Research institutions

Your employer may have specific services available to help you when publishing a book open access. You will also be required to adhere to their policies.

Many organisations provide help that may include:

• open access and research data management services to advise and support authors. These are often centrally based in a library or research office. There may also be local discipline-specific support within faculties;
• support with publication costs, a university press, or help liaising with funders who offer support;
• project coordinators and research support offices to help with grant applications to support your book;
• intellectual property advice (sometimes based in a Research and Commercialisation or University Affairs office);
• local peer review in your faculty;
• support from colleagues on choosing an appropriate publication venue for your topic;
• additional visibility of your research outputs via public-facing platforms such as the repository, staff profiles and university web pages;
• training and guidance on advertising your work online (see University of Glasgow for an example of an institutional page which aims to support you on this subject);
• training and guidance on exploring interest in your work (see Utrecht University for an example of an institutional page which aims to support you on this subject).

Your organisation may expect you to:

• familiarise yourself with local policies;
• communicate your research;
• register accepted research outputs such as publications and the associated research datasets on a central information system and/or repository;
• consider choosing a publication route that offers open access;
• consider how publication routes align with any open access requirement of your funders;
• ensure your affiliation to the organisation is accurately worded in the publication;
• rectify any inconsistencies or errors in the published material;
• support colleagues, especially early career researchers or research assistants in understanding open access for books.

Research organisations:

• are committed to good research practice frameworks such as the Concordat to Support Research Integrity (this includes open communication in making research findings widely available);
• use levels of open access as indicators of success and may return these in national assessment exercises, such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

This article is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.