UKRI Open Access Policy for long-form publications – March 2024 update

The updated guidance around the UKRI open access policy for long-form publications is now available, and the Library Research Services team are here to provide support with the policy and publishing open access.   

As detailed in our previous post, the UKRI policy update applies to monographs, book chapters and edited collections that acknowledge UKRI funding, and are published on or after 1 January 2024, where: 

  • The final Version of Record or Author’s Accepted Manuscript must be free to view and download via an online publication platform, publisher’s website, or institutional or subject repository within a maximum of 12 months of publication.  
  • Images, illustrations, tables and other supporting content should be included in the open access version, where possible.  
  • The open access version of the publication must have a Creative Commons licence, with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence preferred. An Open Government Licence is also permitted. (This requirement does not apply to third party materials included in the publication). 

UKRI expects publications acknowledging their funding to be made open access, although they do allow some exemptions, which we are happy to discuss.  

UKRI have a dedicated fund to support open access costs for long-form publications within scope of the policy, where publication via a green, free, route to open access is not an eligible option for authors. Applications for this fund are made via the library.   

Our UKRI Policy for long-form publications page includes a summary of the policy, how grant holders can comply, details of exemptions and what funds are available to support open access publication. The page also has a link to the form we require to submit an application to UKRI on your behalf or if you want to discuss your options.  

Library Research Services will be attending some faculty meetings, throughout March to May, to discuss what the policy means for authors, and how the library and UKRI will be supporting this. Alongside this, we will be holding a couple of webinars focused on the policy, along with general Open Access Support sessions for any open access queries. We are also available for 1-2-1 sessions as required.   

If you have any questions or concerns about the policy, and how this might affect any current or future publications, please contact openaccess@ncl.ac.uk.  

Dates for your diary: 

20 March 2024: UKRI Policy for Long-form Publications 13.00-13.45 

22 May 2024: UKRI Policy for Long-form Publications 13.00-13.45 

18 July 2024: Open Access Support session: focus on UKRI Policy for Long-form Publications 13.00-13.45

Open Access Support Sessions

Are you looking for advice and information on open access or managing publications? Come to one of our monthly drop-in sessions and meet members of the Library Research Services team, who will be happy to answer questions on:

  • Publishing open access
  • Understanding research funder policy requirements
  • Copyright and licencing issues relating to your publications
  • Uploading your publications to MyImpact.

Whether you’re a seasoned researcher, student or simply keen to explore the possibilities within open access, this session offers a welcoming space to ask questions, gain insights and delve deeper into the realm of open access.

Each session will focus on a specific area of open access including an overview of library research services. These sessions are as follows:

14th March 2024  Publisher Agreements 13.00-13.45

18th April 2024 Funder Policies 13.00-13.45

16th May 2024 MyImpact & ePrints Repository 13.00-13.45

20th June 2024 Copyright & Licencing Open Access Publications 13.00-13.45

18th July 2024 UKRI Policy for Long-Form Publications 13.00-13.45

All are welcome!

This is an informal session, however, registration is required for you to receive the online teams link. 

Research Publications and Copyright Policy: An update on progress 9 months in

Since beginning implementation of Newcastle University’s Research Publications and Copyright Policy in January 2023, the open research landscape has continued to transform. Library Research Services have been integrating our RPCP policy into open research publishing practices across the university. We have been doing this by supporting researchers and professional services staff while monitoring the uptake using our research support systems. Before we dive into the progress made over the past 9 months, we would first like to extend a thank you to our staff and students for recognising the benefits of the new policy and embracing change, and retaining their rights to publish their work where they see fit.

We have made 1,533* articles open access via the gold (paid) route and 388* available using the green (free) route. 238* of the publications made available through green open access were because of our policy with more research articles being accepted for publication containing the statement.

Implementing the policy required extensive planning and coordination. We developed a communications plan outlining the various media and methods we could use including channels, time frames and promotional material to convey the policy clearly and effectively. We added a web page within Library Research Services detailing the policy, a step-by-step guide for researchers and professional services staff and a list of FAQs to pre-empt and answer any questions or concerns they may have.

We are grateful to be part of the N8 Research Partnership which has allowed us to work together while launching similar policies around rights retention. The partnership enabled us to anticipate and tackle the issues we faced as a collective while allowing us to benchmark our progress with other research-intensive universities across the North of England. We liaised with our colleagues in Research, Strategy and Development to discuss how our policy aligned with our Ownership, Protection and Exploitation of Intellectual Property for Employees and the Open Access Policy Statement.

The first practical steps we took towards implementation was to contact over 150 publishers informing them of our policy. The publishers were based on a list from Edinburgh University and adapted to include those our researchers publish with. Once we were in possession of our letter, written and signed by Legal Services and N8 Rights Retention statement, we began contacting publishers as a courtesy.

The next stage involved informing our authors, we contacted each school asking to come along and present the policy to interested parties and we received a very welcoming response. The information was then fed through to various teams within the university by Professional Services staff. By speaking to staff directly, we were able to field questions and concerns to make incorporating the new policy as seamless as possible in the attempt to minimise the impact this would have on our academic’s workload. We set up Open Access Zoom Drop-In sessions to give the opportunity for researchers and members of staff to ask questions surrounding the policy, ask general open access queries and offer advice on good research practice.

As we develop and support open research while continuing to advocate for our research publications policy, the N8 have proposed a webinar for 23rd October 2023 at 10.15am (BST) to give the opportunity for those universities who launched their policies to present on their experience, the barriers they faced and offering advice to other institutions wishing to embark on their own rights retention journey. Details of how to sign up are posted in our Library Calendar.

*Figures taken from CRIS (MyImpact) (Jan 2023-Sep 2023)

UKRI Open Access Policy – May 2023 update

UKRI have updated their 2022 open access policy with guidance on open access requirements for long-form publications. The requirements apply to monographs, book chapters or edited collections published on or after 1 January 2024, that acknowledge funding from UKRI.

A summary of the requirements are:

  • The final Version of Record or Author’s Accepted Manuscript must be free to view and download via an online publication platform, publisher’s website, or institutional or subject repository within a maximum of 12 months of publication. 
  • Images, illustrations, tables and other supporting content should be included in the open access version, where possible 
  • The open access version of the publication must have a Creative Commons licence, with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence preferred. An Open Government Licence is also permitted. (This requirement does not apply to third party materials included in the publication). 

UKRI expect publications acknowledging their funding are made open access. However they are allowing exceptions in the following circumstances:

  • A contract was signed with a publisher before 1 January 2024, which doesn’t enable open access in compliance with UKRI’s policy 
  • The only appropriate publisher is unable to offer an open access option that complies with UKRI’s policy 
  • The monograph, book chapter or edited collection is the outcome of a UKRI training grant (open access is encouraged but not required) 
  • Reuse permissions for third-party materials cannot be obtained and there is no suitable alternative to enable open access publication (practical guidance will be issued in August 2023)  

UKRI will be making funds available to support the costs associated with open access publishing if the Green, free, route to open access is not an eligible option for authors. Further guidance will be issued in autumn 2023 and the Open Access web pages will be updated. If you have any questions about how the policy could apply to you contact openaccess@ncl.ac.uk.

Springer Nature and Jisc negotiations reach agreement – May ’23

Following a year-long negotiation led by Jisc, UK universities have agreed a new, three-year read and publish open access (OA) deal with Springer Nature.

Image: Megapixl

https://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/uk-universities-agree-open-access-publishing-deal-with-springer-nature-03-may-2023#

The agreement meets the majority of the sector’s original requirements – it has reduced costs and delivered open access using a reduced baseline of subscription spend.  The deal is the first major agreement to formally acknowledge the retention of intellectual property rights by institutions and authors via rights retention policies by providing a bespoke licence to publish.

Whilst the agreement has reduced spend and will open up access to UK research, concerns remain on the high costs of open access publishing in Nature Research journals outside the agreement as well as Springer Nature’s strong resistance to rights retention and OA publishing via the deposit route. Their insistence on a high APC, high growth gold only approach is likely to prevent authors from institutions and countries with less research funding to publish openly.

Over the last 18 months the sector has gained a greater understanding of different publisher’s strategies and approaches to open access. By challenging publishers directly, institutions have seen how publishers manage questions about transparency, the conversion of their subscription titles to full open access and global engagement. This has led to increased skepticism about some publishers’ commitment to a full and sustainable global transition to open access and highlighted the need for the sector to set its requirements for an open research future.

The sector needs to look forward and agree how we want to address these issues, how we want scholarly communications to develop and how we will work with commercial publishers in the future.

SCONUL and RLUK have issued a joint press release emphasizing the need for academic colleagues to work with libraries to deliver the change we all want to see: https://www.sconul.ac.uk/news/libraries-call-on-academic-colleagues-to-help-shift-to-full-open-academic-publishing

We will continue to cover these developments in scholarly communications in future Opening Research blog posts.

Jisc and Springer Nature are working on implemention of the agreement – expected by 7th June and after which we will update our guidance for authors. Any questions can be directed to openaccess@ncl.ac.uk.

N8 Research Partnership and Rights Retention

The N8 Research Partnership has released an important statement which outlines its stance on the importance of researchers being able to retain their original rights when their work is published in a journal. Newcastle University is an N8 member and has been involved with the planning and coordination of this initiative which seeks to support all N8 academics if they find themselves caught between funder and publisher policies.

Newcastle University introduced a new Research Publications and Copyright policy in August 2022 and in tandem with the other N8 universities the policy is designed to ensure that Newcastle authors are in a position to follow good open research practice and comply with changing funder requirements around open access to research outputs. It does this by recommending that authors make their work open access via use of a Rights Retention Statement (RRS) and self-archiving into the institutional repository. More detailed guidance on complying with the new policy can be accessed on the Library Research Services web pages.

As part of this initiative, the University’s Legal Services department has sent a Notice of Grant of Licence by post and email to over 150 publishers to which the majority of University staff submit their work. This letter serves as formal notice to publishers of the new policy and is designed to ensure that Newcastle academic staff are fully supported with regard to retaining the rights to their work. Over the coming weeks and months the Library will be delivering a programme of resources and training events to support colleagues in transitioning to the new policy. If you have any questions or concerns then please consult the FAQs or contact the open access team.

Newcastle University and Springer Nature

The “read and publish” agreement between academic publisher Springer Nature and UK Universities was due for renewal by the end of 2022. Discussions were ongoing throughout the year but a new agreement was not reached by 31st December 2022. We are now in a grace period of access into February 2023 while negotiations continue. 

What is being negotiated and why is it important?  

Newcastle University’s 2022 subscription to Springer Nature content enabled University members to read Springer Nature (SN) journals online and also publish open access articles with costs covered in more than 2,000 Springer hybrid journals. A new agreement must seek to encompass the whole Springer Nature Portfolio – Springer Compact, Nature journals, Palgrave journals, and their fully open access journals – enabling continued read access to SN online and allowing UK authors to publish open access in SN journals at no extra cost to themselves.  

The HE sector has noted that subscription and Article Processing Charge (APC) expenditure with SN accounts for an increasing proportion of library subscription and publishing costs. Total expenditure by UK universities now exceeds £30 million. These costs are unsustainable. 

Negotiating criteria 

Newcastle University supports Jisc’s criteria for negotiations. A new agreement must: 

  • Reduce and constrain costs 
  • Provide full and immediate open access publishing 
  • Aid compliance with funder open access requirements 
  • Be transparent, fair, and reasonable 
  • Deliver improvements in service, workflows, and discovery 

What happens if an agreement cannot be reached? 

We are hopeful that an acceptable agreement can be reached but if either side walks away from the negotiations we have plans in place to allow continued access to SN content online and open access publishing. 

Read Access: We have substantial online backfiles to which we would retain access. These would continue to be accessible via LibrarySearch for you to discover and read. We would not have access to new content from SN, and in these instances where we do not have a subscription we will help you get the article through an inter-library loan or other routes. The exact process will depend on ongoing work, so look out for further communications about the details.  

Publishing: We encourage open access publishing to allow wider discovery, access and re-use of research. It is also a requirement of many funders that outputs are published open access if acknowledging their grants. UKRI and Wellcome Trust have provided grants to institutions to cover the costs of APCs but they are no longer willing to pay for open access in hybrid journals, which charge for subscriptions and APCs, unless there is a read and publish (transformative) agreement in place or the journal is a transformative journal.  

It is therefore the case that to continue publishing in SN journals and publish open access you should apply the University’s Research Publications and Copyright Policy. By including the rights retention statement in your article you can publish the author-accepted manuscript in the institutional repository ePrints and repository staff will make it available upon publication in the journal. This means you can continue publishing open access and comply with your funder if required, at no cost. During the grace period we would strongly recommend that authors include the rights retention statement in any submissions to SN journals (including Nature titles). If you have any questions about applying the Research Publications and Copyright Policy please contact the Open Access team

What should authors do? 

We are in a grace period until the end of February 2023. During this time we continue to have access to SN online content and our authors are able to publish open access via our 2022 agreement. As mentioned previously we recommend authors include a rights retention statement regardless of the grace conditions as this secures your right to publish open access if a deal is not agreed. We will continue to keep you informed of developments via this blog. You can also read about the negotiations from Jisc https://www.jisc.ac.uk/springer-nature-negotiations

If you have any questions or concerns please contact us

Rights Retention

Newcastle University has introduced a new Research Publications and Copyright policy which came into effect on 1st August 2022. The policy is designed to ensure that Newcastle authors are in a position to follow good open research practice and comply with changing funder requirements around open access to research outputs. It does this by recommending that authors make their work open access via use of a Rights Retention Statement (RRS) and self-archiving into the institutional repository. Authors retain their own copyright throughout this process.

The University is working with our colleagues in the N8 Research Partnership to align our approach and all eight institutions will be formally launching their new policies from 1st January 2023. Many other Higher Education Institutions beyond the N8 are launching, or have launched, similar policies.

Funders such as UKRI and Wellcome have new open access policies which aim to ensure that the results of publicly funded research are immediately available and not subject to paywalls or embargo periods. These policies have the potential to bring authors into conflict with publishers, some of whom currently prefer to retain more restrictive publication options. Rights Retention policies developed because they offered a way of resolving the growing tension between research funder policies and publisher models.

Background

Traditional publication models require authors to grant publishers an exclusive right to publish their work, or to transfer copyright to the publishers. Reuse of the published work is subsequently controlled by the publishers while authors retain limited rights about when, where, how and with whom their output can be shared. Access to published research output is in effect paywalled, with access controlled by the publisher.

For some time, major research funders have been unhappy about these restrictions on access to publicly funded research and have adopted increasingly robust open access policies to challenge this position.

Since 2018, many major research funders, including UKRI and the Wellcome Trust, have signed up to CoAlition S whose stated ambition is to ensure that publications resulting from public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms. The strapline for Plan S, (the CoAlition’s action plan) is clear and unambiguous:  “making full and immediate open access a reality.” 

Wellcome implemented a new open access policy in January 2021, and as of 1st April 2022 UKRI has followed suit. Both funders now require immediate open access to journal articles and conference proceedings resulting from research which they have funded. The policy for the next REF is also expected to be aligned with these requirements.

What does this mean in practice?

The new UKRI policy has extended the existing requirement for immediately-upon-publication open access to include author accepted manuscripts whereas previously an embargo period between first online publication and AAM availability was permitted. Funders will no longer pay fees for Gold Open Access to hybrid journals that lack a transitional agreement.

A further change in the new UKRI policy is that AAMs made available through repositories must be licenced with a creative commons attribution licence, preferably CC-BY: a licence that permits a broad range of usage.

Therefore, the challenge for authors and institutions is when the funder’s requirement for open access publication (immediately, without fees) conflicts with that of the publisher (after embargo, with fees) – whose policy do we comply with? And how do we manage the risks associated with non-compliance?

Rights Retention Policies at UK HEIs

In an attempt to resolve this conflict between funder and publisher policies, several research-intensive universities have started implementing their own rights retention policies, thereby ensuring their researchers are funder-compliant and the associated research outputs are disseminated as widely as possible, whilst retaining the freedom to publish in the journal of choice. The University of Edinburgh have pioneered this with their Research Publications & Copyright Policy 2021.

As mentioned earlier, Newcastle University’s policy came into effect on 1st August 2022, but along with the other N8 institutions will formally launch its new policy on 1st January 2023.

What will this mean for authors?

In practical terms, to comply with the proposed policy on Research Publications and Copyright authors will need to add a Rights Retention Statement (RRS) to the acknowledgements of submitted manuscripts, inform their co-authors about this policy at the earliest opportunity, and upload their Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) into MyImpact. Providing the RRS is included in the AAM this will be made open access upon publication under a CC BY licence.

The Research Services team in the University Library is developing and delivering a programme of resources and training events to support colleagues in transitioning to the new policy between now and the formal launch in January. More detailed guidance on complying with the policy, including FAQs can be accessed on the Library Research Services web pages, and there will be more blog posts reporting on the uptake of the new policy over the coming months.

Photo credit: Chris Bishop via the Newcastle University Photo Library.

Supporting the UKRI 2022 Open Access policy

Friday 1st April sees the start of UKRI’s new Open Access policy. From this date, eligible UKRI-funded research papers must be made open access without embargo, under a CC BY licence (or, CC BY-ND by exception) and include a data access statement. A major change to the policy is that Gold open access in subscription/hybrid journals will be restricted to titles included in Newcastle University’s Transformative Agreements or journal titles that have committed to transition to open access (aka Transformative Journals).

Why has the open access policy changed?

UKRI is committed to championing open research as part of its strategy of advancing research culture change and to support the ambition set out in the government’s R&D People and Culture Strategy.

Open research improves research efficiency, quality and integrity through collaborative, transparent and reproducible research practices. UKRI’s priorities include open access to research publications and making research data as open as possible but as secure as necessary.
UKRI is building on the UK’s longstanding global leadership in open research with our new open access policy, which was developed through extensive consultation with the sector. The policy delivers on the ambition in the government’s R&D Roadmap, for publicly funded research to be accessible to all, and will boost the global impact of UK research by increasing opportunities for findings to be shared and used across all disciplines and sectors.

UKRI (2022) UKRI Strategy 2022–2027: Transforming tomorrow together. Available at: https://www.ukri.org/about-us/what-we-do/our-strategy-2022-to-2027/ (Accessed: 29 March 2022).

Where can I publish?

  • Fully open access journals and proceedings. Check the Directory of Open Access Journals (funds are available, apply here).
  • Subscription/hybrid journals that are in one of Newcastle University’s transformative agreements.
  • Transformative Journals. Subscription/hybrid journals that commit to transitioning to a fully open access journals (funds are available, apply here).
  • Subscription journals and proceedings that allow you to make your final accepted manuscript open access immediately on publication under a CC BY licence (e.g. Science).

If your journal does not meet any of the criteria above you may want to consider submitting elsewhere. Alternatively include a ‘rights retention statement’ in your submitted manuscript that allows you to make the author accepted manuscript open access in our repository. Contact the Open Access Team if you would like to know more about this alternative route to compliance.

Where can I get further advice and guidance?

Newcastle University’s Open Access team

  • You can find up to date information on our Open Access webpages
  • Open Access colleagues have presented policy briefings at a various meetings and events across the university and to all faculties. If you would like to request a briefing for your school or research group then please contact the Open Access team to request this.
  • Contact the Open Access team direct with your questions.

UKRI

UKRI have contacted grant holders directly explaining the policy changes and have published the following guidance:

Jisc

Find out how Jisc are supporting the research community to implement the UKRI open access policy – https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/implementing-the-new-ukri-open-access-policy.

Newcastle University and Elsevier

The contract between academic publisher Elsevier and UK Universities is due for renewal in December 2021.

Newcastle University subscribes to Elsevier’s ScienceDirect at a cost of £1.1 million for the current subscription deal which enables University members to access Elsevier journals online.

The UK Universities sector – on behalf of its researchers and students – entered negotiations with Elsevier with two core objectives: to reduce costs to levels UK universities can sustain, and to provide full and immediate open access to UK research.

Open access to research allows for greater impact, expanding access worldwide and the potential for collaborative work to benefit the national and international research community.

Elsevier is now the only major publisher that does not have a transformative open access agreement in place. Subscription costs to Elsevier’s journals are high and continuing to increase but do not include an open access agreement. Transformative agreements are also supported by cOAlition S research funders and, from April 2022, UKRI’s new policy is similarly supportive.

Therefore, a key practical aim of the negotiations is to secure a transformative agreement with Elsevier, which will support the core objective of immediate open access publishing.

UK Universities began negotiations in March 2021. Representatives from the sector will sit on the official negotiation team and Jisc facilitates the overall negotiations.

Jisc has produced the following video which highlights the key issues involved and has also produced some background information about the negotiations.

The Library will provide more detailed information about the aims of the negotiations and news of any progress over the coming months via this blog and on the Research Services website.

John Williams

Photo credit: King’s Walk June 2013 by John Donoghue.