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Research Support: Open Access monographs, books and chapters

Advice and support for scholarly communications.

UKRI OA monographs policy

 

UKRI OA policy - updated to include monographs

From 1 January 2024, monographs, book chapters or edited collections acknowledging funding from UKRI, or any of its councils, must be made open access within 12 months of publication. This can be achieved using either a green (unpaid, accepted version) or gold (paid, published version) route. 

The core requirements are:

  • The final Version of Record or Author’s Accepted Manuscript 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.
  • The OA version of the publication must have a Creative Commons licence, with an Open Government Licence (OGL) also permitted.
  • Images, illustrations, tables and other supporting content should be included in the OA version where possible (third-party materials DO NOT require a CC licence).

There may be rare instances where meeting OA requirements may not be possible and, in such cases, funded researchers may be eligible for an exemption. This could be when it is not possible to obtain reuse permissions for third-party materials, there is no suitable alternative to enable OA publication, or redaction of the images would damage the academic integrity of the book.

Although free to access and read, there are costs associated with publishing OA, and UKRI have established a fund of £3.5 million per annum to support OA publication costs. To manage the funds, UKRI have set maximum levels that they will contribute:

  • £10,000 (including VAT) for entire monographs and edited collections
  • £1,000 (including VAT) for book chapters
  • £6,000 for non-book processing charge models where one eligible UKRI output is published. (An additional £3,000 is also available where two or more UKRI publications from the same institution are published under the same model).

This fund will be centrally held by UKRI, who will make payments to Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) in June and December each year. The fund has a two-stage application process:

  • Stage 1 is now open. The RPO (rather than the funded author) registers the output(s) with UKRI for funding and UKRI will confirm whether the output is eligible. A publishing contract does not need to be signed for a stage 1 application.
  • Stage 2 will go live in January 2024. This is where the RPO provides final confirmation of publication to allow UKRI to release funds. Stage 2 applications are welcome at any time after the institution receives a publisher invoice.

Please email eResearch@qmu.ac.uk for further assistance with this policy.

 

Wellcome Trust

All original scholarly monographs and book chapters authored or co-authored by Wellcome grantholders as part of their grant-funded research, must be:

  • made freely available through NCBI Bookshelf PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC as soon as possible and no later than within 6 months of the official final publication date

and

  • be published under a Creative Commons licence where a fee has been paid to the publisher to make the work open access. Our preference is for a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY), however, researchers may choose to publish their work under any of the Creative Commons licences including non-commercial and non-derivative licences (CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND).

Funding is available to cover publishers' open access monograph and book chapter processing charges.

Scottish Universities Press

SUP is a fully open access publishing press coordinated by SCURL and managed by member libraries on a not-for-profit basis.

SUP provides a clear and cost-effective route for researchers at Scottish HEIs to make their work freely available to a global audience, responding to changes in the policy landscape around open access books.

SUP delivers a full-service publishing experience with open communication and transparent processes from peer review through to promotion. SUP is community-led and responsive to the needs of the academic community in Scotland that it serves.

SUP is open for book proposals. More information can be found here.