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 1^st January 2024.

There will be 2 ways for Dundee authors to meet UKRI’s open access requirements:

• Make the final Accepted Manuscript available via our institutional repository, Discovery, with a maximum embargo of 12 months, and 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 Dundee 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 will introduce a two-stage process to deal with applications for open access funding from a new dedicated fund.

Stage 1

Authors should contact our Research Services Team at discovery@dundee.ac.uk so that we can register the output with UKRI and apply for funding. The following information will be required:

• UKRI funding reference
• Author name(s)
• Title of publication
• Name of publisher
• Estimated cost (if known)
• Statement about relationship of the output to the UKRI funded project or grant, including the authors role in this

Stage 2

If UKRI confirm that the publication is eligible for funding, the following information is required:

• Date of publication
• Confirmation of open access publication
• Financial information
• Any changes to the information provided at Stage 1

A number of exceptions to the policy are permitted:

• If the contract with the publisher was signed before 1^st January 2024
• If the chosen publisher cannot offer an open access option (either paid open access or depositing the manuscript in Discovery)
• If reuse permissions for 3^rd party content cannot be obtained and no suitable alternative exists
• If the funding comes solely from a UKRI training grant, open access publication is encouraged but is not mandatory

If your funding comes from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), there is an additional requirement to deposit a copy of your publication in their NERC Open Research Archive (NORA).

If you are planning to publish a book, book chapter or edited collection in 2024, and your research has been funded by UKRI, you should contact the Research Services team so that we may guide you through the process of ensuring that your publication meets UKRI’s open access policy requirements.

One option to consider might be to publish with the Scottish Universities Press. A number of libraries of Scottish Higher Education Institutions have collaborated to form the Press as a mechanism to provide a cost-effective and compliant route to publishing open-access monographs. Email the Research Services Team, or visit the Scottish Universities Press website for more information.

Contact the Research Services Team at discovery@dundee.ac.uk

Please note the subject matter of this blogpost has now been updated with new information in a further blogpost, UKRI’S Open Access Policy on books and book chapters – an update published on 13th November 2023.