compliant with REF 2029 OA requirements. However please be aware that the requirements on allowable embargo periods have changed and that outputs subject to embargo (in the form of Author Accepted Manuscripts) must be uploaded to RaY upon acceptance. 

The University's Rights Retention Policy allows immediate Open Access to Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) assigned an ISSN on publication through the institutional repository, RaY. For publishers pre-notified of the policy, Rights Retention overrides any publisher set embargo, making it compliant with REF immediately on acceptance. 

Should any York St John researchers have any questions or concerns about Open Access outputs for the next REF, please email RaY (ray@yorksj.ac.uk).

Open Access Community Framework initiatives

The Open Access Community Framework (OACF) was launched in 2022 and supports stakeholders to collectively fund Open Access content with no, or reduced, costs to authors.

As part of York St John University's commitment to support OA, Library and Learning Services pledged money to 2 initiates to Jisc's OACF between 2022 and 2024, and renewed the pledge to one in 2025:

International Journal of Strength and Conditioning

A peer-reviewed academic journal in Sport Science, Sport Performance, and Strength and Conditioning. The IJSC is Diamond Open-Access, bringing scientific research to the entire community at zero-cost to the consumer and author. The support given through institutional Open Access pledges enable a fully independent and sustainable operation for the IJSC. This will mean continued OA to the journal for all, as well as unlimited opportunity for submission and publication within the IJSC for all of UK institutions' academics and students.

Jisc is currently reviewing the current OACF which will reopen in 2026.