The UKRI Open Access (OA) Policy sets out the requirements for publications that acknowledge funding from UKRI or any of its councils. The new OA policy requires immediate open access to be the default for research articles. This positive change will ensure that publicly funded research is openly available at the point of publication.
The new policy comes into effect for research articles submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022 and is similar to the cOAlition S and Wellcome open access initiatives. In-scope monographs, book chapters and edited collections published on or after 1 January 2024 are included for the first time.
UKRI will provide a £46.7 million Open Access block grant to support implementation of this policy however, the ring-fenced budget for OA monograph publishing is not significant at £3.5 million for the sector. UKRI will release further information on the block grant and conditions of funding in December 2021 and in 2022 for monographs. Swansea University Library is responsible for supporting Faculties to achieve compliance with the URKRI Open Access policy and receives the block grant to support researchers.
Requirements of the new policy
For peer-reviewed research articles, reviews and conference papers with an ISSN, key requirements include:
- immediate open access for research articles submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022.
- articles can be open through an open access journal or platform using the ‘gold’ route, or via ‘green’ self-archiving of the author accepted manuscript (AAM) in an institutional or subject repository without an embargo period.
- authors can only access UKRI funds to publish in a gold open access journal or in a subscription “hybrid” journal covered by a JISC transitional agreement.
- a Creative Commons CC-BY licence or CC-BY-ND (by exception) is required, including a requirement to notify the publisher of this licensing at the point of submission. UKRI provide rights retention strategy (RRS) boilerplate text for ‘green’ self-archiving purposes. Using a rights retention strategy is a cultural shift for authors and will be a funder requirement.
‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead) to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising’
- articles must include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible.
Key requirements of the new policy for monographs published on or after 1 January 2024 include:
- the final version of a publication or accepted manuscript are made open access via a publisher’s website, platform or repository, within a maximum of 12 months of publication or the accepted manuscript must be deposited in a repository.
- a Creative Commons CC-BY licence is preferred, but NC and ND licences are permitted for monographs.
- UKRI’s licensing requirements do not apply to any materials included within a long-form output that are provided by third-party copyright holders – see the policy exceptions.
Preprints are not included within the new policy but the use of pre-print services across disciplines is encouraged. A statement on pre-prints is expected at some point.
Read the new UKRI open access policy
Read ‘Shaping our open access policy’ by UKRI
Read the cOAlition S ‘Primer on the Rights Retention Strategy by Stephen J Elgin.
The Library Research Support team will be adding policy updates to the Effective Research Publishing Handbook as they become available. Details of JISC transitional publishing agreements applicable to Swansea University researchers are also available from this resource. Faculty administrators and directors are encouraged to make contact for further guidance to ensure that researchers are able to comply with the new funder requirements.
Contact ISS-Research@swansea.ac.uk / openaccess@swansea.ac.uk