In common with a number of other universities in receipt of Research Councils UK (RCUK/UKRI**) funding for open access (Cambridge, UCL, LSHTM), we cannot pay for every single RCUK-funded output to be immediate open access. The Vice Provost’s Advisory Group for Research have therefore decided to restrict the use of the RCUK grant to only pay where:
- a. the publication output is in a fully open access title that appears in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or
- b. the publication title does not provide a compliant “green” (self-archiving) open access route
RCUK funded authors can still expect financial support for open access for the following:
- Fully open access journals e.g. PLoS, BMC etc.
- ‘Hybrid’ open access journals – but only when a compliant publisher “green” (self-archiving) open access route is unavailable or exceeds the individual research council embargo.
Rather than paying for open access, if you are in receipt of funding from the UK research councils, you can comply by simply self-archiving (a REF2021 requirement already). Provided that the publisher’s required embargo does not exceed the maximum permitted. The vast majority of publications are compliant via the self-archiving open access route and authors can check individual embargo periods of journals via Sherpa Romeo.
Funder Maximum permitted embargo
MRC 6 months
BBSRC 12 months
EPSRC 12 months
NERC 12 months
STFC 12 months
ESRC 24 months
It is important to note that the choice of publication venue will not be compromised as we will pay when they exceed the permitted embargo. Funder compliance and REF2021 output eligibility will also be ensured.
The full policy of the College’s RCUK fund is available via the Open Access Library website as well as contact details with the OA Team.
**UKRI: UK Research and Innovation brings together the UK Research Councils, Innovate UK and Research England into a single organisation.