University Library

For papers, conference contributions, book chapters and all other research output other than electronic theses, please use the Loughborough University Publication Information database LUPIN. Login is with your standard University username and password. LUPIN enables you to attach and upload the accepted for publication version of the full-text of your output and sends it to the Institutional Repository for checking and processing. Repository staff will email you when your submission has been added. If you require assistance with LUPIN please contact: researchpolicy@lboro.ac.uk

Please remember to upload the accepted for publication version of your file, rather than the publisher PDF. We will check the publisher copyright policies. Text files should be in Word or PDF format. Only one file should be uploaded (any appendices, figures etc. should be included in the main document). If you need to submit a further file (for example if you have a video art work which is accompanied by a text document, please contact repository@lboro.ac.uk).

One printed repository licence is required to cover all your submissions. If you have not already completed a copy of the form, please download the form, sign and return to the IR Manager, Support Services, University Library, to give us permission to make your work available online.

Please make sure that you have the agreement of co-authors before submitting papers to the repository, especially if copyright of the work has been retained by the authors.

Also, if you are submitting audio-visual work please remember to seek permission from participants/performers beforehand. A suggested consent form is available here.

Full instructions for uploading papers to the Institutional Repository via LUPIN are available here (video) and here (instruction sheet).

E-theses should be submitted via the e-thesis submission form. Login is with your standard username and password.

Students are required to deposit a copy of the final version of their Ph.D. thesis, as approved by their Examiners, in electronic format in the University’s Institutional Repository. Each thesis will be made freely available on the web via the University’s Institutional Repository unless the thesis is Restricted or Confidential.

 The research degree will not be awarded until the electronic version has been deposited with the University.

Further information and details of the submission process are available from the Academic Registry Template Shop (Section 4 Research Student Administration).

Please read the procedures and notes about third party copyright material in theses.

A recent study has emphasised that "there are encouraging early indications that electronic doctoral theses attract significant attention when made openly accessible. Open access to electronic theses may therefore indeed accelerate the sharing of knowledge and the progress of scientific discovery and human development."

Moyle, M and Barnes, T and Brown, J and Sadler, K (2012) Electronic doctoral theses in the UK: a sector-wide survey into policies, practice and barriers to Open Access. UK Council for Graduate Education.

Loughborough University recommends that academics retain their copyright. The University's suggested author's agreement is available here. For more information on copyright and author's rights please see the Copyright Toolbox for authors and the Versions Toolkit (pages 11-12). The SPARC Author Rights Initiative is also a useful source of information. Please note that, whether retaining copyright or not, it is very important to read publishing agreements very carefully to check that they allow at least the final pre-publication version to be archived in Institutional Repositories.

The majority of publishers now permit authors to deposit a version of their papers in repositories. We can check the copyright restrictions for each paper you would like to deposit by using the SHERPA/RoMEO database and by checking publisher copyright policies. If the information is not available online for your research output, then we can contact the publishers for permission on your behalf.

N.B. If you do have a copy of any agreements signed with publishers then it is useful to see these for items you submit.

Please also remember that you may need to obtain permission from the appropriate copyright holders for any third party copyright material that has been included in your submitted work. For further information please see: Third party copyright material and the Institutional Repository.

"Open Access brings benefits for a variety of constituencies. Researchers gain from the increased usage and impact of their work. Their institutions benefit from aggregated usage and impact of their researchers and the increased presence that Open Access brings. Society benefits from better technology transfer, better diffusion of know-how and a better-informed populace."  Swan, A., 2012. Open Access: Impact for Researchers, Universities and Society. RLUK and SCONUL.

Visibility and impact: Research output that has been made freely available in Institutional Repositories is more accessible to a wider audience, thus overcoming the impact barriers of the subscription model and potentially increasing your citation impact. Research has shown that when comparing open access articles and non-open access articles in the same journal/year open access articles have substantially better citation rates. For example see the studies at: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12906/and http://hdl.handle.net/2134/4083.

Also, Loughborough's repository contains Open Archives Initiative compliant metadata which means that papers within it are highly visible on the internet.

Accessibility: depositing your work in the repository frees it from access and subscription barriers and makes it more available to all.

Central storage and preservation: Although papers may be stored on personal web pages, search engines will rank results from repositories much higher, which enhances your visibility. Papers will also be preserved in the repository indefinitely, whereas personal web pages may no longer exist after a few years.

Fulfilling the conditions of research grants - Many research funders now have Open Access (OA) policies which make funding subject to the condition that outputs are made open access.

Open Access is based upon the key principle that publicly funded research should be made publicly available and as widely accessible as possible. Open Access material is free at the point of access, to anyone with without barriers of subscription or registration.

The current structure of the publishing market does not always ensure that publicly funded research is made publicly available, nor does the system work in the best interests of the academic community.  The high subscription costs of traditional academic journals and the nature of print publishing schedules create barriers to the free flow of scholarly communication.

In December 2011 the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) published the document Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth (URN 11/1387). This white paper requires that all outputs from research funded by public sector are made available by open access.

Most UK research funding bodies and universities now recognise two main routes to making your papers Open Access, Green and Gold.

Green Open Access: Authors publish a copy in a journal or elsewhere in the traditional way, and then self-archive in an open access repository, such as the University’s Institutional Repository. Most publishers permit authors to make their own final versions of papers available online in this way, without any charges. Institutional repositories provide an excellent example of how universities can work to ensure that the results of research are disseminated more widely, whilst maintaining rigorous peer review standards. 

Gold Open Access: Authors publish a copy of their research papers in Open Access (or hybrid) peer-reviewed academic journals or conference proceedings. Many publishers levy a significant Article Processing Charge (APC) for this. Once accepted for publication, the publisher places the final version of your research paper on their website and makes it freely available under a licence. The licence preferred by RCUK is a Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC-BY) Licence which allows for modification, re-use, and re-selling with proper attribution. It is important to check any licence agreements that you sign carefully to make sure that you are permitted to deposit the publisher final version in repositories without restrictions on re-use.

The Research Information Network (RIN) have produced a booklet "Getting your feet wet: an introduction to Open Access" which provides a good overview of Open Access and its benefits.

Many research funders now have Open Access (OA) policies which make funding subject to the condition that outputs are made open access, for instance by publishing in an Open Access journal (see DOAJ ) and/or depositing in an Institutional Repository. The Research Councils UK (RCUK)  have recently announced a new Open Access policy for all research articles submitted for funding from 1 April 2013 that arise from Research Council funding.

SHERPA JULIET provides  details of the policies of funders. Before you publish your funded research output in a journal, check carefully to make sure that the publisher is Open Access / Repository friendly and will permit you to comply with your funder's policy. The SHERPA RoMEO database provides this information.

If your research is funded by a funder with an OA policy, it is very important that you read their policy carefully. Not complying with funding conditions could potentially affect future grants and many research funders have begun to monitor this issue more closely.

• With effect from the 01 September 2011 and the roll-out of LUPIN to your School, Loughborough University requires that staff submit a copy of all academic journal articles, conference papers and book chapters to the Institutional Repository.

• Staff are also required to deposit any research output expected to be submitted for the REF 2014 where format permits.

• Staff are also strongly encouraged to deposit all other research output.

• Staff are required to provide, wherever possible, these research outputs by keeping author created final versions of their research output.  

• To this end, Loughborough University recommends that its staff do NOT assign copyright to publishers.

• Instead, the University recommends that when submitting an article for publication authors grant the publisher a licence to publish the article.

• Staff are required to sign the Institutional Repository licence.

• Loughborough University supports the principle that the outcomes of funded research should be made available as widely as possible.

To view material already available in the Institutional Repository:  http://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace

Loughborough University's Institutional Repository Policy - including aims and objectives, information for authors and information for service providers.

Building an Institutional Repository at Loughborough University: Report on the first year of development of the Institutional Repository.

Further information relating to Institutional Repositories and the Open Access movement:

Ayris, P., 2008. Managing and sharing research resources: how Open Access repositories can help. JISC Briefing Paper, April 2008.

Centre for Research Communications at the University of Nottingham. The CRC includes the SHERPA partnership; the open-access services RoMEO , JULIET and OpenDOAR ; the JISC Research Communications Strategy project and the Repositories Support Project (RSP).

The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies House of Commons. Science and Technology Committee, 2004. Scientific Publications: Free for all? Tenth Report of Session 2003-04, Volume I: Report.

'Finch Group', 2012. Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications: report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings.

Norris, M., Oppenheim, C. and Rowland, F., 2008. The citation advantage of open-access articles. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59 (12), pp. 1963-1972.

Pappalardo, K. M. ... et al., 2008. Understanding Open Access in the academic environment : a guide for authors. Unpublished.

OAIster - Hosted by OCLC, this is a cross-search facility for well over 1100 Digital Repositories.

OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) a list of repositories worldwide.

Repositories Support Project and JISC, 2011. Embedding repositories: a guide and self-assessment tool.

ROAR - Registry of Open Access Repositories (hosted at the University of Southampton).

Swan, A., 2012. Open access: impact for researchers, universities and society. Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and SCONUL.