Open Research and Education

The University is committed to the values and culture of open research and education. We aim to support our academic community to transition to open practice to maximise the opportunities for discovery, reach and impact.

The underlying principles of Open Practice

• Publically-funded research and scholarship should be openly available to all and free at the point of access
• Research and scholarship should be as open as possible and closed as necessary
• Open Practice expands the opportunities for knowledge exchange
• Transparency in all areas of research and scholarship helps to create a fairer and more inclusive research culture

The University's Open Research statement

The University of Sussex is committed to the long-term development of an Open Research culture. As part of the Sussex 2025 Research with Impact Strategy we identified an aim to embed a culture of collaboration, openness and inclusion, and in particular to develop a sector leading approach to Open Research.

Read the Open Research Statement

Open Research Services

• DORA principles

  The University is a signatory to DORA principles and the Library actively promotes the use of responsible metrics.

• Rights retention

   The University's new Publications and Copyright policy was launched on 1st October 2023 and enables all its authors to publish their articles & conference proceedings Open Access. The policy deploys a rights retention approach. Read the full policy.

• Institutional open publishing

  We support the creation of Open Educational Resources and have invested in a publishing platform to work with Sussex academics to produce open textbooks and other open publications. The Library worked in partnership with the School of Psychology on a pilot project to create a textbook and you can hear more about this project in this RLUK conference recording. 

  The Library also supports Open Journal Systems (OJS), an open-source publishing platform enabling Sussex researchers to establish open online journals. OJS supports a full range of publishing and editorial workflows.

• Key documents
  • Research Data Management Policy
  • University Publications and Copyright Policy