Thursday, 11 February 2021

Science Foundation Ireland have updated their Open Access Policy which is available online here. This policy applies to all scholarly publications arising in whole or in part from SFI-funded research (i.e. where one of the authors has received SFI funding in support of the underlying research), and is effective from 1 January 2021.  The policy has significant implications for the publication of SFI-funded research, and you should read through it carefully.  In particular, it states that all such publications that are submitted for publication after 1 January 2021 must be made openly available from the date of publication.

SFI have prepared a webinar on the Open Access Policy, which can be accessed using this link, SFI Open Access Webinar. Frequently Asked Questions on the subject can be reviewed here, SFI's Open Access FAQs.

In preparing SFI-funded publications for submission, researchers should be aware of the different open access requirements depending on the venue in which they are publishing, and take action accordingly.  If you do not publish in an open access venue (see for example doaj.org), or through one with which we have an open access publishing (transformative) agreement ( see irel.ie/open-access), you will need to deposit your author’s accepted manuscript in an open access repository instead.  An important element of this is the inclusion of the following “Rights Retention” statement upon submission of SFI-funded original research to peer-reviewed journals, as required by SFI:

"This publication has emanated from research [conducted with the financial support of/supported in part by a grant from] Science Foundation Ireland under Grant number [ ]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission."

Further details about the SFI Open Access Policy and its implications for your work can be found here, including a webinar and FAQs. 

Researchers are also reminded to include costs for open access in their funding applications in accordance to the SFI Budget Policy.

The Library at University of Limerick has a number of open access agreements with publishers to allow corresponding authors from UL to publish their articles open access immediately on publication, at no additional cost outside the agreement. A full list of publishers is available here.

If you do not publish in an Open Access Journal then you can make your work Open Access by depositing a version of the article in the University of Limerick’s Open Access Repository, ULIR.

The University of Limerick Institutional Repository (ULIR) is an open access database of published and unpublished work by UL faculty and researchers. The content is made fully and freely available in accordance with copyright holder permissions.

If you have any queries about Open Access options please contact Ashling Hayes, Head of Research Services in the Library at ashling.hayes@ul.ie