NIHR Policy on Open Access for its funded research

"The Department of Health (DH) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) agrees with the other main biomedical research funders with the principal of Open Access to the outputs of its research.  In doing so the DH recognises that open access to the outputs of its research can offer both social and economic benefits as well as aiding the development of new research and stimulating wider economic growth of the UK economy. The Government, in line with its overarching commitment to transparency and open data as well as part of its economic growth strategy, is committed to ensuring that published research findings should be freely accessible. As a publicly funded research body, the NIHR is subject to the requirement to make the outputs from its research publicly available – not just to other researchers, but also to potential users in business, charitable and public sectors, and to the general tax-paying public. In common with the other Research Councils, and as one of the original funders of UK PubMed Central, the NIHR has had a policy on Open Access since 2006. This revised policy is in line with recent updates by the Research Councils and follows the Government’s response to the Finch Report 'Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publication' published in 2013. The revisions to the NIHR policy are a direct result of the Government’s response to Finch Report and to ensure the NIHR remains in line with its partners in Europe PubMed Central. This revised approach continues to remain consistent with the long-standing policy set out in the Research Governance Framework, section 2.4 – Information Originally launched in January 2007 (as UKPMC), Europe PubMed Central provides a permanent and free-to-access online digital archive of the full text, peer reviewed research publications (and datasets) that arise from research funded by DH, the NIHR and the other members of the Europe PMC Funders Group ..."