New UKRI Policy on Open Access Monographs coming soon
What's happening with UKRI?
Open access is no longer a term that can be confined to journal articles and conference papers. Within the publishing world there are a range of options for making academic books and chapters open access albeit these options are not as extensive as those we see in article publishing. Against this backdrop, the UKRI has announced a new open access policy directed specifically at long form publications. UKRI have stated that any author they fund must make any monograph, book chapters or edited collection that they author from 01.01.2024 onward open access.
Authors can choose two ways in which to achieve this. They can publish open access via the publisher, making the final published version immediately available under a creative common license, or they can make the accepted author manuscript version available on an institutional or subject repository within a maximum of 12 months of publication. The policy itself presents several challenges, the most prominent of which is financial. UKRI have ring-fenced £3.5 million annually to cover the costs associated with open access publishing for long form outputs. They have capped book publishing costs at £10,000 inclusive of VAT and chapter publishing costs at £1,000 inclusive of VAT, both caps are very much below most commercial publishers’ price points. In addition to this, initial decisions surrounding REF 2028 have stated that authors who comply with the current UKRI open access policy will be compliant with REF criteria 2028. This is problematic. The policy outlined by UKRI for monographs cannot be applied wholesale to REF, (unlike the policy for Journals and Conf. Proceedings). Therefore, we will likely get more consultation on this come March 2024.
See above for timeline outlined by UKRI
See below for useful links
Making your monograph, book chapter or edited collection open access – UKRI
Guidance on managing copyright under UKRI open access policy – UKRI
Publishing under the UKRI open access policy: copyright and Creative Commons licences - Jisc
Our role in open access - Jisc