UCL Publications Policy

UCL's Publications Policy applies to all UCL researchers. The policy includes rights retention for scholarly articles authored or co-authored by UCL staff.

Effective from 08 April 2025.

This policy supersedes the UCL Publications Policy 2012. It is part of a framework of UCL research and authorship policies that also includes:

1. Scope and purpose

1.1. This policy applies to all UCL researchers, with the exception of sections 3 and 4, which only apply to UCL staff.

1.2. UCL is strongly committed to ensuring the widest possible access to its researchers' outputs through open access. Rapid and widespread dissemination maximises their social, intellectual, cultural and economic impact, enhances the visibility of their authors, and fosters collaboration.

1.3. Traditional publication models require authors to transfer their copyright to the publisher, or to grant the publisher an exclusive right to publish the work. Reuse of the published output is subsequently controlled by the publisher, and authors retain limited rights to share it. This approach does not accord with the principles of open science and scholarship and the expectations of research funders.

1.4. The purpose of this policy is to ensure that:

the published outputs of research are made open access wherever possible, and as soon as possible;
UCL and its researchers can meet the requirements of their funders' open access policies, including those of UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and NIHR, as well as the Research Excellence Framework;
researchers retain rights allowing them to license and reuse their own outputs without any restrictions imposed by publisher agreements; and
at the same time, researchers can continue to publish in their venue of choice.

2. Publications record and deposit

2.1. Every UCL researcher must ensure that their publications record in UCL's publications and profiles management system (known as RPS) is kept up to date. This requirement exists to:

enable researchers and UCL to make outputs open access and to comply with funders' open access requirements;
ensure that accurate publications data is supplied for other UCL requirements, including in UCL's public profiles system (known as UCL Profiles) and UCL's appraisal system (known as MyAppraisal);
facilitate output selection for external assessment, and reporting for other purposes.

2.2. Publication records in RPS may be amended by staff from UCL Library, Culture, Collections & Open Science (LCCOS) and UCL Research, Innovation and Global Engagement (RIGE) to support external research assessment and other reporting purposes.

2.3. Every UCL researcher must ensure that an electronic copy of the accepted manuscript of their publications is provided to UCL, unless the publication is published Gold open access under a Creative Commons licence or the Open Government Licence. This will usually be done through the established manuscript deposit process in RPS. In addition to this, funded researchers must ensure that their accepted manuscript is deposited in any repository that their funder requires (e.g. Europe PMC).

3. Scholarly articles and rights retention

3.1. Sections 2 and 3 of the UCL Intellectual Property (IP) Policy provide that UCL:

agrees that copyright in scholarly materials and teaching materials created by UCL staff in the course of their duties shall, with certain limited exceptions, belong to the UCL staff member who is the author/originator of such materials;
retains a royalty free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable licence to use scholarly materials for academic and research purposes, as well as for any other purpose relating to UCL’s charitable activities; and
may use and reproduce scholarly materials worldwide, in all formats.

3.2. In line with the licence terms outlined in section 3.1 above, after receiving the accepted manuscript of any scholarly article authored or co-authored by a UCL staff member in accordance with section 2.3 above, and following necessary checks, UCL will make it, and the metadata related to the publication, publicly available under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) in UCL's open access repository (known as UCL Discovery).* This will apply to scholarly articles submitted on or after 08 April 2025.

* An alternative Creative Commons licence may be requested, subject to any funder requirements. See section 5 below.

3.3. Whilst this section does not apply to outputs other than scholarly articles, UCL strongly encourages researchers to make other types of output, including books, book chapters and edited collections, as openly available as possible. Where a funder's open access policy applies in such a case, it is recommended that researchers take the action outlined in section 3.4 below.

3.4. UCL will make all reasonable efforts to inform publishers of UCL's pre-existing licence. However, to assist staff in taking advantage of it, it is recommended that when submitting a scholarly article they include the following statement in the covering letter and acknowledgements section:

"For the purpose of open access, the author(s) has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission."

An alternative statement with the same intention, if required by specific funders such as UKRI, may be used instead. Provided that the publisher has been notified of UCL's pre-existing licence, the licence will remain valid even if the publisher seeks to impose conflicting terms.

3.5. UCL staff should bring this section of the policy to the attention of all co-authors of each scholarly article as early as possible in the publication process. Should a co-author object to the granting of this licence, the UCL staff member may apply for an exception (see section 4 below).

4. Exceptions

4.1. UCL recognises that there may be situations in which it is not possible to apply this policy. Therefore, in exceptional circumstances, and subject to section 4.2 below, UCL may waive this policy or apply a Creative Commons licence other than CC BY on a case by case basis. However, this may cause the output to be non-compliant with funder policies.

4.2. To request an exemption, or to request a Creative Commons licence other than the CC BY licence, the staff member should complete this form (coming soon) before the date of first publication and before the output is deposited in RPS, providing details of the publication and the reasons for the request.

5. Support for researchers

5.1. UCL provides full support for researchers with this policy, including in discussions with publishers. See the UCL Publications Policy support pages (coming soon).

6. Governance

6.1. This policy is overseen by UCL Press and Publications Board and has been approved by Research, Innovation and Global Engagement Committee. Faculties and, as appropriate, institutes, divisions and departments, are responsible for communicating the policy and related support materials to their researchers, and UCL Doctoral School to postgraduate research students. The Open Access Team in LCCOS is responsible for implementing the Policy, and, along with the Copyright Team in LCCOS, for interpreting and providing guidance on it.

7. Accessibility

7.1. Where necessary, UCL will make reasonable adjustments to ensure that all researchers can equitably comply with this policy. This may include providing assistance with the deposit of accepted manuscripts.