St George’s, University of London (SGUL) is committed to open sharing practices, for the purposes of increasing visibility, accessibility and impact of our scholarly activity to the academic community and wider society. This Publications policy formalises this commitment and outlines what steps SGUL authors are expected to take to facilitate the dissemination of publications and enable researchers to meet funder requirements.
Please refer to the Open Access Glossary of Terms for definitions of terms used in this policy:
Open Access Glossary
SGUL supports a mixed model of ‘green’ and ‘gold’ open access:
1. Purpose
The purpose of this policy is to provide guidance for authors to support the publishing process. By encouraging and increasing open access publishing as best practice across the university, whilst ensuring adherence to any intellectual property and/or contractual funder requirements, this Publications policy aims to:
1.1 Ensure SGUL has an up to date and comprehensive record of research activity via the Current Research Information System (CRIS).
1.2 Make publications available open access via SGUL’s institutional repository, St George's Online Research Archive (SORA). This ensures compliance with funder mandates and facilitates the management of statutory returns such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and annual funder compliance reports, e.g. Researchfish. Publications may in addition be deposited elsewhere, such as Europe PubMed Central (EPMC).
1.3 Ensure that the public web profile pages of SGUL academics are kept up to date by linking to publications data from the CRIS.
2. Author guidelines and expectations
For a step-by-step guide to open access publishing, please refer to the Open Access Decision Tree (this is also available as an interactive Microsoft Form version)
2.1 Maintain individual bibliographic records relating to their scholarly output in the CRIS. Most academic staff at SGUL have a CRIS profile with a record of their individual publications and professional activities. Authors can login at https://cris.sgul.ac.uk to view their profile, verify authorship and deposit new publications. For any problems logging in, or if you do not have a CRIS profile, contact the SGUL Library team at openaccess@sgul.ac.uk.
2.2 As a minimum, all peer reviewed journal articles should be deposited into SORA. The full text of the final author accepted manuscript (AAM) should be uploaded into CRIS for deposit in SORA upon acceptance, or within 3 months of the acceptance date at the latest.
2.3 SGUL strongly encourages the retention of author copyright, whether through publishing agreements or other mechanisms, such as the inclusion of a rights retention statement in the submitted manuscript. Rights Retention facilitates compliance with the open access policies of cOAlition S funders via the green route. For guidance on how and when to apply rights retention, visit the Plan S website.
2.3.1 Traditional practice has been for authors to transfer copyright to the publisher, giving them exclusive rights to reproduce and disseminate the publication. This can place restrictions on the sharing of either the AAM or the Version of Record, often with an embargo. Retaining copyright allows the author to share and re-use their article, including making it available immediately with no embargo in a repository.
2.3.2 A Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence should be applied to the AAM and/or Version of Record where possible. Required by many funders, a CC BY licence allows for maximum re-use of the published material whilst still providing appropriate credit to the author.
2.4 Check the Terms and Conditions of grant awards for any publication requirements of the funder(s); this must be done before work is submitted to a journal or publishing platform to ensure the future publication will meet these requirements.
2.4.1 If specified by the funder, all outputs submitted and supported by that funder must be published with immediate open access, which means the article is made freely available at the time of publication (with no embargo). This can be achieved by either: a) publishing gold open access; or b) including a rights retention statement on article submission and depositing the author accepted manuscript in SORA on acceptance (see 2.2 and 2.3 above).
2.4.2 Where funders require a version to be made available under specific licence terms (e.g. CC BY), grant awardees are expected to make all reasonable efforts to comply.
2.4.3 If the funder mandates open access, authors requiring guidance to ensure compliance should contact SGUL Library at openaccess@sgul.ac.uk prior to manuscript submission.
2.4.4 Funding for the payment of open access APCs should be taken from grant awards, where available. If required, funding is obtainable on application via institutional block grants made available by funders and the St George’s institutional open access fund. Applications must be made before submission to a journal. The application form with guidance on eligibility and how to apply is on the SGUL website.
2.5 Make any acknowledgements as required by their funder(s), for example including the name of funder(s) and grant reference number(s) in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript.
2.6 Include acknowledgements of any internal funding and/or SGUL core services that supported the work, e.g. Image Resource Facility (IRF), Biological Research Facility (BRF).
2.7 Observe any requirements with regards to research data management and include a data access statement. Data access statements typically contain information on where the data can be accessed with a unique persistent identifier and details of any restrictions. More information is available on the St George’s Research Data Management webpages.
2.8 Use a persistent author identifier when submitting author details for a publication. SGUL strongly encourages the use of ORCID; once registered, user profiles should be made publicly visible and updated regularly. ORCID accounts can be linked to your CRIS profile and ORCID identifiers should be logged in MyWorkplace.
2.9 Include an author contribution statement in the submitted manuscript to affirm the substantial contribution to the output by the SGUL author(s); where possible, it is highly recommended to use the CRediT format, which outlines specific contributions across a wide range of author roles.
2.10 When submitting publications, where possible use a standard address convention. To ensure consistency and increase the visibility of the close collaboration between the University and the NHS Trust, both organisations should be acknowledged in outputs from work carried out by those with joint, honorary or other collaborative contracts. This will ensure that all research outputs are correctly attributed and publications are easily identified and retrieved from online databases, e.g. PubMed.
2.10.1 Where affiliation exists with St George’s, University of London only, use the following address format:
Dr. A. N. Othera
a. City St George’s, University of London, School of Health & Medical Sciences, London, SW17 0RE
2.10.2 Where joint affiliation exists with SGUL and St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (SGHT), use the following address format:
Dr. A. N. Othera,b
a. City St George’s, University of London, School of Health & Medical Sciences, London, SW17 0RE
b. St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London, SW17 0QT
2.11 If conducting a Clinical Trial sponsored by SGUL or SGHT, ensure that results are published within 24 months from Primary Study completion and outputs have been deposited into a subject repository, if required. See SGUL’s Clinical Trial Transparency policy for details.
2.12 If unsure of funder publication requirements, or how to use CRIS, seek assistance via openaccess@sgul.ac.uk. Authors with commercial funding or a grant award from a funder without an open access policy should consult with Joint Research and Enterprise Services (JRES) for individual contractual terms.
3. Review and Responsibilities
3.1 This policy will be reviewed annually by the Research Publications and Data Management (RPaD) Group, and recommendations for amendment will be submitted to the Research Committee for consideration and approval.
3.2 Individual authors are responsible for meeting the requirements in section 2, namely maintaining an accurate record of their publications in the CRIS and ensuring the appropriate version of the full text is deposited in an appropriate repository.
3.3 The principal investigator (PI) is responsible for ensuring compliance with any funder requirements, including publishing under a specific licence and/or with immediate open access, as stated in the Terms and Conditions of grant awards. As a co-author, the PI has responsibility for accurately communicating these requirements to the corresponding author and/or submitting author.
3.4 SGUL Library will provide periodic statements to JRES, the University Institutes, RPaD and Research Committee on the volume of full-text publications deposited in SORA. These reports will highlight levels of academic engagement and open access compliance across St George’s, enabling targeted follow-up and support. Data may additionally be used for auditing purposes (e.g. grant reports, REF).
3.5 Non-adherence to this policy may be followed up by Institute Directors, as appropriate.
4. Institutional documents and policies that should be read in conjunction with this policy