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‌The Open Access (OA) movement 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 online and free at the point of access, without barriers such as subscription or registration. There is significant evidence to suggest that publishing your work Open Access leads to wider readership, increased downloads and ultimately more citations.

Please take a look at the University’s Open Access Policy covering academic journal articles, conference papers, book chapters and other research output by Loughborough authors.

This Open Access Policy supports the requirements specified by Research England in its current REF Open Access Policy. The core principle of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 open access policy is that journal articles and conference proceedings with ISSNs must be available in an open access form to be eligible for the next REF. Crucially authors’ accepted manuscripts must have been deposited in an institutional or subject repository within three months of acceptance. Research England have stated that the REF 2021 OA Policy should be followed until further notice. 

Loughborough University has an Open Access Research Repository into which staff may self-archive their research output. Submission to the Research Repository is via the LUPIN system.

Explore the pages in this section to find out more about how to submit your papers to the Research Repository, funders’ Open Access requirements, how to request OA funding for Research Council funded papers, Open Access discounts, and more …