Open Policy Finder: Your Gateway to Research Policies

Embargo periods? Green or Gold OA? Data archiving rules? With publications piling up, navigating publisher and funder policies to enable open access can feel like a maze. Open Policy Finder cuts through the complexity, offering a one-stop portal to streamline your research journey.

Why Open Policy Finder Matters

In academic research, policies on funding, ethics, data sharing, and open access are as critical as the research itself. Yet, tracking them down across scattered sources is time-consuming. Jisc’s Open Policy Finder (formerly Sherpa Services), a free, open-source search engine, acts like a “Google for research policies.” It consolidates global policies from funders, journals, and publishers, saving you from endless searches so you can focus on your work.

Open Policy Finder landing page

Navigating Open Access and Self-Archiving

Available at openpolicyfinder.jisc.ac.uk, Open Policy Finder centralizes policies from:

• Funders: general OA mandates, policies on archiving research articles and data.
• Publishers: journal listings and OA book policies
• Journals: OA options, fees, available Creative Commons licenses, instructions about self-archiving.

Its intuitive “Search all” bar lets you enter keywords or target specific publishers, journals, or funders. Results are clear, with summaries that break down complex policies into actionable insights.

For example, Open Policy Finder can quickly confirm that Angewandte Chemie International Edition (ISSN 1433-7851) allows self-archiving (Green OA) of the accepted manuscript in HKUST’s Institutional Repository after a 12-month embargo. When funding for article processing charges (APCs) for Gold OA is limited, knowing that accepted manuscripts can be shared via Green OA is invaluable.

Open Policy Finder shows how different versions, submitted, accepted, or published, may be shared, with or without relevant embargo periods and other conditions for meeting OA compliance.

Bookmark the Finder for quick checks for open access options. Also, explore our “How to Make Your Work Open Access” library guide or contact HKUST Library’s Research Support Team (lbrs@ust.hk) for more information.

– By Lester Chan, Library

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