UKRI announces new open access policy

UK Research and Innovation announced its updated open access policy for research articles and academic books in August 2021. The new policy requires immediate open access for peer-reviewed articles arising from UKRI-funded research submitted for publication from 1 April 2022.

The policy requires that peer-reviewed articles should be made open immediately on acceptance for publication. It also includes a new requirement for monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1 January 2024 to be made open access within 12 months of publication.

The UKRI Open Access Policy will replace the existing research councils’ Policy on Open Access, which was published in 2013.

UKRI will provide increased funding of up to £46.7 million per annum to support the implementation of the policy.

Deputy-Vice-Chancellor, Professor Parveen Yaqoob, who chairs the University Committee on Open Research and Research Integrity (CORRI), said:

“The new UKRI Open Access Policy is an important step towards realising our own vision of an open and transparent research culture. Making our work more open increases the opportunities to access, share and reuse research outputs. This benefits both the research community and enables wider access by public and professional audiences outside of academia. However, the funding model must cover the full cost of such an ambitious policy.”

Articles

For peer-reviewed research articles resulting from UKRI-funded projects, key requirements include:

• immediate open access for research articles submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022
• either via the ‘version of record’ in a journal or publishing platform, or by depositing the authors accepted manuscript (or if permitted by the publisher, the version of record) in an institutional or subject repository without any embargo
• creative commons licences should be used (CC BY licence and CC BY ND by exception – explainer here), including a requirement to notify publisher of licensing at the point of submission.

Monographs

Key requirements of the new policy for monographs published on or after 1 January 2024 resulting from UKRI-funded projects include:

• the final version of a publications or accepted manuscript being made open access via a publisher’s website, platform or repository, within a maximum of 12 months of publication
• creative commons licences should be used. CC BY licence preferred, but NC and ND licences are permitted (explainer here).

Supporting implementation

To support successful implementation of the policy UKRI will work with the sector to put in place supporting interventions, including:

• substantially increasing UKRI funding support for open access in recognition that this is required to meet the new policy intent and the extension of our policy to long-form outputs
• dedicated funding to Jisc in support of sector open access negotiations, with guidance and infrastructure to aid the uptake of UKRI compliant open access options
• continuing work to support culture change around publication, in that research should be recognised for its intrinsic merit rather than where it has been published.

Further information

Additional information about the open access, open data and other resources are available in UKRI’s good research resources hub.

Advice and guidance are available from the Library’s Research Engagement team.