UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) and its constituent research councils have operated an Open Access policy for journal articles and conference proceedings for several years, but will extend the policy to include monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1st January 2024.
There will be 2 ways for Kent authors to meet UKRI’s open access requirements:
- Make the final Author Accepted Manuscript available via our institutional repository, KAR, with a maximum embargo of 12 months, under a Creative Commons licence (Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) preferred).
- Publish open access with the publisher themselves, usually involving the payment of a fee.
The University of Kent receives a block grant from UKRI to cover the costs of open access publication in journals and conference proceedings, but this will not be used for book publication. Instead, UKRI have a two-stage process to deal with applications for open access funding from a new dedicated central fund.
Stage 1 – register an output with UKRI in order to acquire agreement for funding in principle. The Kent Open Research Team in the library need to do this on your behalf. There are caps on the amount of funding that UKRI will grant for individual outputs (£10,000 per book, £1,000 per chapter)
Stage 2 – claim the money back from the UKRI central fund once an output has been published
To enable Kent researchers to comply we will need to ensure efficient and effective guidance and processes, including financial ones. The Open Research team will develop these in an Information Services project and publish guidance as we progress on our Open Access webpages.
Action to take now
- complete this short form to allow the Kent Open Research team to identify your needs. We will then be in touch to support you.
- keep hold of the Author Accepted Manuscript version of your work
- be aware of the new requirements if you are about to sign a contract with a publisher
More detailed information
See UKRI’s Making your monograph, book chapter or edited collection open access and UKRI’s FAQs on their Open Access policy
- The policy applies to outputs arising from pre-existing and closed awards if they are published on or after 1 January 2024 and within seven years of the formal end of the award.
- Text books, trade books, scholarly editions, exhibition catalogues and all types of fictional works and creative writing are excluded
- Policy exemptions will be considered by UKRI but evidence will be required. We will develop means to help you register and evidence exemptions