Research outputs resulting from UKRI grants or UKRI-funded doctoral training programmes must comply with the UKRI Open Access Policy. This includes journal articles, papers published in conference proceedings, books, and book chapters. Different rules may apply depending on the type of research output, but the result is always the same: your output must be made available publicly and free of charge. For more information please scroll down.
Doctoral theses are not included in the UKRI Open Access Policy, but they must comply with the UKRI terms and conditions for training funding. It is your responsibility to check if your doctoral training programme has been funded by UKRI. For more information click here.
UKRI Open Access Policy applies to peer-reviewed research articles submitted for publication from 1 April 2022 and accepted for publication in either a journal or conference proceedings with an ISSN.
1. Research articles must be made open access and published under a CC-BY licence immediately upon publication.
2. UKRI funding must be acknowledged.
3. Data access statement must be included, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible.
Route 1 (Gold): Publish the article in a fully open access journal or a publishing platform which makes the Version of Record (VoR) available under a CC-BY licence.
This includes fully open access journals that are part of Publisher Agreements that Ulster University has in place. Please note that publishing your article open access in a hybrid journal will not meet the compliance criteria.
Route 2 (Green): Publish the article in a subscription journal and deposit the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM), or Version of Record if the publisher permits, in an institutional or subject repository at the time of final publication, under a CC-BY licence.
This version must be made immediately open access upon publication - embargoes are not permitted. To make the publisher aware of this requirement, the following text must be included along with the funding acknowledgment:
For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.
UKRI Open Access Policy applies to monographs, book chapters, and edited collections (collectively referred to as long-form publications) published on or after 1 January 2024.
1. The Version of Record (VoR) or the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) must be free to view and download via an online publication platform, publisher's website, or institutional or subject repository within a maximum of 12 months of publication.
2. The open access version has a CC-BY licence or other licence permitted by UKRI and allows the reader to search for and reuse content, subject to proper attribution.
3. The open access version should include, where possible, any images, illustrations, tables and other supporting content.
4. Where an AAM is deposited, it should be clear that this is not the final version.
Route 1 (Gold): Publish the book or the chapter under a CC-BY licence or other licence permitted by UKRI which makes the final published version available in open access immediately upon publication.
Route 2 (Green): Publish the book or the chapter under publisher's copyright and deposit the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in an institutional repository. This version can be embargoed for up to 12 months of publication.
Increasing numbers of academic publishers allow self-archiving (a.k.a. Green Open Access route) of book chapters and sometimes even whole books. You can check the publisher's policy via JISC Open policy finder. If you can't find the publisher's policy for long-form publications, please get in touch with our team as we may be able to find this information for you.
UKRI recognises there may be rare instances where meeting open access requirements for long-form publications may not be possible.
The following exemptions may apply:
1. If the only appropriate publisher, after liaison and consideration, is unable to offer an open access option that complies with UKRI’s policy.
2. If the publication is the outcome of a UKRI training grant, e.g. a PhD stipend.
3. If permissions for 3rd party copyright material cannot be obtained and there is no suitable alternative which enables open access publication.
4. Trade books are exempt from the policy unless they are the only output from UKRI-funded research.
5. Scholarly editions, exhibition catalogues, textbooks, reference works and all types of fictional work are out of scope of the policy.
On this page you will find out how to fund the cost of publishing your UKRI-funded journal articles open access:
On this page you will find out how to apply for funding to cover the cost of publishing your UKRI-funded book or book chapter open access:
UKRI funding for long-form publications
Please use the forms below to note the exemption you will be applying to your long-form publication:
UKRI exemption application: monograph and/or edited collection
UKRI exemption application: book chapter
