Supporting compliance with
funder & government policies –
UKRI open access policy 2023
Alice Gibson, Licensing Manager - Jisc

Jisc Licensing
We negotiate the best agreements for and with the research and
education sectors, underpinned by intelligence and data
2
165
University members
300+
Agreements offered
each year
£192m
Sector savings from
sector agreements and
shared services

The UKRI Open Access Policy
Under this new policy, all peer-reviewed research, conference proceedings and
review articles that acknowledge funding from UKRI or any of its councils submitted
after 1 April 2022 must:
be published open access (OA) immediately, without embargo,
under a CC-BY license.
Route
One
Either the final version of record is made open access
or
Route
Two
Authors are allowed to self-archive the Author Accepted
Manuscript (AAM) or VOR in an institutional or
subject-based repository.
This UKRI OA policy mirrors other major funder policies (NIHR, Wellcome Trust) with similar
mandates announced from 2021 onwards.

Supporting the implementation of UKRI policy –
accelerating the transition to Open Access
Rapidly scale up our agreements so that UKRI-funded researchers have
ubiquitous and frictionless routes to publish OA.
Providing/developing existing tools for authors and research organisations to
navigate available OA options, improve workflows and automate reporting.
Gather and analyse data to monitor and evaluate the performance of OA
agreements. Enable members, funders and publishers to understand the
progress and impact of OA agreements.
Work with UKRI, UK universities, publishers, researchers, and representative
bodies, to develop an understanding and respond to the challenges in delivering
OA - deliver support and sharing best practices.

What impact has our approach had so far
~79% of UK research output is now covered
by a Jisc-negotiated transitional agreement or
published in a fully gold OA journal.
Our focus is to address those journals still
categorised as Hybrid/Closed (21.1%)
UK – OA articles in TAs
increased +58.5%
(2022 to 2021 - 12-month comparison)
Source: https://github.com/subugoe/oa2020cadata/, ESAC Transformative Agreement Registry - TA data
https://esac-initiative.org/market-watch/ last updated: 25-01-2023

Hybrid/Closed
Many of hybrid journals are currently non-compliant with the new
UKRI Open Access Policy. (8.7% of these are Other publishers, who
our focus is on)
To give a sense of how hybrid journal situation in the UK fares with
other countries:

Our Achievements
• We now have 67 Transformative Agreements registered on ESAC: 56,483 articles have been published under these
agreements
• We have successfully negotiated with 49 Publishers who now facilitate compliance with Route 2 of UKRI‘s policy
• 16 of these permit self archiving with CC BY and with no embargo for all authors, regardless of funding
From ESAC 25/01/23: https://esac-initiative.org/about/transformative-agreements/agreement-registry/

Checking Compliance
• We provide a range of sources to facilitate compliance
checks prior to submission:
• Sherpa (we include links to publisher’s policies)
• We keep a public spreadsheet here under the heading
‘Publisher Negotiations
• Review our Monthly Reports
https://www.jisc.ac.uk/open-research/our-role-in-open-access

Jisc/UKRI dashboard data
UKRI article output – compliant routes
Route % of Articles Level of compliance
Transitional Agreement (TA) 49% Compliant - eligible for funding
Transformative Journal - part of TA 9% Compliant - eligible for funding
Gold OA 27% Compliant - eligible for funding
Subscribe to Open 0% Compliant - eligible for funding
Green OA 4% Compliant - not eligible for funding
Transformative Journal - green 3% Compliant - eligible for funding
Hybrid 5% Non-compliant
Not compliant 2% Non-compliant
100%
Figures are limited to articles published between 2017 and 2021, which were funded by one of the UKRI funding bodies.
Data sourced from Dimensions in November 2022, an inter-linked research information system provided by Digital Science (https://www.dimensions.ai).
Due to licensing and copyright restrictions, these images should not be used or reproduced for other purposes without permission.
Key focus

UKRI policy and OA publishing options
Fully Gold OA
Route 1 - Version of Record - immediate Open Access Route 2 - Green Open Access
Converts subscription
payments into funds
for OA publishing
Diamond OA
Permits deposit of
AAM on publication,
no embargo, CC-BY
Makes content OA if
subscription
commitments reached
Read & Publish - TA
Subscription
+ Green OA
Subscribe to Open
cOAlition S
Transformative
Journals + R&P TA
Jisc Approved -
Transformative Journal
Status
cOAlition S
Transformative
Journals + Green OA
Jisc Approved -
Transformative Journal
Status

Routes to open access (1)
Read & Publish – Transitional Agreements
• Recent developments –
• Last year ESAC registered that 16,376 articles were published in the agreement Jisc negotiated
with Elsevier
• Springer Nature negotiations are ongoing
• Negotiations have begun with APS
• There is a consultative side of our approach with smaller publishers
- We work with smaller publishers to implement OA workflows and reporting
- These policies need full explanation – often a one desk operation
- Submission systems, usage reporting (JUSP), CRIS/IR submission (Publications Router) – all these
need guidance and attention
• Models tend to be ‘portable’ to other international consortia - Publishers benefit from working with Jisc

Routes to open access (2)
Permits deposit of AAM on publication no embargo CC-BY
for any UKRI article
• Essential backstop for capped Read & Publish agreements –
guaranteed compliance.
• Highly valued by institutions.
• Compliant green OA policies are widely used in institutional
evaluation criteria.
• Policy shared on Sherpa Romeo.
Simple message to UK funded authors – publisher compliance with
funder policy means they are permitted to submit articles.
Green OA for UKRI
funded authors

Route 2 open access for funded authors: 34 publishers
American Diabetes Association
American Institute of Mathematical Sciences
(AIMS)
American Mathematical Society (AMS)
American Meteorological Society
American Psychiatric Association Publishing
American Society of Neuroradiology (ASNR)
American Speech Language Hearing Association
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Audio Engineering Society
British Academy
British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery
Equinox Publishing
IGI Global
Inderscience Publishers
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE)
Intellect
Inter-Research Science Center
International Institute of Anticancer Research
Johns Hopkins University Press
Mark Allen Group
Mary Ann Liebert
SAE International
Society for Industrial & Applied Mathematics
(SIAM)
Pacific Affairs
Practical Action Publishing
Society of Exploration Geophysicists
University of Toronto Press
University of Wales Press/Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru
South African Medical Association NPC
Spandidos Publications
SPIE, the international society for optics and
photonics
Uniwersytet Lodzki (University of Lodz)
World Scientific Publishing
https://www.jisc.ac.uk/open-research/our-role-in-open-access ‘Publisher Negotiations’

Other routes - Community-based models
Diamond – Open Access
Community Framework
(OACF)
• Announced in February - new model being piloted in 2022 – focus
on not for profit and diamond OA – currently evaluating pilot.
• 10 initiatives participating – funding pledges committed for 3
years.
• Initiatives include journals and monographs.
• Streamlines decision-making for supporter institutions and
provides budget predictability for participating publishers.
Jisc Blog - Introducing the OACF

Our approach
• Over the past 12-months, we have been prioritising smaller publishers to help them find their
route to compliance.
• We work with publishers to identify suitable models by looking at their UK revenue data,
APCs, UK publishing output and trends.
• Our careful consultative approach requires close discussions with publishers and UK
institutions.
• Our aim: to make it as easy as possible for UK academics and those supporting them, for
work to be made open access without delay

For those that would like to know more
about our work in this space - get in
touch!
Contact us – licensing@jisc.ac.uk