UKRI OA Policy (from 01 April 2022)
UKRI’s new OA policy applies to in-scope journal articles and conference papers that acknowledge UKRI funding and are submitted for publication from 01 April 2022 (and monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1 January 2024).
When submitting UKRI funded journal articles or conference proceedings for publication from 1 April 2022, authors must:
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make sure that their paper can be made available immediately Open Access under a CC BY licence.
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include a Data Access Statement in the paper
Two routes to policy compliance:
Route 1: publish in an open access journal or publishing platform, with a CC BY licence. This includes publishing in a journal covered by a UKRI-compliant transitional agreement. You can check journal compliance using the Journal Checker Tool
(UEL researchers can publish their review and primary research articles open access with no charge in Elsevier, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis journals that are part of our "read & publish" agreements with these publishers.)
Route 2: publish in a subscription journal and deposit the accepted manuscript in a subject or institutional repository with a CC BY licence and with no embargo from the date of first online publication. To publish using route two, on submission manuscripts it is advisable to include the following licensing text:
"For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising".
Exceptions and OGL:
Use the following statement on submissions from 1/4/2022 only if you have negotiated a licence exception with UKRI before submitting, or if you are using the Open Government Licence.
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Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.’
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Open Government Licence: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied an Open Government Licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.’
The licensing text asserts author copyright to any arising accepted manuscript (following peer review and relevant editorial processes), including the application of a CC BY licence to that accepted manuscript when deposited in a repository.
Where an output includes third party copyright content, researchers do not need to seek permission for this content to be made available under a CC BY licence – UKRI specifies third party copyright content is not subject to its OA requirements.
Data Access Statement:
Regardless of the route chosen, in-scope articles must include a Data Access Statement. The Data Access Statement lets readers know where the underlying research materials associated with a paper are available, and how the research materials can be accessed. If applicable and appropriate, the statement can include links to the dataset.
The data referred to in a Data Access Statement does not have to be openly available, and if there is no associated data, this must be stated in the data access statement.