If you are funded by the AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC, Research England or Innovate UK (but not UK Space Agency) you must comply with the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Open Access (OA) Policy.
The policy applies to peer-reviewed research articles submitted for publication on or after 1st April 2022 and long-form publications published after 1st January 2024 that need to acknowledge UKRI funding. "Research articles" includes reviews and conference papers that are accepted for final publication in either a journal, a conference proceeding with an international standard serial number (ISSN), or on a publishing platform. "Long-form publications" includes monographs, book chapters, and edited collections published with an ISBN.
Please see further details on the requirements for research articles and long-form publications below.
You can make your article open access via one of two routes:
The AAM is the author's version of a research article that has been peer reviewed and is accepted for publication, prior to typesetting by the publisher. It may otherwise be known as the 'author manuscript' or 'final author version' or post print.
If you are intending to publish open access via route 2 (Green OA), and the journal does not allow deposit with a CC BY licence and a zero embargo, include this statement in the acknowledgement section of your manuscript and any submission cover letter/note: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence [where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence’ may be stated instead] to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising'.
You can apply to UKRI for an exception to use a Creative Commons No-Derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence by using the UKRI No-derivatives licence exception form.
You can publish in the journal or publishing platform you consider most appropriate for your research, provided UKRI's open access requirements are met.
UKRI also requires in-scope research articles to incude a Data Access Statement, even where there is no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible. Further guidance is available in Annex 1 in the UKRI policy and examples are provided in UKRI’s good research resource hub.
Look at the journal webpage to determine if it is:
If you are unsure if the journal you intend to publish in is compliant with the UKRI Open Access Policy, please contact the Library Research Support team.
How to Access the UKRI block grant
The policy includes a new requirement for monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from the 1st January 2024 to be made open access (unless a contract has been signed between the author and the publisher before this date that prevents adherence to the policy. However, UKRI strongly encourages authors and publishers to make publications open access). This applies to publications that need to ackowledge funding from UKRI or any of its councils. This includes funding from the AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC, Research England and Innovate UK. In-scope long-form outputs are detailed at Annex 1 in the UKRI Open Access policy.
You must make your long-form output open access within 12 months of publication and use an open license. In summary, the core requirements of the policy are:
These requirements and definitions of in-scope and exempt types of publication are further detailed in the UKRI Open Access Policy.
You can choose the publisher most appropriate for your research, provided UKRI's open access requirements are met. When you contact your preferred publisher, you should inform them that your publication is in scope of the UKRI open access policy and check if they can offer a compliant open access publishing platform.
Many publishers offer open access of the final Version of Record. They may charge for open access, or offer free open access supported via alternative funding models, such as subscribe to open (S2O) models, for example. These S2O models are usually supported by the UKRI Block Grant.
Some publishers may not offer open access but may permit you to deposit your Author's Accepted Manuscript (a version of your accepted manuscript agreed between you and the publisher) in an institutional or subject repository.
If you are publishing a monograph or edited collection, you should consider UKRI’s open access requirement prior to submission of your book proposal. If you are contributing a book chapter in an edited collection, you should inform both the editor of the collection you are contributing to and the publisher of UKRI’s open access requirement prior to agreeing to contribute. See details on funding for open access monographs, chapters and edited collections below.
If you plan, with agreement from your publisher, to comply with the policy by depositing a version of your publication in a repository, you can use:
Find available repositories using OpenDOAR
If you are depositing an Author's Accepted Manuscript, this should be marked as not the final published version, which you may also choose to link to.
UKRI provide in-depth guidance on the inclusion of third party copyright in open access research publications, including template communications and answers to questions rights holders may have. We recommend you review and follow that guidance early in the process of preparing your manuscript. You are welcome to contact us on library-research-support@open.ac.uk with any queries or concerns.
UKRI will fund up to £2,000, within the funding maximum for an output, to support costs associated with clearing permissions for third-party content to be included in the open access version of the publication (see our guidance on the UKRI Long-Form Publications Fund for more information). However, these costs should be accounted for in grant applications, where possible.
UKRI has introduced a dedicated £3.5 million fund to support open access costs for long-form publications within the scope of this new policy. This fund opened for applications from 28th November 2023 for UKRI funded monographs, book chapters or edited collections due to be published on or after 1 January 2024. Funding can be used to support costs to make the Version of Record immediately open access with a Creative Commons licence. Please see the UKRI Long-Form Publications Fund page of our website for further details on this fund, and how to apply.
The full policy with a list of frequently asked questions, and exemptions to the policy, can be found on the UKRI open access policy webpage.