This section provides an overview of the various research funder policies with regard to Open Access. Some funders have requirements for Open Access availability of research outputs stemming from their funded projects, and some also make available specific funding to universities for paying for Open Access publishing fees. The list below is however not comprehensive, so please get in contact with the Strathclyde Open Access team at openaccess@strath.ac.uk for any queries on funders’ OA policies that may not be shown below.
REF Open Access policy
At present the applicable REF OA policy is the one that was issued for REF2021. Since there are changes already in the way research funders are addressing Open Access requirements, the expectation is that an updated REF policy for the post-2021 REF exercise will be made available sometime in the winter 2021/2022. The current policy applies to journal articles and conference papers and requires the deposit of the full-text accepted manuscript or AAM (author accepted manuscript) in an institutional system (Pure at Strathclyde) no longer than three months since manuscript acceptance. This AAM must be added to a newly created Pure record that should also include the date of manuscript acceptance (DOA) so that it’s possible to easily confirm that the deposit of the AAM has taken place within the established three months.
UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)
The UKRI comprises the following nine research councils:
- Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
- Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
- Innovate UK (IUK)
- Medical Research Council (MRC)
- Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
- Research England (RE)
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
UKRI Open Access Policy
The UKRI have released an updated Open Access policy that applies to UKRI-funded manuscripts submitted on or after 1 April 2022 and to UKRI-funded monographs, book chapters and edited collections published on or after 1 January 2024. This updated OA policy includes the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), a free, Green OA-based route to Open Access.
For Gold Open Access, i.e. making the paper OA on the journal website, the Library administers the annual block grant that UKRI have allocated the University of Strathclyde and is able to fund the Open Access publishing fees or APCs under certain circumstances (see the Funding Open Access webpage for more information).
Funding from the UKRI block grant will only cover articles that have a CC BY license and that have previously been deposited in Pure.
The recommended format for acknowledging a UKRI-funded project is "This work was supported by the xxxxx Research Council grant no. xxxxx". In order to access Gold OA funding please contact the open access team at openaccess@strath.ac.uk who will be able to further advise.
For UKRI-funded outputs, a data statement should also be included on how the underlying research materials (such as datasets or software) can be accessed. Please contact the research data management (RDM) team at researchdataproject@strath.ac.uk for more information.
Policy Scope
The Open Access requirements apply to all UKRI-funded manuscripts, from grants as well as PhD studentships, submitted from 01 April 2022 to be published as peer-reviewed research articles (including reviews) or conference papers in a journal, proceeding (with an International Standards Serial Number, ISSN), or publishing platform.
The policy will also cover monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 01 Jan 2024.
What do I need to do?
If your manuscript acknowledges one or more UKRI-funded projects (inc. Innovate UK) you should consider the way Open Access will be achieved. This is best done as early in the research process as possible, and the Open Access team may be able to assist with your choice of title to submit to – we have long-standing experience of advising on OA, and Read & Publish agreements specifically.
There are two main compliant routes with the UKRI Open Access policy. Please note that “Gold OA” via a Read & Publish deal is the route of first preference for Strathclyde corresponding authors: