Benefits

Benefits to researchers:

• Depositing in Insight makes your research open access via the ‘green’ route*, it is freely and publicly available online, and not restricted to expensive subscription-only journals and publisher websites
• Studies have found links between open access publishing and increased citations
• Dissemination, exposure and impact is on a global scale – items in Insight are fully Googlable
• Depositing the manuscript of your published journal article/conference proceedings in Insight means it is open access and therefore eligible for the next REF** (and also ensures compliance with many research funder open access mandates such as UKRI, Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK)
• Insight ensures outputs are catalogued to internationally recognised standards and provides a robust, safe archive in which they are preserved
• Insight staff check publisher copyright policies on researchers’ behalf

Benefits to society:

• Making research outputs open access and freely available to anyone with an internet connection removes the barrier of expensive journal subscriptions and opens up research to people in developing countries, public, private, charitable and media organisations and other groups who do not have traditional channels to access academic research
• The vast majority of research in the UK is publicly-funded so exposing the resulting outputs to the tax-paying public is only right and fair
• The sharing of findings between researchers on a global scale results in significant academic, economic, social and cultural impacts; collaboration on similar research topics is made easier and duplication of effort reduced

Benefits to the University of Cumbria:

• Insight provides an official showcase of the University of Cumbria’s research outputs, reflecting the breadth and depth of research activity undertaken at the University
• Insight, and the active engagement of University of Cumbria researchers with it, is key in enabling the University to achieve its commitment to the wider open access agenda
• The University of Cumbria is committed to fostering a vibrant culture of research across the whole institution, contributing to nationally- and internationally-relevant research in its key areas of expertise

* The ‘green’ route is where outputs are made freely available online via an open access repository like Insight. It is preferable to the other method of open access publishing, the ‘gold’ route, because it avoids authors (or their institutions) paying hefty Article Processing Charges (APCs) to publish in ‘gold’ open access journals.

** The Research England open access policy states that, to be eligible for submission to the next REF, certain outputs (journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN) must be deposited in an institutional or subject repository like Insight within three months of being accepted for publication. The version deposited must be the authors' final accepted manuscript (after peer-review, but before the publisher’s typesetting). The requirement does not apply to monographs, book chapters, working papers, creative or practice-based research outputs, or research data. The policy applies to research outputs accepted for publication after 1st April 2016 i.e. now. Where publishers stipulate embargo periods before manuscripts can be made open access in Insight, those embargoes must not exceed 12 months for STEM subjects and 24 months for Arts and Humanities subjects.