UKRI (formerly RCUK) FAQs

Peer-reviewed research articles, including reviews and conference papers, that need to acknowledge UKRI funding in whole or in part, submitted from 1 April 2022, and accepted for final publication in either a journal, conference proceeding with an International Standards Serial Number (ISSN), or publishing platform. The policy also applies to in-scope research articles arising from UKRI training grants as these need to acknowledge UKRI funding.

It does not apply to:

• peer-reviewed articles submitted before 1 April 2022, which need to comply with the Research Councils’ Open Access Policy

• data articles or articles focused on describing a protocol, method or software

• preprints. UKRI encourages the use of preprints and also reserves the right to ensure the use of preprints in the context of emergencies.

For peer-reviewed research articles, including reviews and conference papers which are required to be  OA immediately on publication, without any embargo period, the options you have are to:

1. Publish in a full Open Access (OA) journal, ‘transformative’ journal (committed to becoming fully OA), or OA platform that makes the Version of Record immediately OA on its website. A fee (e.g. Article Processing Charge) is often required. Or,

Publish in a journal that provides immediate OA of the Version of Record via a ‘Read & Publish’ agreement between the publisher and SGUL Library, where OA charges are included in the deal. Details of the Read & Publish agreements SGUL subscribe to can be found here.

2. Repository route: If it is not possible to publish via route 1, you can publish in a subscription or hybrid journal and make your Accepted Manuscript OA with a CC BY license and no embargo via a repository (e.g. SORA or EPMC).This is enabled by retaining your copyright. No fee is required for this route.

Rights Retention

Under the traditional publishing model authors often signed away their copyright, giving the publisher exclusive rights to reproduce and disseminate the article: this often applied to the Accepted Manuscript as well as the Version of Record, with restrictions placed on where the manuscript could be shared, under what terms, and with an embargo applied.

Retaining your rights allows you to share and reuse your article as you see fit, including making it available immediately with no embargo and a CC BY license in a repository. For an overview please have a look at our Library webpage on rights retention here.

For peer-reviewed research articles, including reviews and conference papers:

• Acknowledge your funding: please follow the UKRI guidance on how this should be done.
• UKRI funded authors following route 2 (repository) to OA must include the following Rights Retention Statement in the submitted manuscript and in any cover letter or note accompanying the submission: 
  ‘For the purpose of open access, the author(s) has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence’ may be stated instead) to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising’
• Include a Data Access Statement in your manuscript, even if there are no data associated, or they are inaccessible. The statement should specify how the data underlying your findings can be accessed by other researchers, or give a reason why they cannot be accessed. Wellcome have some examples of good practice
• Deposit your article to SORA upon acceptance by uploading the Accepted Manuscript to the CRIS, and to Europe PMC where required.
• Check carefully any publishing agreement you are asked to sign, which may conflict with your funder obligations: contact us and your funder for advice before signing, or if you encounter difficulties in using the rights retention statement required by UKRI.

For peer-reviewed research articles, including reviews and conference papers, the policy requires CC-BY.  While under the previous policy it was permitted to publish under a CC-BY-NC licence, this changed under the new policy: now UKRI may allow a CC-BY-ND licence, by exception.

Agreement to publish under CC-BY-ND must be sought in advance from UKRI, on a case by case basis. The form to be completed to request an exception can be found here If you think you may need to ask for a licence exception, let us know so we can help advise you.

Authors are permitted to use a CC0 licence (please be aware this would mean 'no rights reserved').

The policy up to 1st April 2022 included review articles not commissioned by publishers.

The new policy from 1st April 2022 includes commissioned and invited reviews that acknowledge UKRI funding as in-scope of the policy.

For peer-reviewed research articles, including reviews and conference papers, UKRI has provided an OA block grant to SGUL to support implementation of their OA policy.  

The OA block grant cannot be used to pay colour and page charges. 

Applications must be submitted before a manuscript is submitted to a publisher.

Please complete the St George’s Open Access Fund application form (Word, St George's, University of London login required), then send a copy of the completed form to us, or contact us before submission if you have any queries, using our openaccess email .

 

Under the previous policy, the RCUK open access block grant could not be used to support open access costs resulting from research funded by Research England or Innovate UK.

For the purposes of the new policy from 1st April 2022, publications acknowledging Innovate UK (IUK) and Research England (RE) are now included in the UKRI OA policy.  Most RE funding is not intended to lead to specified outputs, however where particular outputs are attributed directly to RE funding, these outputs are subject to the UKRI Open Access policy and the funding must be acknowledged.  Get in touch with us before submission if you need advice on whether Research England funding should be acknowledged and outputs must meet the policy. 

You will need to acknowledge fully all the funders and grants from which the research reported has arisen, following the guidance.

If you have more than one funder requiring a statement retaining rights to publish under CC-BY, the UKRI advice is that they provide wording (as above here in FAQ 4) to authors seeking to comply with their policy under Route 2. If other funders provide equivalent wording to that supplied in UKRI’s policy which intends to achieve the same result of immediate OA via deposit of the author’s accepted manuscript with the appropriate license, provided the wording achieves compliance with the policy, authors may use the wording provided by another funder, e.g. Wellcome (UKRI FAQs).

In-scope outputs that need to acknowledge a UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee grant must comply with the Horizon Europe open science policy. Applicants would normally have included publication costs as part of their original grant application to the EU, and this funding for open access costs should be used.

If unsure, please contact us before submission .

Ask us! Get in touch before submission: openaccess@sgul.ac.uk

The Journal Checker Tool is available to make it easier to check if a journal offers a compliant route.

There are also lists of eligible transformative journals and transitional agreements available via the Jisc website:

• Jisc approved transformative journal list
• Jisc transitional agreement look up tool

Monographs, book chapters and edited collections (arising from pre-existing and closed awards) published from 1 January 2024 (unless a contract has been signed between the author and the publisher before this date that prevents adherence to the policy). Please contact us if you have questions about this part of the policy and require further guidance.  Exemptions are possible where:

• the only appropriate publisher, after liaison and consideration, is unable to offer an open access option that complies with UKRI’s policy.
• reuse permissions for third-party materials cannot be obtained and there is no suitable alternative option available to enable open access publication (see FAQ 5 below).

Monographs, book chapters or edited collections arising from UKRI training grants: open access publication is not required where the training grant is the only UKRI funding source acknowledged, but is encouraged. 

The accepted manuscript or the Version of Record (published version) should be made available under a Creative Commons licence after no longer than a 12 month embargo. If funding is requested to make the published version available, this would need to be published open access immediately with no embargo under a Creative Commons licence. The preferred licence is CC-BY, see FAQ 5 below.

Please refer to the UKRI guidance Making your monograph, book chapter or edited collection open access – UKRI, or contact us in advance of submission if guidance is required.

For monographs, book chapters or edited collections published from January 2024, please refer to the UKRI guidance Making your monograph, book chapter or edited collection open access – UKRI  and contact us in advance of submission where guidance is required.

UKRI are not requiring a rights retention statement on submitted or accepted manuscripts for long-form publications.

UKRI requires the open access version to be made available under a Creative Commons licence. A Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence is preferred to maximise opportunity for sharing and reuse, but other Creative Commons licences are permitted – for instance, an Open Government Licence is permitted when authors are subject to Crown Copyright.

Note if there are for instance images, photographs, diagrams or maps being included in the work, where copyright is held by a third-party, the UKRI’s licensing requirements for open access licences do not apply to those parts. For more information see licencing guidance in the policy, the UKRI's Guidance on managing copyright under UKRI open access policy or contact us. 

If the exclusion of third party content material means that the remaining content would not make sense to the reader, then an exemption for the publication may be possible (see FAQ 1 above).

The guide Publishing under the UKRI open access policy: copyright and Creative Commons licences by Jisc contains some useful general definitions and guidance of concepts around copyright and licensing. 

UKRI have introduced a centrally held dedicated fund supporting open access costs for long form outputs in scope of this new requirement. There is a two stage application process to apply for this funding (see the relevant section here).  

If you are considering publishing, please contact us via openaccess@sgul.ac.uk at an early stage. This will help us to work with you to select a route to open access publication which meets the funder requirement.

The research organisation, rather than the author, submits the request for funding using the online form provided by UKRI. UKRI will review the application at Stage 1 and confirm whether the output will be eligible for funding; however note that funding will not be released until successful submission of a Stage 2 application for reimbursement, when the research organisation must provide confirmation of publication to UKRI to enable the release the funds.  SGUL's Research Funding team can be contacted for further information.

You will need to acknowledge fully all the funders and grants from which the research reported has arisen, following the guidance, which covers where the research was supported by more than one agency. Authors may use wording provided by another funder (for example, Wellcome) or their research organisation, as long as the wording achieves compliance with UKRI’s policy.

In-scope outputs that need to acknowledge a UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee grant must comply with the Horizon Europe open science policy. Applicants would normally have included publication costs as part of their original grant application to the EU, and this funding for open access costs should be used.

Ask us! Get in touch before submission: openaccess@sgul.ac.uk