Over the summer, the Open Access Officers interviewed Matthew Nudds, Head of the Philosophy Department, to find out more about the overall Philosophy view on Open Access.

Do you know roughly when perhaps colleagues or maybe yourself used the Green route? I know you mentioned before that you generally used more of the Green route than the Gold.

The term ‘Green route’ became more familiar to us last year when the RCUK policy was published, and I think they asked me to comment on it and the British Philosophy Association asked me to comment. Colleagues have been using WRAP.

What support did you receive from your peers and colleagues in order to publish in Open Access?

Everybody has been using WRAP as it’s been part of REF preparations so I have asked everybody to ensure that they have their REF materials uploaded onto WRAP. As a Department we support them in doing that, but also the Library supported it from their end.

What advice would you give to a colleague in your subject area who might be new to Open Access?

That they should be sure that their work is on WRAP. That they should be making use of things like PhilPapers, both to ensure things that they’ve published in journals is appearing in a place where people go to find literature; but also that drafts and things that they are currently working on that haven’t been accepted for publication. People in the profession are reading things before they’re published and it’s very useful for junior colleagues to be having their work read before it’s published.

As a general question, do you see there being any benefits to Open Access at all?

It makes it much easier in doing work, preparing teaching, to be able to access things easily and quickly.