UKRI released their updated Open Access Policy on August 6th 2021. The policy applies to all the UKRI funding bodies and will come into effect on 1 April 2022 for research articles, and on 1 Jan 2024 for long-form publications (monographs, book chapters and edited collections).

A summary of the new policy requirements and the support available through UKRI grants is as follows.  

Policy requirements for peer-reviewed research articles:

For peer-reviewed research articles, the key requirements of the new policy include:

  • research articles must be made immediately available as open access, so no embargoes allowed – this applies to articles submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022;
  • articles can be made open access through a gold route in an open access journal or publishing platform, or through a green route by depositing the author accepted manuscript in an institutional repository;
  • researchers can only use UKRI funding to publish in a purely gold open access journal or in a subscription “hybrid” journal covered by a transitional agreement agreed with Jisc;
  • articles must be made available using a CC BY licence, or CC BY ND by exception – this includes a requirement to notify the publisher of this licensing at the point of submission;
  • articles must include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible.

Preprints:

Preprints are not covered by the new open access policy. However, to facilitate open research practices, UKRI encourages the use of preprints across the research disciplines that they support. They will be publishing a statement on preprints at a later date.

Policy requirements for monographs:

For monographs, book chapters and edited collections, the key requirements of the policy include:

  • monographs, book chapters and edited collections must be made available as open access within a maximum of 12 months of publication, from 1 January 2024;
  • the final version of the publication must be made open access via a publisher’s website, platform or repository, or the accepted manuscript must be deposited in a repository;
  • monographs must be made available using a CC BY licence, although NC and ND licences are permitted.

UKRI open access funding:

UKRI will be providing up to £46.7 million per year to support the implementation of the policy.  This substantial increase in funding recognises the costs involved to meet the new policy requirements, as well as the inclusion of monographs in the policy.

UKRI will release further information on the block grant and terms and conditions of funding for articles in November/December 2021 and in 2022 for monographs. Further updates to follow.

If you require any advice or information on Open Access Publishing or Research Data Management, please contact the Research Outputs Team or visit our webpages.