How and why you should deposit upon acceptance
Over the last two years, we’ve visited most schools at the University and a clear theme has arisen, which has since been supported by further evidence:
Many researchers are not depositing their outputs in Pure.
Certainly, many are doing so, either themselves or through a deposit hub in their school—that is, a research administrator who has been tasked to deposit things on researchers’ behalf.
Either way though, it remains the researcher’s responsibility to deposit their outputs in Pure by creating a record and including necessary metadata like the date of acceptance and uploading the accepted manuscript for articles and proceedings.
But, as I have already said, many researchers are not depositing their outputs in Pure. Following a recent short project, the OA team imported over 500 articles, published in 2024-26, that were not previously recorded in Pure.
Creating publication records in Pure is not automatic
There are many reasons for this, of course, including that people think Pure is automated, creating records through bots and/or magic.
It isn’t. You may get an automatic notification in your email telling you a record has been created for your output, or something in your record has been updated, but that is only because a diligent, hard-working person from either the Open Access or Pure teams has actioned something—created, validated, or simply updated the record, their own human fingers clattering on a keyboard to do so. Similarly, there are helpful tools that can suggest outputs such as Scopus import or automated search, but a human still needs to review and bring in the suggested record(s). Check the Pure guides or contact [email protected] for help
It may seem antiquated in today’s digital world, but almost nothing is automatic in Pure, and it is the hard work of a small team to attempt to make everything—around 400 records per month—is accurate, updated, and standardised. But it is not the open access or Pure team’s responsibility to get things in Pure.
We also have no access to the accepted manuscripts that are required for Green open access – these need to be provided by the author. It is the researchers’, something that’s been communicated regularly to schools for the last decade or more, including through school visits, blog posts like this, announcements, communications, and more. If you deposit your record after publication, it may fall through the cracks and risk non-compliance with not only our policy, but also REF’s OA requirements.
Institutional policies and REF requirements
The institutional open access policy, which aims to support St Andrews researchers in contributing to open access research while also complying with other policies, requires St Andrews staff to deposit their accepted manuscript for articles and proceedings upon acceptance. This will then usually be made available, thanks to our rights retention policy, upon publication with CC BY licensing applied.
Furthermore, it is helpful to deposit upon acceptance so as to comply with REF requirements. REF2021 rules, for example, which apply to all outputs published between January 2021 to December 2025, actually require an item be made available less than three months after acceptance.
REF2029 rules, which apply to all outputs published between January 2026 and December 2028, stipulate something be made available within three months of publication. However, to do so, it has to be deposited in Pure, and the best way to guarantee we catch something in time to make it public is by depositing upon acceptance.
How to deposit
There is a short guide available as a PDF to help you as you deposit your item in Pure. We encourage folks to download this to their desktop so as to have it on hand.
There are a few important elements to think of when depositing a record:
- Date of acceptance: Please include your full date of acceptance. When it is published, please add that as another date—do not remove the date of acceptance.
- Accepted manuscript: Please deposit your accepted manuscript—the version that’s been peer reviewed but not yet copyedited or typeset by the publisher—by clicking ‘Add electronic version (file, DOI, or link)…’
- Document version: Please select which document version it is, otherwise we need to email you to ask.
- Public access to file: As it says on the Pure record entry, please set this to ‘Unknown.’ The Open Access team will make items open when they are legally allowed to, based on permissions and copyright.
If you have any questions about depositing in Pure, you can email the Pure Live team at [email protected].
If you have questions about open access in Pure, then please contact us at [email protected].