UKRI Open Access Review Consultation document (25 March 2020)

In phase three (September 2019 to October 2020) UKRI consulted the wider community – both within the UK and internationally – on a proposed policy.

A total of 350 organisations and individuals responded, with an externally-commissioned analysis undertaken to look at the responses.See our open access review consultation document (PDF, 977KB).

Executive Summary

Purpose

1. Operating across the whole of the UK with a combined budget of more than £7 billion,UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) brings together the seven Research Councils, InnovateUK and Research England. It is currently reviewing its open access (OA) policies forresearch publications. UKRI aims to ensure that the findings of research it supports can befreely accessed and widely reused in ways that can benefit research and innovation andmaximise opportunities for human knowledge, and economic, social and cultural impact.
2. The UKRI Open Access Review will determine a single UKRI OA policy for researcharticles and long-form research publications that acknowledge funding from UKRI andits constituent councils. This document sets out UKRI’s proposed OA policy and related considerations for consultation. UKRI will use responses to inform its final policy which itintends to announce in 2020.
3. This document also includes high-level questions to help inform the developmentof the OA policy for research outputs submitted to the UK-wide Research ExcellenceFramework (REF) exercise following REF 2021 (REF-after-REF 2021). The REF is jointlyowned and governed by the UK higher education (HE) funding bodies. As far as possible,they and UKRI are seeking policy commonality to aid compliance and promote OA. The intention is that compliance with UKRI’s OA policy will result in compliance with the OApolicy for the REF-after-REF 2021. Informed by the outcomes of UKRI’s review, the UKHE funding bodies will launch a detailed REF-specific OA consultation no later than sixmonths after UKRI’s policy is announced, which will inform their decisions on the OApolicy for the REF-after-REF 2021.
4. The Research Councils UK (RCUK) Policy on Open Access and REF 2021 OA policyshould continue to be followed until further notice. No changes will be made to the REF2021 OA policy.

Key points

1. For peer-reviewed research articles, UKRI’s proposed OA policy would apply to in-scopearticles accepted for final publication on or after 1 January 2022 in journals, in conference proceedings and on OA publishing platforms, and which acknowledge UKRI funding. Insummary, the proposed requirements are for: (i) the version of record to be made freelyand immediately available online via a journal or OA publishing platform; or (ii) the author’saccepted manuscript or version of record to be made freely and immediately availablewithout an embargo via an institutional or subject repository. UKRI would require the OAversion to be made available with a Creative Commons attribution (CC BY) licence.
2. UKRI is also considering other options and issues that could form part of its policy forpeer-reviewed research articles, including: (i) a case-by-case exception allowing a CCBY-ND (no derivatives) licence; (ii) a requirement for journals, platforms and repositoriesto meet certain technical standards for access and discovery; (iii) whether to requireauthors (or their institutions) to retain copyright and/or certain reuse rights; (iv) terms andconditions on the use of UKRI OA funds, including not permitting these funds to be usedfor publication in hybrid journals or on hybrid publishing platforms unless these are part ofa transformative agreement or similar arrangement.
3. To increase access to the outcomes of publicly funded research, UKRI is extending its OA requirements to include academic monographs, book chapters and edited collections thatacknowledge UKRI funding. Its proposed policy takes into account that this requirement isnew and that the OA environment for books is different