Make your research publications Open Access
How to publish Open Access papers
You can publish your paper as Open Access by:
- Self-archiving - deposit the accepted manuscript in Pure or other repository and/or
- Publish the paper in an Open Access or subscription journal which allows Open Access.
The University holds funding to publish papers that acknowledge UKRI or the British Heart Foundation in gold Open Access journals.
All Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can take advantage of the Read and Publish agreements listed below to make their research articles Open Access.
Co-authors should seek to make their papers Open Access by self-archiving the accepted manuscript in Pure.
Read and Publish/Transformative agreements
- Please check that the journal in which you wish to publish is included in the list of eligible journals on the Publisher's website before signing a publishing agreement. You should never have to generate an invoice when publishing under a Read and Publish agreement. There are no University funds to pay for Article Processing charges in hybrid (subscription) journals.
- Check that the type of article you wish to publish is included in the agreement. For example, data papers, book reviews or conference reports are normally not eligible.
Contact open.access@hw.ac.uk if you would like to check a specific journal.
- When publishing Open Access, please select the CC BY license. If you wish to select a different licence, contact open.access@hw.ac.uk to check this meets University or funder policies.
- Use your Heriot-Watt University email address and include Heriot-Watt University as your main affiliation when submitting your paper and include all funders in your acknowledgements.
Research data supporting publications should be recorded in Pure and archived in compliance with your funder and University policies. See our support pages for more information.
Read and Publish/Transformative Agreements
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in all ACS journals. Please use your Heriot-Watt University email address and affiliation on submission to the journal and select the CC BY licence when prompted.
Negotiations are continuing between both parties to reach an agreement for 2025. In the meantime, ACS has agreed with Jisc to temporarily extend the 2024 agreement on a month-to-month basis through March 2025.
Articles with an acceptance date of 1 January 2022 or later that have been published behind the paywall will be made retrospectively OA through a CC license.
For full details of the agreement see ACS.
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in AIP's hybrid journals with no additional APC charges. Please use your Heriot-Watt University email address and affiliation on submission to the journal and select the CC BY licence when prompted.
Gold Open Access journals are not included in the agreement. If you are UKRI funded, you can apply for funding from the University. Make sure you mention your funder in the acknowledgements.
The agreement runs from 1 January 2024 - 31 December 2025, and is a renewal of the transitional journals agreement 2021-23.
See AIP for more information.
American Physical Society (APS)
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in hybrid Physical Review journals at no cost to themselves. Please use your Heriot-Watt University email address and affiliation on submission to the journal and select the CC BY licence when prompted.
Gold Open Access journals are not included in the agreement. If you are UKRI funded, you can apply for funding from the University. Make sure you mention your funder in the acknowledgements.
Agreement Period: January 1 2023 - December 31 2025, inclusive of both dates.
See APS form more information.
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors will have their research articles and conference proceedings published Open Access in ACM journals, conference proceedings and magazines, at no cost to themselves. Please use your Heriot-Watt University email address and affiliation on submission and select the CC BY licence when prompted.
This deal is in place until 31st December 2025.
For full details of the agreement see ACM.
Cambridge University Press
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish their research articles, review articles, rapid communications, brief reports or case reports in CUP's gold and hybrid Open Access journals at no upfront cost to themselves. Please use your Heriot-Watt University email address and affiliation on submission and select the CC BY licence when prompted.
For full details of the agreement see Cambridge University Press.
Elsevier
The University has a four year agreement with Elsevier which runs from 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2025.
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in hybrid (subscription) journals at no cost to the author. Please use your Heriot-Watt University email address and affiliation on submission and select the CC BY licence when prompted (do not select CC BY-NC-ND).
There is a list of participating journals and instructions for authors on the Elsevier website.
Gold Open Access journals are not covered by this agreement. If you are UKRI funded, you can apply for funding from the University. A 15% discount on fees applies.
Geological Society Lyell Collection
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access free of charge in 10 hybrid journals and book series listed below. Please use your Heriot-Watt University email address and affiliation on submission and select the CC BY licence when prompted.
Eligible journals and book series: Journal of the Geological Society, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology & Hydrogeology, Petroleum Geoscience, Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis, Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, Scottish Journal of Geology, Special Publications, Memoirs and Engineering Geology Special Publications.
Gold Open Access journals are not included in the agreement. If you are UKRI funded, you can apply for funding from the University. Make sure you mention your funder in the acknowledgements. This agreement is in place until 31 December 2025.
For full details of the agreement see Geological Society’s Lyell Collection.
Institute of Physics
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in eligible hybrid journals. Please use your Heriot-Watt University email address and affiliation on submission to the journal and select the CC BY licence when prompted.
Included in the agreement are all subscription journals, owned by IOP Publishing, which offer a hybrid Open Access option. In addition, the agreement also includes selected journals which are published by IOP Publishing on behalf of their society partners.
Gold Open Access journals are not included in the agreement. If you are UKRI funded, you can apply for funding from the University. Make sure you mention your funder in the acknowledgements.
For full details of the agreement see IOP.
Optica (Optical Society of America)
This agreement covers all Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors, who can publish Open Access at no upfront cost in the following journals: Advances in Optics and Photonics, Applied Optics, Biomedical Optics Express, Journal of the Optical Society of America A, Journal of the Optical Society of America B, Optica, Optical Materials Express, Optics Continuum, Optics Express, and Optics Letters.
Corresponding authors must have a current affiliation to Heriot-Watt University. To take advantage of this agreement, please use your Heriot-Watt University email address when submitting the paper. Please also select the CC BY licence.
For more information from the publisher: Optica Institutional Open Access Agreements
Oxford University Press
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in hybrid and fully Open Access journals free of charge.
APCs for participating hybrid and fully Open Access journals are paid in full for all corresponding authors at participating UK institutions. Applies to research or review articles which are received into OUP production on or after 1 January 2024.
For more information see JISC agreement.
PLOS
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access free of charge in PLOS Climate, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Global Public Health, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS ONE, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, and PLOS Water.
See: PLOS Institutional Partnerships for more information.
Royal Society for Chemistry
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in their hybrid journals free of charge. See Royal Society of Chemistry for more information.
SAGE
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in 900+ hybrid journals in the current Sage Premier package, as well as in the IMechE Journal Collection and the Royal Society of Medicine Collection, free of charge.
Corresponding authors publishing articles in Gold Open Access journals are entitled to a 20% discount. Please select SHEDL when selecting your SAGE consortium agreement
Springer Nature
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can elect to make their papers Open Access in Springer/Palgrave hybrid journals and Nature hybrid academic journals. Springer Nature are paid an annual fee to cover costs as part of the Read and Publish agreement. We encourage you strongly to take up this offer. Please select the CC BY licence.
Open access agreement for the UK: Information for authors
- Springer portfolio journals included in the agreement
- Nature portfolio journals included in the agreement
If you wish to publish in a fully Open Access journal, eg Nature Communications, you will be required to pay a fee to the publisher, with a discount applicable. UKRI-funded authors can apply to the UKRI Open Access Block Grant for funding to pay the Open Access fee in fully OA journals.
Taylor & Francis
Heriot-Watt University corresponding authors can publish Open Access in Taylor&Francis and Routledge Open Select (hybrid) journals at no cost to themselves. See Taylor & Francis for more information.
Wiley
Corresponding authors affiliated with Heriot-Watt University may publish primary research and review articles in any of Wiley’s and Hindawi's fully gold Open Access journals or Wiley’s hybrid (subscription based) journals at no further charge to the author. More information from Wiley
What funds are available to cover Article Processing Charges (APCs)?
The University holds funding to pay article processing charges (APCs) for papers acknowledging UKRI and British Heart Foundation funding.
UKRI have allocated funds to research institutions in the form of a block grant. Funding for Open Access fees (APCs) are available to corresponding authors. British Heart Foundation funding is claimed retrospectively. There are also the Read and Publish deals for all corresponding authors, listed above.
To pay Gold Open Access fees in Open Access Journals, please contact open.access@hw.ac.uk before you submit to the journal to check if there is funding available. In some cases we will ask that you consider the Green Open Access route. Please complete and send this form to open.access@hw.ac.uk
There is no central University funding to pay for APCs.
UKRI and British Heart Foundation funded papers
Papers acknowledging UKRI funding
There are two routes to open access compliance:
Route one: you can publish the article open access in a journal or publishing platform. This makes the version of record immediately open access via its website with a creative commons attribution (CC BY) licence or other permitted licence.
Route two: you can publish the article in a subscription journal. You can deposit your author’s accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository at the time of final publication with a CC BY or other permitted licence. A publisher embargo period is not permitted.
There is funding for open access publishing in open access journals listed in DOAJ - please apply via the application form below.
There is no funding for APCs in hybrid/subscription journals, but you can make your paper OA via a tranformative agreement (see Read and Publish deals).
The British Heart Foundation makes a small grant to the University to support open access publishing.
Please contact open.access@hw.ac.uk before you submit to a journal to check if there is funding available to pay the APC. In some cases we will ask that you consider the Green Open Access route. Please complete and send this form to open.access@hw.ac.uk
For non-UKRI funded papers, please check your funder's requirements for publishing Open Access, and if you are able to claim Open Access costs, for either Gold or Hybrid article processing charges, please do this. If the paper is published in a journal that is part of a Transformative agreement please inform open.access@hw.ac.uk.
Funders' Open Access Policies
The new UKRI Open Access Policy applies to journal articles submitted from 1st April 2022
UKRI and British Heart Foundation funded papers
If you wish to publish in a journal not included in the deals above you can apply for funding to cover the article processing charge (APC) if your paper acknowledges UKRI or BHF funding. Please note that from April 2022, UKRI Funds are only available for papers published in Gold Open Access (listed in the DOAJ) or transformative journals. Please see the new UKRI Open Access Policy for more information.
For non-UKRI funded papers, please check your funder's requirements for publishing Open Access, and if you are able to claim Open Access costs, for either Gold or Hybrid article processing charges, please do this. If the paper is published in a journal that is part of a Transformative agreement please inform open.access@hw.ac.uk.
Memberships and other institutional agreements
Frontiers
Only eligible for papers acknowledging UKRI funding. To publish your article under this agreement, please select ‘Heriot-Watt University’ as the payer in the invoice section when submitting your article. Frontiers will then verify your eligibility with Heriot-Watt University and, if confirmed, the APC will be paid by the University upon acceptance. 10% discount applies.
MDPI
Under MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), UKRI and BHF funded authors can choose to have the invoice dealt with centrally. Make sure you add your funder on submission.20% discount for all authors.
IEEE
There is no Read and Publish agreement with IEEE. However, all Heriot-Watt University authors can deposit their AAMs in Pure with no embargo period and the CC BY licence.