Category: Publishers

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. 

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.

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.