With a new policy for Open Access, UK Research and Innovation aligns with Plan S and requirements by the European Commission.
The Open Access (OA) community has gained a new member. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), another major European science funder has decided that scientific papers stemming from their funded projects shall be published in OA journals. With the decision communicated on 6 August, UKRI follows the trend in moving away from subscription based science publishing.
The new UKRI OA policy will come into force from 1 April 2022, when all peer-reviewed publications will have to be published Open Access immediately, without embargo period. For monographs, book chapters and edited collections the new rules will apply later. They will have to be made Open Access within 12 months of publication from 1 January 2024 onwards. In addition, the new policy will require open licences and all UKRI funded research must be licensed ‘CC BY’. UKRI will also no longer fund article processing costs (APCs) in hybrid journals outside of transformative agreements. There will be different routes to compliance with the new requirements as an alternative to OA journals; UKRI will also allow depositing authors’ accepted manuscripts in institutional or subject repositories at the time of publication. UKRI is working with higher education funding bodies in order to ensure that their OA policies are in line with the new UKRI policy, and it will spend up to £46.7 million every year to cover the additional costs that arise from the policy.
The new UKRI OA policy is in line with EU efforts to make the results of research funding with public money openly available. Immediate OA without embargo is one of the new Open Science requirements for projects funded under Horizon Europe, the new Research and Innovation framework programme. In contrast to UKRI, however, the European Commission (EC) is even stricter with respect to hybrid journals. APCs are only covered if a publishing venue is full Open Access; transitional agreements for hybrid journals are not accepted.
cOAlition S, a consortium of national research agencies and funders from European countries and beyond, welcomes the new UKRI policy and sees it as a model and inspiration for funders world-wide. The UKRI policy is closely aligned with Plan S, the cOAlition S’ own OA principle, which was established in 2018 and is based on the recognition that publishing in OA maximises the impact of research. UKRI has been a supporter of Plan S since its inception.