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City Research Online (CRO)

What is City Research Online (CRO)?

City Research Online (CRO) enables our academics, research staff and research students to record bibliographic details of their research and make the research outputs openly available. CRO helps academic and research staff meet the open access requirements for the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

It consists of City's open access institutional repository and the research publications database. 

  • The publications database: Records details of the research produced by our academics, research staff and research students. This information is publicly available through Staff Profiles
  • The institutional repository: Makes the full text of the research produced by our academics, research staff and research students freely available to anyone with internet connection. Anyone can access, read, use and cite the research found in the institutional repository. High ranking by search engines enables the widest possible audience for the content of the repository. 

Our Elements help Ask Us questions provides guidance on how to use the publications database and upload your research to CRO.

Making your research Open Access with City Research Online

[Uplifting acoustic guitar strumming music plays.]

[An animation of two research students meet in a university classroom.]

Student 1: Our article has been accepted for publication!

[The two student high-five. Enter a classmate.]

Student 3: Have you looked into open access?

Student 1: Should we?

Student 2: What are the benefits?

[Enter their lecturer.]

Lecturer: Yes! You should. Open Access has many benefits…

[The lecturer opens a blackboard and starts explaining, the following also appears as text on the board.]

What is Open Access?

Open Access makes research outputs freely available to anyone who wishes to read them.
Various types of Open Access allow for different levels of access.

What are the benefits?

  • Allows everyone to read your research and maintain freedom to publish in top journals
  • Will have greater impact. OA articles have greater citations, practitioners can access your findings, your research has greater chance to influence public policy
  • Compliant with the funder, university and REF policies
  • Your research is permanently archived with a persistent ID, download tracker and discoverability through CORE and Google Scholar

[Student 2 claps.]
Student 1: That sounds good! How do we go about it here at City?
Lecturer: It’s easy and it only takes 5 minutes! Let me explain…
[The lecturer opens a computer screen and explains. The words also appear on the computer screen.]
There are two ways in which your research can be made openly available:

  • Gold open access
  • Green open access

Gold Open Access Route

  • Makes the published version available under a Creative Commons licence
  • Requires a payment of the Author Processing Charge, which may be covered by an OA Transformative Agreement

Green Open access route

  • Articles published in a subscription journal can be self-archived in City Research Online
  • Makes the author’s accepted manuscript available
  • Is free for both authors and readers

[The screen changes to show a screencast of the process in the Elements system. The following words appear with the screencast]

To archive your newly accepted article, you’ll need to log in to Elements (publications.city.ac.uk) using your City username and password.

[Screencast shows the username and password typed into the relevant fields and the “login” button is clicked.]

And add the article details.

[Screencast shows the tab called “Publications” is opened the “Add new” button is selected. A pop window opens showing the publication type categories. "Journal article" is selected from the range of document types.]

[In the next screen the title of the article is typed into the search field. Then the “skip” link is clicked.]

Make sure to note all the authors, the journal and the acceptance date.

[The screencast example shows the following fields are completed on the form: Relationship with the journal article? i.e. Author; Author name; journal title; stats i.e. Accepted; date of acceptance - selected from a calendar; Refereed?  i.e. Yes. The "save" button is clicked to move on.] 

Grants are managed through Worktribe so you can ignore this page.

[User skips the “Link funding” section by selecting the “Grant not listed” button.]

Here's where you should upload the author accepted manuscript of your article.

[The next page shows the "prepare deposit upload file box. A browse button lets you search or the file location."].

[Screencast shows an example of author accepted manuscript and an example of published version.]

Publishers only allow the use of author accepted manuscripts. An author accepted manuscript is a version that’s been through peer-review but not type set yet. Publishers don’t allow the version of record to be used in the repository.  

[Screencasts shows what the article will look like once it's live on CRO]

Your article is now live on CRO. A unique persistent link is created (check the URL bar). It is linked to the version of record. Downloads are tracked and it’s harvested by Google Scholars and CORE. And it’s freely available to everyone!

[Back to the classroom. Some of the students are smiling and clapping.]

Student 1: Sounds great!

Student 2: Thanks for watching!

[Everyone waves their hand.]

Outro. Further help and support can be find at libguides.city.ac.uk/openaccess and our email is publications@city.ac.uk