Supporting the transition to open access publishing - an update | Jisc

"One of our key priorities over the last two years has been to strike agreements that accelerate the UK’s transition to open access (OA), reduce and constrain costs, and capitalise on the potential of OA to break down some of the barriers to collaboration and excellence in research practices.   Alongside this, we have been working with the sector through our strategic groups to define and design the conditions that will support open scholarship during and after the OA transition. As part of our work to support our funders’ policies, most notably UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), we have rapidly scaled-up our negotiations to put in place agreements that provide UKRI-funded researchers with routes to OA publishing and that allow these funds to be used to support these arrangements. We are now at a point where around 80 per cent of UK output can be published openly via a Jisc agreement. Key to our negotiations are equity and affordability as set out in the sector's requirements of our members. This means working with publishers to forge sustainable routes to OA that are available to all researchers regardless of institution, discipline, or publication venue. As the most used publication venue for UK researchers and the largest agreement by spend, reaching an agreement with Elsevier that delivers full and immediate OA at an affordable and reduced fee was a priority for the sector...."