UCT’s Council approved an Open Access Policy in March 2014. The Policy seeks to:
- “increase discoverability and visibility of scholarly output at UCT;
- preserve, present and facilitate access to the institution’s research and knowledge production;
- ensure the full participation of the UCT academy in global knowledge communities;
- contribute their academic resources to social and economic development;
- develop research capacity within the institution and region by sharing research knowledge and practices;
- manage the rising costs of library materials and access to scholarly knowledge; and
- increase citations to and maximize the visibility of UCT scholarship.”
UCT authors are encouraged to deposit the post-peer reviewed manuscript or postprint into OpenUCT, as well as other forms of scholarship, including educational resources, books, conference papers and reports. UCT’s Theses and Dissertations are also available in OpenUCT.
The Open Access Policy has been amended to include delaying access to a thesis or dissertation for up to 24 months or a longer time, if the necessary criteria are met; these criteria are set out in the document Guidelines for OpenUCT: Publication of Theses and Dissertations after Conferment of the Degree
If UCT authors are unable to deposit their article in the Repository due to restrictive publisher copyright policies, they might be able to negotiate their rights by adding an author addendum to publications agreement to a publisher contract. This legal tool allows researchers to keep certain rights to their work, such as the right to redistribute.
UCT Libraries will implement the Open Access Policy at UCT through managing the OpenUCT Repository.