UKRI’s new OA policy: Troubleshooting

Around 25% of UKRI-funded papers are likely to be published in subscription journals which are not covered by a transformative agreement.

Some subscription journals have been granted ‘Transformative Journal’ status, meaning it will be possible for the Library to use UKRI funds to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish the paper Gold Open Access (route 3).

Jisc is developing a Journal Checker Tool to facilitate identification of ‘Transformative Journals’. Prior to the launch of this tool, authors should contact the Library’s Open Access Team to enquire about ‘Transformative Journals’ and associated publishing options.

Around 25% of UKRI-funded papers are likely to be published in subscription journals which are not covered by a transformative agreement.

Some subscription journals have been granted ‘Transformative Journal’ status – see compliance route 3, above.

Where a subscription journal is not covered by a Transformative Agreement, and has not been granted ‘Transformative Journal’ status, compliance with UKRI’s policy will need to be achieved through sharing the accepted manuscript via Pure, under the CC BY licence, immediately on publication (route 4).

To allow compliance via route 4, authors must, prior to submission, ensure that their manuscript includes a licence statement in the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission. Visit this page to obtain the licence statement. It is not possible to retrospectively add this licence statement – it must be included in the paper prior to submission to ensure compliance with UKRI’s Open Access policy.

Once the paper is accepted for publication, authors should deposit their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) via the Library’s Open Access Gateway. The Library’s Open Access team will ensure that the paper meets funder and REF OA requirements by verifying the manuscript version, checking applicable journal and funder policies and ensuring immediate Open Access upon publication under the CC BY licence where possible.

Please see other scenarios below for examples of where this may not be possible, and support available in such cases.

UKRI recommends that authors select a journal where the publisher has made its position on compliance with UKRI’s OA policy clear.

Authors can use the following page to see examples of possible compliance routes when publishing in different journals: Open Access compliance routes: examples.

Authors can also contact the Library’s Open Access team, either via a weekly drop-in clinic, or via email, to discuss their plans to publish and check the compliance routes possible for their preferred journal.

If a journal rejects a paper citing inclusion of the licence statement as the reason, UKRI recommends that authors submit their paper to another journal which will support compliance with the funder’s OA policy.

For a publisher to request that an author removes their funder’s licence statement is to ask an author to breach their funder contract;

in such a situation, UKRI recommends that authors submit their paper to another journal which will support compliance with the funder’s OA policy.

For a publisher to request that an author signs an acceptance contract which overrides their funder’s licence statement is to ask an author to breach their funder contract;

in such a situation, UKRI recommends that authors submit their paper to another journal which will support compliance with the funder’s OA policy.

If a publisher requests an additional fee to include UKRI’s licence statement, UKRI advises that authors must source funds to cover this fee (UKRI funds cannot be used), or submit their paper to another journal which will support compliance with the funder’s OA policy for no additional fee.

If a publisher removes UKRI’s licence statement from a manuscript after accepting it for publication, UKRI recommends that authors withdraw the paper and submit to another journal​ which will support compliance with the funder’s OA policy.  

UKRI requires that all funded papers submitted for publication from 1 April 2022 are published under the CC BY (Creative Commons by Attribution) licence to maximise opportunity for sharing and reuse. This licence is required regardless of compliance route.

The required CC BY licence should either be automatically applied, or available for authors to accept, when publishing papers Gold Open Access through routes 1, 2 or 3.

Inclusion of UKRI’s licence statement in submitted manuscripts should allow authors to comply with the funder’s policy through route 4 (sharing the paper via Pure).

If the publisher refuses to allow the CC BY licence to be applied, authors can request an exception from UKRI to use a creative commons no-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence by using this UKRI Open Access Form. The decision to grant an exception will be dependent on the reasons articulated to UKRI within the context of research and will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

IEEE have recently provided clarification on their support for compliance with the new UKRI Open Access policy. Authors publishing in one of IEEE’s subscription journals can comply with the policy via Route 4 - making the accepted manuscript available in Pure, under the CC BY licence, upon publication. Authors do not need to include a licence statement in submitted manuscripts. Authors should deposit the accepted manuscript via the Open Access Gateway and the Library will ensure that it is Open Access under a compliant licence upon publication 

UKRI prohibits the use of its OA block grant to pay for APCs in IEEE’s subscription journals, so please do not choose the Open Access option when completing submission/copyright transfer. The OA block grant can be used to pay for APCs in IEEE’s fully OA journals, however. If you are submitting to one of these titles you can request funding via the Open Access Gateway. 

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