UKRI Open Access Policy The new UKRI Open Access policy applies from 1st April 2022. It applies to:
For articles accepted for publication before 1st April 2022 the RCUK policy applies.
It applies to authors whose publications result from funding from UKRI (including the research councils, Research England and Innovate UK). Authors can publish their research article in the journal or platform they consider most appropriate for their research, provided UKRI’s Open Access requirements, including licensing requirements, are met via either Open Access Route 1 or Route 2.
You must inform your co-authors about your responsibilities under the UKRI Open Access policy.
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Route 1. (Gold Open Access) Publish your article as Gold Open Access with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. The Version of Record must be available for access and download as soon as it is published. Route 1 includes publication in:
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Route 2. (Green Open Access) Publish your article in a subscription journal and deposit the Author's Accepted Manuscript (or the Version of Record if it is permitted by the publisher) in the institutional repository, CentAUR. It must have a CC BY licence. No embargoes are permitted. |
Apply licensing requirements
UKRI requires the Open Access version of a research article to be published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This applies to both Route 1 and Route 2.
For Route 2 article submissions, the following text must be included in the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission:
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
There are exceptions to this licence:
UKRI requires in-scope research articles to include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible.
Some research councils have further requirements regarding deposit in specialist repositories and making preprints available. Check the terms and conditions of the offer document.
Monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1st January 2024 that result from UKRI funded projects must be available Open Access. You can comply via the gold or green Open Access routes.
Annex 1 of the policy clarifies which types of book are within the scope of the policy and which are not. For example, text books, fictional works and most trade books are out of scope.
If you think that you need to apply an exemption please contact oarequests@reading.ac.uk for advice. Authors are expected to follow UKRI guidance on the permitted exemption and to work with their organisation to make a decision. The process for applying an exemption is self-managed and trust-based. No approval is needed but UKRI expects authors or institutions to notify them when an exemption is applied. The UKRI exemptions notification form can be completed by the author but it is preferable for the Library to complete this for you. Please contact oarequests@reading.ac.uk to request this.
Annex 3 of the policy provides further guidance on exemptions.
UKRI has a central Open Access fund and researchers must apply to this via the Library's UKRI Open Access books request form. The Library will then register the application with UKRI for confirmation of eligibility (stage 1) and inform researchers whether or not UKRI will provide Open Access funds. Please DO NOT commit to paying an Open Access charge BEFORE you receive confirmation from the Library that UKRI has agreed to provide funds that you requested. Once published, the Library will claim the funds from UKRI (stage 2)
The maximum amount available from UKRI for Open Access publishing costs is:
For monographs and edited collections (but not chapters) you can include up to £2,000 for rights clearance costs within these limits; however, you should use your grant for these costs by default so that you leave the maximum amount availbale to you from the UKRI Open Access fund to cover your BPC.
If your publisher's charges will or may exceed this you will need to provide the additional funds or seek an alternative route to achieving UKRI compliant Open Access. If this applies to you, please contact oarequests@reading.ac.uk for advice before completing the form.
UKRI requires a Creative Commons licence to be applied to the book, chapter or edited collection. CC BY is preferred but any Creative Commons licence is permitted. An Open Government Licence is permitted when authors are subject to Crown Copyright.
For any third-party content within copyright, only include the content under the licence or terms under which the rightsholder has released it.
UKRI’s licensing requirements do not apply to any materials included within a long-form output that are provided by third-party copyright holders. Academic books published under a CC BY, or other creative commons licence may include third-party materials (such as images, photographs, diagrams or maps) which are subject to a more restrictive licence. UKRI considers this approach compliant with its policy.
UKRI recognises that there may be some instances where permissions for reuse in an Open Access book cannot be obtained for all third-party images or other materials. Therefore, an exception to the policy may be applied when reuse permissions for third-party materials cannot be obtained and there is no suitable alternative option available to enable Open Access publication
See the UKRI guidance document: Managing third-party copyright for research publications
Publication checklist and workflow
British Heart Foundation Open Access Policy Research funded by the British Heart Foundation should be made freely available to the broader scientific community and to the public to maximise its reach and benefit.
All Grantholders funded wholly or in part by the British Heart Foundation. It applies to:
Gold Open Access route
The published version of record must be immediately available without restriction on the publisher website and deposited in Europe PMC. The article must have a CC BY licence. Deposition in Europe PMC is usually handled by the publisher of your article but you should check that this will be included in their processes.
Green Open Access route
The author final version of the article after peer review must be available without restriction in Europe PMC no later than 6 months after publication.If the publisher offers to deposit it, select this option. If not, then the author should upload it via the Europe PMC submission system.
It is a Condition of the Grant that Grant Holders acknowledge BHF support by quoting “British Heart Foundation” followed by the award reference number in the appropriate section of all publications arising from BHF funded research.
The overarching aim of the Open Access (OA) policy is to make sure that knowledge and discoveries resulting from Wellcome Trust funding are shared and used in a way that maximises their benefit to health.
Grant recipients whose publications include original research that is funded in whole, or in part, by Wellcome. It applies to:
Use the Journal Checker Tool to check if your preferred journal enables you to comply with the Wellcome Trust policy and to decide which of the routes described below that you should take.
1. Ensure that the publisher supports the following Open Access criteria:
2. Ensure that the journal accepts that the Author Accepted Manuscripts arising from submissions from Wellcome-funded researchers will already be licensed under a prior CC BY licence
3. Ensure that you have funds to cover the cost of any Open Access publishing charges.
There are three publishing routes you can follow to comply with Wellcome’s policy. Routes 1 and 2 are preferred.
Route 1: Publish in a fully Open Access (Gold) journal or platform.
Route 2: Publish in a subscription (hybrid) journal through a transformative arrangement that is available to you via your organisation.
Route 3: Publish in a subscription journal and take responsibility for making the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) freely available from Europe PMC at the time of publication.
Grantholders must also include the following statement on all submissions of original research to peer-reviewed journals:
'This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number]. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.'
All research articles supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must include a statement explaining how other researchers can access any data, original software or materials underpinning the research. This is in line with the funder's data, software and materials management and sharing policy.
All Wellcome-funded researchers are strongly encouraged to:
Where there is a significant public health benefit to preprints being shared widely and rapidly, such as a disease outbreak, the posting of preprints is required.
All original scholarly monographs and book chapters authored or co-authored by Wellcome grantholders as part of their grant-funded research, must be:
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Wellcome Trust funding is available to cover publishers' Open Access monograph and book chapter processing charges.
Authors should consult the Wellcome Trust web pages. These include advice on definitions, deposit processes, exceptions and waivers, meeting Open Access costs, step-by step processes and links to forms and templates.
Under Horizon 2020, beneficiaries of ERC grants must ensure Open Access (free of charge, online access for any user) to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to its results. The detailed requirements on Open Access to publications are contained in the Horizon 2020 ERC Model Grant Agreement (Article 29.2).
All grant holders. It applies to:
1. Ensure that the publisher offers an Open Access option compliant with the Gold or Green routes defined below.
2. Check that you have funds to cover the Open Access publishing costs. Charges are eligible for reimbursement from the grant during the duration of the project. If the grant has closed, you may request funds from the University's Open Access fund. Apply for funding using the Library's Open Access request form. If funding is not available, you will need to comply with the funder's policy via the Green Open Access route.
If funds are not available, investigate publication on the dedicated platform, Open Research Europe. This platform has been funded by the European Commission for 4 years to publish research from funders who received a Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe grant. Researchers who received funding are not charged an APC for publication.
3. Archive your peer-reviewed manuscript in a suitable repository as soon as accepted for publication. ERC strongly encourages ERC funded researchers to use discipline-specific repositories for their publications. Also, deposit it in CentAUR.
4. Make the final version of the article Open Access, by either the Green or Gold Open Access route:
Green Open Access route - archive a final version in a repository as soon as accepted for publication. The maximum embargo periods permitted are 6 months for STEM disciplines, and 12 months for Humanities and Social Sciences.
Gold Open Access route - publish it as Open Access on the publisher's website, and archive a copy in CentAUR. It should be available immediately, without embargo. Authors are encouraged to retain copyright and grant an adequate licence to publishers e.g. CC BY. The minimum requirement is that the licence must allow people to read, download and print an article.
If the repository allows for this, beneficiaries of ERC grants are strongly encouraged to ensure that the bibliographic metadata also includes additional information such as the European Research Council (ERC) as funding source, the grant number, the title of the action and its acronym, the publication date, and the length of the embargo period (if applicable). For ease of tracking, beneficiaries should include the digital object identifier for the 'European Research Council' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781) in the funding acknowledgement field in their metadata, in addition to the digital object identifier for 'Horizon 2020' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100007601).
In Horizon 2020 the European Commission has been encouraging Open Access to and reuse of digital research data generated by Horizon 2020 projects through the Open Research Data Pilot (ORD Pilot), following FAIR data principles - all research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR)
The Leverhulme Trust does not have a mandate for Open Access and has made no stipulations regarding mandatory archiving or Open Access publication for grant holders (last checked February 2022).
It is possible to include Open Access charges in your budget when you apply for funding from the Trust. The Open Access charges must be incurred during the period of the grant. If the costs are not incurred during the life of the grant, funds allocated for Open Access must be returned to the Trust.
If your grant has expired and you would like to publish Open Access, you may qualify for funding via the Reading University Gold Open Access Fund. To access the fund, complete the Library's Open Access request form.
Many funders and sponsors have requirements that research publications resulting from their grants are made Open Access. The agreements that you have signed will specifiy what you need to do.
Use SHERPA/JULIET to find summaries of and links to funders' Open Access policies
Correct when presented in October 2022. UKRI funder requirements and how to comply with them, finding suitable journals, navigating the Green Open Access route for funder compliance