1. Policy statement

To ensure effective scholarly communication and funder compliance, all Sheffield Hallam authors are required to deposit a copy of all their research outputs with the Library, which will be made available to the public where possible.

All scholarly articles — which include papers in journals and conference proceedings, as well as chapters in edited collections, whether they are text-based outputs or the outputs of creative practice — must be made Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence from the day of publication. To achieve this, all Sheffield Hallam authors must (1) add a Rights Retention Statement as part of their manuscript submission to the publisher, and (2) deposit their accepted manuscript into Elements upon acceptance and before publication.

Different types of Open Access are recognised and supported. Some exceptions to this policy exist.

2. Objectives

The objectives of this policy are to:

• Apply the principles and practice of Open Research to how we disseminate knowledge for the benefit of society (see the University’s position statement on Open Research)
• Enable staff and students to maximise the reach and impact of their research
• Act as responsible stewards with regard to the University’s knowledge assets
• Ensure copyright is applied legally and ethically
• Achieve compliance with funder policies on Open Access
• Contribute to the development of a healthy and ethical scholarly communication infrastructure
• Ensure our authors retain the freedom to publish in a journal of their choice
• Support sustainability of scholarly communication and initiatives to develop institutional and sector transitional and transformational agreements with publishers

3. Purpose

This policy has been developed based on business, legal and ethical requirements to ensure all Sheffield Hallam authors understand their responsibilities with regard to publication and copyright, and that they take the right action at the right time in order to achieve the objectives described above.

Support and guidance for all Hallam authors is available from the Library.

4. Scope

This policy applies to all research publications authored by University staff and students.

5. Policy Detail

Open Access to all scholarly work other than scholarly articles

1. Authors must deposit a copy of each research output resulting from research carried out by University researchers into Elements (https://elements.shu.ac.uk). Authors may in addition choose to deposit their work in subject repositories relevant to their discipline.

2. Authors must deposit such a copy into Elements within 3 months of the date of acceptance and before the first publication date.

3. The principle of depositing a copy of University research into Elements before the publication date applies to all types of outputs irrespective of format. But requirements for scholarly articles are outlined in paragraph 9-19.

4. The deposited copy of the research output should usually be the author's final peer-reviewed version before publication and not the publisher's PDF. Library Services will make the deposited copy publicly available via the SHU Research Archive (SHURA) in accordance with the author's agreement with the publisher and with the publisher's Open Access policy.

5. The University's preference is to follow the green open access route wherever possible. This is achieved by depositing a copy of scholarly work into Elements, and by making this publicly available.

6. The gold route through the payment of article or book processing charges (APCs and BPCs) to publishers is also supported where appropriate. Funds provided by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the University's own Open Access Fund will be used appropriately and strategically to increase the visibility and impact of University publications. Your Library also engages in agreements with publishers that cover the cost of publishing open access—this means that publishing gold open access in the journals covered by these agreements does not require the separate payment of an article processing charge. Publishing scholarly articles in so-called hybrid journals, that offer both subscription and open access content, outside of these read-and-publish agreements is generally discouraged but will still be funded where appropriate.

7. Diamond open access, which does not require the payment of article or book processing charges at all, is also supported. Your Library provides a publishing platform for academic journals and provides support to the journals’ editors, such as supplying an ISSN for the journal, DOIs for papers published in the journal, and registration of the journal in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

8. Open access to research data which underpins research outputs is discussed in the University’s research data management policy.

Open Access to scholarly articles, and copyright

9. The following stipulations (paragraph 9-19) apply to all scholarly articles, including papers in journals and conference proceedings, and chapters in edited collections, authored or co-authored while the person is a staff member or student of Sheffield Hallam University, which includes any third-party content where rights in that content have been secured. Any articles submitted, or accepted, for publication before the adoption of this policy are exempt.

10. The following stipulations (paragraph 9-19) do not apply to monographs, scholarly editions, text books, datasets, edited collections, or other outputs that are not scholarly articles. These are covered above (paragraph 1-8).
    
    Although the following stipulations do not apply to edited collections as a whole, they do apply to individual contributions within edited collections.
    
     

11. Sheffield Hallam University confirms its Intellectual Property Policy, which states in clause 1.2 that through the inclusion of subclause 16.3 in its standard Lecturers’ employment contract, the University assigns to authors the copyright in books and other scholarly/academic articles and publications (not software), where such works are not explicitly commissioned by or through the University on the understanding that in consideration for doing so the authors will grant to the University a non-exclusive royalty free right to use such scholarly work, publications and articles for the purpose of assessment and dissemination including, but not limited to, the assessment under the HEFCE Research Assessment Exercise or its successors.
    
    Sheffield Hallam University also confirms its Terms and Conditions for Students, which state in clause 8.2.1 that each student grants to the University a continuing, non-exclusive, world-wide, irrevocable, royalty free license to use his/her student IP, including the right to sublicense, for non-commercial use and academic and research purposes.
    
    This Research Publications and Copyright Policy expands on this right that staff and students grant to the University.
    
     

12. Each staff member and student grants to Sheffield Hallam University a non‐exclusive, irrevocable, sub‐licensable, worldwide licence to make manuscripts of their scholarly articles publicly available. This licence is granted on condition that, if Sheffield Hallam University does make the said scholarly articles available, it will only do so on the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.

On submission

13. The policy requires staff members to add the following Rights Retention Statement (RRS) in the funding acknowledgement section or in the first footnote or endnote of the manuscript, and in any cover letter/note accompanying the submission:
    
    “For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version of this paper arising from this submission.”
    
    It is essential that staff members include this Statement in all submissions of scholarly articles. When submitting work to the editor of an edited collection  –  such as a special issue of a journal, or a book – , staff members must inform the editor. When authors are asked to sign a publishing agreement before submission, they must communicate on that occasion to their publisher that they have already granted a CC BY licence over the Author Accepted Manuscript to Sheffield Hallam University.
    
     

On acceptance

14. Upon acceptance, each staff member will provide an electronic copy of the accepted manuscript (AM) of each scholarly article at no charge to the appropriate representative of Sheffield Hallam University in an appropriate electronic format (such as PDF) within 3 months of the date of acceptance and always before the first publication date.

15. Staff members will, when providing the electronic copy of the AM, notify Sheffield Hallam University if any rights or permissions needed to make third party or co‐authored content in an article publicly available under a CC BY licence have not been secured and which consequently need to be made available with a ‘rights reserved’ statement.

16. Authors must be aware of the terms of copyright transfer agreements they sign with publishers and the impact on how their work can be made available under the terms of this policy.

On publication

17. Sheffield Hallam University will deposit the AM in its digital repository, SHURA (https://shura.shu.ac.uk), with article metadata usually available immediately upon deposit and the AM being made accessible to the public on the date of first publication (online or otherwise), or the conference end date for conference proceedings, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.

Co-authorship

18. Where this policy applies to an article that is co‐authored, the staff member will use all reasonable endeavours to obtain a licence to Sheffield Hallam University from all the co‐authors on the same terms as the licence granted under this policy by the staff member. Sheffield Hallam University automatically sub‐licenses the rights granted to it under this policy to all co‐authors and their host institutions, on condition that if the said co‐authors and/or host institutions make a co‐authored scholarly article publicly available, they will do so on the terms of a CC BY licence. Consequently, the staff member need not seek permission from co‐authors employed by institutions that have adopted policies that give institutions and/or authors the same rights.

Opting out

19. The University recognises that there may be situations outside a staff member’s control where it is difficult to follow this policy exactly. In this case it will be permissible for staff to request an opt out of the requirement for immediate open access upon publication, and/or the assignation of a CC BY licence. However, authors should be aware that opting out may cause the research output to be non-compliant with funder policies, which may limit their ability to contribute to the Research Excellence Framework or its successors, as well as result in reduced research income through sanctions of their funder. To request an opt-out we simply ask authors to contact Library Services with details of the publication.

Address convention

20. This policy requires all Sheffield Hallam University research outputs to be easily identified as being from Sheffield Hallam University in order to ensure full credit is given in bibliometric searches carried out for the assessment of research, league tables or other purposes. All researchers should use an address in the following form when submitting an item for publication. As a bare minimum the phrase ‘Sheffield Hallam University’ must be used and the full registered address of 'City Campus, Howard Street, Sheffield, S1 1WB', as outlined in Principles of good research practice for publication and authorship.

Acknowledgement of funding

21. Authors must acknowledge sources of funding in their research outputs including grant numbers where applicable and in accordance with the funder’s terms and conditions agreed when accepting the funding.

Inclusion of data access statements

22. In compliance with the University's research data management policy, all Sheffield Hallam University research outputs must include a data access statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible. Such a statement informs readers where the underlying research materials associated with a paper are available, and how the research materials can be accessed. The statement should include links to the datasets, where applicable and appropriate.

23. Publicly funded research data should be made openly available with as few restrictions as possible. Where there are reasons to protect access to the data, for example commercial confidentiality or sensitivities around data derived from potentially identifiable human participants, these should be included in the data access statement.

Adoption and use of author identifiers (ORCID)

24. ORCID provides researchers with a unique identifier that can be kept throughout their career. It distinguishes between researchers with similar names and helps ensure that publications are attributed and recorded correctly, potentially reducing researchers’ workload. ORCID is a global, non-profit organization supported by its members, including Sheffield Hallam University. Publishers are increasingly adopting ORCIDs in their journal submission systems. Major research funders, such as the Wellcome Trust and the UK Research Councils, now require, or recommend the use of ORCID. In addition, external grant application and reporting systems, such as Researchfish and Je-S, now link with and require ORCID identifiers.

25. Sheffield Hallam University strongly encourages researchers, if they have not already done so, to claim, create and populate their ORCID record. This can be done automatically via information already held in the publications management system, Elements. Sheffield Hallam University then asks researchers to use their ORCID in all research outputs.

Collaborations and co-authorship

26. A collaboration agreement must be in place with external partners before the start of the research that clearly addresses publication practice in line with funder and/or University guidelines.

New members of staff

27. Authors who join the University and who have published research whilst at another higher education institute (or research organisation) are encouraged to add records for their full list of publications to the publications management system, Elements. In addition, they must deposit copies of all their research from the current REF period in Elements, to be made discoverable in the SHURA repository.

Donations to the Hallam Authors Book Collection

28. The University encourages authors of books and book chapters to donate a copy to Library Services to become part of the Hallam Authors Book Collection. Library Services maintain a Hallam Authors Book Collection to showcase and preserve books written by Sheffield Hallam staff. Books in the collection are available in your Library in the usual way, but additionally appear as a separate collection in the Library catalogue. Your Library intends to preserve these books indefinitely.

6. Roles and Responsibilities

The library is responsible for implementing the policy and for providing accompanying guidance and support to Sheffield Hallam authors.

The Open Research Operations Group are responsible for overseeing and monitoring the policy. The Group reports to the Research and Innovation Committee.

7. Definitions and Abbreviations

Associate Documents

Position statement on Open Research

https://www.shu.ac.uk/research/excellence/ethics-and-integrity/position-statement-on-open-research

Research Data Management policy

https://www.shu.ac.uk/research/excellence/ethics-and-integrity/data-management

Intellectual Property Policy – Academic & Research Staff

https://sheffieldhallam.sharepoint.com/sites/3085/SitePages/Intellectual-Property-and-Commercialisation.aspx

Terms and Conditions for Students

https://www.shu.ac.uk/study-here/terms-and-conditions-and-student-regulations

References

UKRI Open Access policy

https://www.ukri.org/publications/ukri-open-access-policy/

cOAlition S and Plan S

https://www.coalition-s.org 

UK Scholarly Communications License and Model Policy

https://ukscl.ac.uk/

UUK and JISC sector requirements for transitional agreements

https://www.jisc.ac.uk/content/open-access/our-role