If you receive funding from UKRI, you may be required to:

make your research publications open access
make your research data as open as possible
follow good research data management practices
acknowledge your funder in any outputs.

Requirements for publishing your findings will depend on the type of grant you were awarded and which council provided the funding. Always check your specific terms and conditions, and any guidance provided by the council funding your research.

You should publish the results of the research in line with your research organisation’s procedures and with normal academic practice.

Making your Research Publications Open Access

Making your publications Open Access means that the results of publicly funded research are available:

to everyone for free
under conditions that enable them to be re-used and built upon

If you have an award from UKRI or one of their councils, you must follow their Open Access requirements when publishing a research publication acknowledging their funding.

The requirements you’ll need to follow will depend on the type of publication and when you plan to submit or publish.

Peer-Reviewed Research Articles

The Open Access requirements for a peer-reviewed research article depends upon when it is submitted for publication.

If you submit for publication before 1 April 2022:

You must follow the existing research councils’ policy on open access and supporting guidance.

This policy applies to:

articles which need to acknowledge research council funding
some articles resulting from Innovate UK funding, as outlined in the guidance for academics applying for Innovate UK funding on GOV.UK.

If you submit for publication on or after 1 April 2022:

You must follow the new UKRI Open Access policy.

This applies to articles which need to acknowledge funding from UKRI or any of its councils. This includes funding from:

The Research Councils: AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC and STFC
Research England
Innovate UK

For information about the development of the new policy and how UKRI are implementing it, see shaping our open access policy.

Monographs, Book Chapters and Edited Collections published from 1 January 2024

Before publishing your research findings, refer to the full requirements and guidance in the UKRI open access policy and supplementary frequently asked questions.

A summary of the policy for peer-reviewed research articles acknowledging UKRI funding, and which are submitted for publication from 1 April 2022, is provided below.

Useful resources to support you to make your research open can be found in the good research resource hub. Help can also be sought from the Open Access Manager for the University by contacting oa@hud.ac.uk.

Further guidance on UKRI’s new open access requirements for monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1 January 2024 will be added to this page in due course.

Making Your Article Immediately Open Access

The policy applies to peer-reviewed research articles. This includes journal articles, review articles and conference articles that are accepted for final publication in either a journal, conference proceeding with an international standard serial number (ISSN), or publishing platform.

You can make your article Open Access via one of two routes:

Route one: you can publish the article Open Access in a journal or publishing platform. This makes the version of record immediately Open Access via its website with a creative commons attribution (CC BY) license or Open Government license (OGL). There is only 1 other permitted license, which is the No derivatives license CC BY-ND. Authors can apply to UKRI to get permission to publish with this license should they wish. For further information see the application form on UKRI's website or contact the University's Open Access Manager oa@hud.ac.uk.
Route two: involves self-archiving, however there are a number of more difficult criteria to meet with this option that the University of Huddersfield is currently encouraging route one. If you would like to discuss the requirements of OA compliance using route two, please contact the Open Access Manager for the University oa@hud.ac.uk.

You can publish in the journal or platform you consider most appropriate for your research, provided UKRI’s Open Access requirements are met.

This can include fully Open Access journals or publishing platforms, or ‘hybrid’ subscription journals that offer an Open Access option, and which offer a compliant route.

However, only hybrid journals that are included in transitional Open Access arrangements (for example, transformative journals or transitional agreements) that meet the requirements of the research sector, and as set out in the Jisc requirements, are eligible to have APCs paid by the University's UKRI OA Block Grant.

To apply to have your APC paid by the University's UKRI OA Block Grant, fill in the short request form and send it to oa@hud.ac.uk.

If you intend to publish in a hybrid journal that does not meet these requirements, you will need to find an alternative source of funding to meet the publication costs. The Jisc requirements have been agreed by the research sector and help to ensure value for money.

Getting Support with Open Access Routes

If you need support with Open Access routes:

find further guidance in the UKRI open access policy and supplementary frequently asked questions
UKRI will provide an online tool for authors and research organisations to make it easy to check if a journal offers a compliant open access route. Information about this will be added to the UKRI website and to this staff intranet page when it is available

Include a Data Access Statement in Your Article (even if there are no data or inaccessible data)

You must include a data access statement in your article, even where there is no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible.

This informs readers where the underlying research materials associated with a paper are available, and how the research materials can be accessed. The statement can include links to the dataset, where applicable and appropriate.

Getting Support With Data Access Statements

For more help:

see further details in the UKRI open access policy and supplementary frequently asked questions
get resources about data access statements can also be found in the good research resource hub.
get guidance from the Research Data Management officer for the University rdm@hud.ac.uk

Depositing Research Outputs in a Repository

The University of Huddersfield Open Access policy states that authors should add their outputs to Pure within 3 months of the acceptance date. Adding your items to Pure improves access to your research findings.

Check the terms and conditions in your grant offer document and the Open Access policy that applies to your publication to find out if you need to add your publications to any other repositories, such as those specified below:

Whether publishing Open Access via a journal or repository, biomedical research articles that acknowledge the Medical Research Council (MRC) or the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funding are required to be archived in Europe PubMed Central. This is in accordance with:

Some research councils have repositories for publications produced by researchers affiliated with them, or publications that report work carried out at their facilities and research centres.

These include:

Making Your Research Data Open

Research data is out-of-scope of the UKRI Open Access policy. Instead the requirements of making data open and timescales are dicussed by each council separately and can be accessed on UKRI's Making Your Research Data Open webpage.

Contact for Further Information

If you have any questions, please contact the Open Access Manager for the University of Huddersfield oa@hud.ac.uk and/or the UKRI Open Access Team: openaccess@funding.ukri.org and/or the UKRI Open Research Team: openresearch@ukri.org