RGPO Open Access Policy

 

The UCOP Research Grants Program Office (RGPO) is committed to disseminating research as widely as possible to promote the public benefit. To that end, all RGPO grantee institutions and researchers grant RGPO a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright and in any medium for all scholarly articles and similar works generated as a result of an RGPO grant award, and agree to authorize others to do the same, for the purpose of making their articles widely and freely available in an open access repository. This policy does not transfer copyright ownership, which remains with the author(s) or copyright owners.

Scope and Waiver (Opt‐Out): The policy applies to all scholarly articles and similar works authored or co‐ authored as a result of research sponsored by an RGPO grant, except for any articles published before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the grantee institution and/or researchers entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. Upon express written request of the institutional grantee and/or researcher, RGPO will waive the license for a particular article or delay “open access” to the article for a specified period of time.

Deposit of Articles: To assist the RGPO in disseminating and archiving the articles, the grantee institution and all researchers to the grant award will commit to helping the RGPO to obtain copies of articles published as a result of an RGPO sponsored grant award. Specifically, each author will provide an electronic copy of the final version of the article to the RGPO by the date of its publication for inclusion in an open access repository, subject to any applicable waiver or delay referenced above. Notwithstanding the above, this policy does not in any way prescribe or limit the venue of publication.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Open Access?
Open access (OA) literature is free, digital, and available to anyone online. With OA literature, there is the potential for greater access, thus more readers and greater impact. (As with any scholarly article, authors of an open access article should be properly acknowledged and cited.)

There are two approaches to making research results Open Access: One involves publishing articles or books via the OA route on a publisher's platform (often referred to as Gold Open Access). The other involves archiving a version of the manuscript in an OA repository (often described as Green Open Access). The UC Open Access Policy and RGPO’s Open Access Policy fall under the Green OA model. The green OA model allows authors to continue to publish as they always have in the same journals. Once the article has been published in a traditional journal, the author then posts a “final author version” of the article to an OA repository like eScholarship.

What is the University of California publication management system?
The University of California Publication Management System (hereafter referred to as UCPMS) allows UC faculty and RGPO grantee authors to view and manage all their publication citations in one place. The automated system searches various open and commercial databases for papers that RGPO grantees have authored or co-authored. Authors then claim (or reject) the articles that the UCPMS has identified; the system then provides step-by-step instructions on how to post those articles to eScholarship, UC’s open access publishing platform.

Why do I need to verify my publications?
The UCPMS searches for names, but it is not perfect. Some of the harvested papers in your account may have been authored by someone else with a similar name. To ensure that the citations in the system were actually authored by you, we ask that you log in and click to verify the publications that you authored (you only have to do this once!).

Do I have to add my papers to eScholarship?
No. If your research publications are already freely available through other venues, just provide the link to the full text of your paper (rather than uploading a file of the full text) in the UCPMS. For instance, you would choose this option if you published in an OA journal or if you have already deposited your papers into an OA repository such as arXiv,PubMed Central.

Can I appoint a delegate to manage publications on my behalf?
You can delegate someone else to manage your publications by filling out the UC Publications Management delegation form.

Still have questions?
Please feel free to reach out to RGPO Open Access representatives at oapolicy-help@universityofcalifornia.edu with any additional questions you might have about our Open Access policy, how to utilize the publication management system, or any other Open Access questions you might have.