Research Funders Requirements

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

UK Research & Innovation expects that all research articles derived from their funding be made available open access. These articles must include details of the funding that supported the research and, if applicable, a statement on how the underlying research materials, such as data, samples, or models can be accessed.

UKRI’s preferred open access model is Gold which allows immediate access to the published research, but they also support deposit of the author’s accepted manuscript (post-print) in an institutional repository within 1 month of acceptance, this is also known as Green open access.

From 1^st January 2024, UKRI are extending this open access requirement to long-form publications, e.g. monographs, edited books, and book chapters. Further information is available from the UKRI website.

For questions and support surrounding the UKRI open access requirements please contact us at openaccess@aber.ac.uk.

Other funders

Most other funders have open access policies. You can search for details of these policies using the SHERPA Services tool: https://beta.sherpa.ac.uk/

Many funders, including UKRI (April 2022), the Wellcome Trust (January 2021), the NIHR (June 2022), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (January 2021) have Plan S aligned policies; which include a rights retention requirement.