UKRI proposes OA requirement for monographs from 2024

UK funding body United Kingdom Research & Innovation (UKRI) is proposing to extend an Open Access requirement to academic monographs and book chapters from January 2024. Meanwhile, all journal articles must be made immediately available Open Access from January 2022, UKRI has said.

The proposals were revealed this morning (13th February) as part of the UKRI Open Access Review. A consultation on the plans will now be open until 17th April.

The new policies require that journal articles with UKRI funding must be made "freely and immediately available online" by CC BY license via a journal or Open Access publishing platform, or via an institutional or subject repository, from 1st January 2022.

From 1st January 2024, Open Access requirements will be extended to include academic monographs, book chapters and edited collections with UKRI funding. The monographs must go OA within a maximum of 12 months of publication, with a preference for immediate OA. UKRI prefers that the texts be made available by CC BY license, although a CC BY-ND license would also be compliant.

However, UKRI said the proposed new policy would take into account that the Open Access environment for books is different, and there would be "potential exceptions" to the new policy, including where a text makes "significant" use of third-party materials, and where a monograph has a broad public audience and is marketed as a "trade" book.

Professor Sir Duncan Wingham, UKRI's executive champion for Open Access, said: “Maximising the re-use of publicly funded research findings is central to UKRI‚Äôs ambitions for research and innovation in the UK. We encourage contributions from across the research and innovation landscape to the consultation, which will help to shape our forthcoming new Open Access policy.”

UKRI administers a combined budget of more than £7bn across the UK, through seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. The current Open Access Review will decide a single OA policy across all its bodies, with the policy to be announced later this year. The policy will also inform Open Access policy in regard to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), UKRI said. A REF-specific Open Access consultation will be launched no later than six months after the announcement of UKRI's own policy.

International funding consortium cOAlition S is working to a January 2021 date for requiring its research to be published OA.