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The Scholarly Works Policy

To publish our research openly, our authors need to retain their rights to share their work. Traditionally, most publishers have claimed these rights in their standard publishing contracts, but to comply with funder open access policies and future REF assessments we need to hold on to them. To ensure our authors can do so, the University of Bristol has enacted the Scholarly Works Policy.

Using the Scholarly Works Policy

Include The Scholarly Works Policy statement in your submission

Authors should include the following statement in their submissions to publishers:

For the purpose of open access, the author(s) has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

You should include the “University of Bristol” affiliation in all submissions. If your funder’s policy has a different statement, use that one instead. The University has notified all major publishers of this policy.

You should include this statement when submitting any journal article or peer reviewed conference paper for publication. You do not need to use it in book, chapter, or other types of submissions to publishers. The statement is particularly important when you intend to make your work open access via the green (self-archiving) route, but your publisher's standard policy requires an embargo or licence that is more restrictive than your funder's policy allows.

Upload your accepted manuscript to Pure

Once your paper is accepted, upload a copy of your Authors' Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to Pure. The open access team will ensure that the file is released under a CC-BY licence upon publication.

Who can use the statement?

Co-authored papers

It is established practice that the corresponding author on a paper speaks for all co-authors when engaging with the editors of a chosen journal. The corresponding author at the University of Bristol takes responsibility for making the publisher and their co-authors at other institutions aware of the Scholarly Works Policy's requirements.

If you are not the corresponding author, you should discuss with your co-authors how you will make the article open access in accordance with your funders' policies, the requirements of the REF, any other relevant policies, and the needs of your audience.

Students, Honorary and associate staff

Students and honorary or associate members of staff are also entitled to use the Scholarly Works Policy and you can include the statement in your submissions to publishers.

Removing the statement

A publisher may ask you to remove the statement because a work is already being made open access through another route. When asked to remove the statement, you are free to do so. But please be aware that removing the statement from the submission does not remove the prior licence you automatically give to the University.

You can remove the statement when asked, and still make the accepted manuscript downloadable from the repository from the first day of publication under the CC BY licence, without breaking copyright law.

Opting out of the policy

In some cases, we understand that it may be necessary to opt out of the policy for a specific article. If you need to opt out of the policy, you can do so by filling out the Scholarly Works Policy Opt Out Form. This will allow us to ensure that your Pure deposit is not made available immediately and instead follows your publisher's standard requirements.

You should be mindful that opting out may mean that you are not able to comply with your funders' policies and they may choose to enact sanctions for non-compliance, which could lead to a loss of grant money.

Additional Resources

Useful Resources

The The Scholarly Works Policy checklist (PDF, 231kB)‌ can help you track the process.

The Open Access Flowchart (PDF, 91kB) shows how to use all three open access routes.

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