Open Research & Scholarly Publications

Changes to the UKRI Open Access policy next year – what researchers ought to know

On 6^th August UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) published their long awaited updated Open Access policy. This revised policy strengthens the previous Open Access policy and expands some of its provisions into new areas.

Who does this effect?

A researcher (PGR or academic) whose publications benefit from research funding from a UK Research Council or Innovate UK will be subject to the new Open Access requirements.

On projects with multiple authors, we strongly recommend having a discussion prior to selecting venues for publication to identify any funding sources which authors are in receipt of and which will be acknowledged in the publication. This will then help identify what Open Access requirements the publication needs to meet, which in turn can inform suitable places to publish the research.

The current policy, to March 2022

Up until the end of March 2022, the UKRI Open Access policy remains unchanged. Under this policy peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceeding publications are covered by the policy. In order to comply authors can publish via one two routes. Firstly, the ‘Gold’ Open Access route: this involves the publication being available Open Access immediately under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. Publishing via the ‘Gold’ Open Access route can involve the payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC), and we have a Block Grant fund provided by UKRI to support the payment of such charges. To apply for Block Grant funding please complete an online application.

Alternatively, authors can publish via the ‘Green’ Open Access route. This involves the final publication being accessible to those with subscription access to the journal, and the author accepted manuscript version (the version as accepted for publication following peer-review) being archived on a suitable repository such as our Pure system. The policy up to the end of March 2022 permits embargo periods of up to 12 months for AHRC and ESRC funded research, and 6 months for all other UK Research Councils.

What will change from April 2022?

From 1^st April 2022 the Open Access conditions for peer-reviewed journal and conference proceeding publications acknowledging UKRI funding are changing. Articles submitted for publication from 1^st April 2022 will need to be made Open Access immediately upon publication, with embargo periods no longer being permitted under the policy framework. There are three routes by which authors can comply:

1. Publish in a fully Open Access journal under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. An Article Processing Charge (APC) may need to be paid to publish via this route, it is anticipated that the UKRI Block Grant will continue in some form to help support the payment of such charges. More news and final confirmation about the future of the Block Grant is being awaited.
2. Publish in a journal which is covered by a Transitional Agreement which has been agreed between the publisher and the University of the corresponding author, with the final publication being made Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. A list of publishers where our University is party to such an agreement is available here on our LibGuide. Under these Transitional Agreements it is generally possible for an article to be published Open Access without an individual Article Processing Charge needing to be paid, provided appropriate funding is acknowledged.  
3. There is also a ‘Green’ Open Access route to compliance. This involves publishing in a subscription access publication, with the final published version being restricted to subscribers of that particular publication. The author accepted manuscript then needs to be archived and made available through a suitable repository such as our Pure system. Access to the accepted manuscript ought to be provided at the same time as the article is published online, and the document needs to be subject to a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. For more on what authors need to do to publish via this compliance route please see our Blog Post on ‘Rights Retention Strategies’.

Research funded by the BBSRC or MRC will also need to be archived in Europe PubMed Central. Many publishers will fulfil this requirement on an author’s behalf, but this is worth checking with the relevant journal / publisher.

Where Crown Copyright applies, an Open Government Licence is an acceptable substitute to a CC-BY licence. Please also note that the UKRI Policy mentions that a Creative Commons No-Derivatives license, CC BY-ND, may apply by exception in place of the more liberal CC-BY licence. We are awaiting further information as to how such exceptions will operate in practice.

A Data Access Statement also needs to be provided to research articles covered by the policy, even where there is no associated data or where the data is inaccessible. Please see Annex 1 of the policy for more information.

Will authors need to adapt their publishing habits?

UKRI expect that the great majority of academic journals will comply with their policy. To help pave the ground for the implementation of the new policy, negotiations have been held with many publishers to reach Transitional Agreements. JISC are negotiating these agreements on behalf of the UK HE sector.

UKRI’s new policy fits with the wider Open Access framework of ‘Plan S’. In anticipation of the ‘Plan S’ Open Access framework being implemented, publishers have been written to and informed about the new conditions which funders will be imposing on their authors. Whilst there may be some resistance from publishers not wishing to change their publishing business model by entering into ‘Transitional Agreements’, in these cases compliance ought still to be possible via the third route outlined above, with the publisher permitting the author to disseminate their Accepted Manuscript under a CC-BY licence from the point of publication. Time will tell whether particular journals or publishers assert policies which are at odds with the UKRI Open Access requirements, but at the time of writing it is hoped such cases will be few and far between.

One area which will change is to which publications we are able to allocate any future UKRI Block Grant funding. From April 2022 we will only be able to use this fund to cover Open Access publishing costs where the journal is a fully Open Access publication, or to help cover additional costs around Transitional Agreements which the University may sign up to.    

Coming down the line: an Open Access Monographs Policy

From 1^st January 2024, academic monographs, book chapter and edited collections which have benefited from UKRI funding will also be subject to an Open Access policy.

This policy will require either the final publication, or the author accepted manuscript version, to be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. A maximum embargo period of 12 months is permissible.

We will circulate more information nearer the time that this component of the policy comes into effect, but in the meantime we would encourage authors of book chapters to get into the habit of adding the accepted manuscript version on to Pure when creating a record. Many publishers do permit the accepted version of a book chapter to be shared, either straight away or after an embargo period which our team can set up on your behalf.

If you should have any questions in relation to this upcoming policy change, please contact us at: oa.lib@coventry.ac.uk. We are happy to arrange information sessions for Research Centres to go over the upcoming changes and the wider Open Access policy landscape.