UKRI announces new open access policy

^{Image: Susan Q Yin/Unsplash}

On 6 August, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) released their long-awaited new open access policy. The policy will take effect for journal articles submitted for publication from 1 April 2022, and for monographs, edited collections and book chapters published from 1 January 2024.

The policy applies to all research that is funded by any of the nine research councils that make up UKRI. The policy stipulates that these articles are required to be immediately available as open access (OA) through one of two routes:

1. Authors can publish their article OA in a ‘gold’ journal, or a hybrid journal covered by a Transitional Agreement.

2. Authors can self-archive the accepted version of their article immediately (with zero embargo) and under a CC-BY licence, or a CC-BY-ND licence in specific circumstances, as per the Rights Retention Strategy.

Both routes carry equal weighting, with no preference given to the gold open access route (as was previously the case). The policy also mandates the use of Data Access Statements and encourages the use of preprints. UKRI will provide an increased funding of up to £46.7 million per annum to support the implementation of this policy.

The Society’s portfolio contains three hybrid journals (Area, The Geographical Journal, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers) and one gold OA journal (Geo: Geography and Environment). WIREs Climate Change is also a hybrid journal.

Gold open access journals (such as Geo) are all already compliant with the policy, and as with all journals published by Wiley, there are routes to compliance with the policy for all our hybrid journals through the Transitional Agreement with Jisc.

For books, there is a requirement that the materials be made available as open access within a year of publication. The RGS-IBG book series has routes available to ensure compliance with this mandate.

Following on from this announcement, a further announcement in relation to the OA requirements for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) is expected. We will update on this when the announcement is made.

Find out more about the Society’s publications and our approach to open access.