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This is referring to the first time that your paper is submitted for consideration by the journal – the first draft for peer review.
No, this is not an acceptable licence for research articles which must acknowledge UKRI funding, see below:
From UKRI documentation ‘UKRI Open Access Policy – Frequently Asked Questions’ Licensing requirements
Licensing requirements
UKRI requires the open access version of a research article to be published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.
There are two exceptions to this requirement:
- An Open Government Licence (OGL) can be used when a research article is subject to Crown Copyright.
- While a CC BY licence is appropriate in most cases, UKRI may permit, on a case-by-case basis, the use of a more restrictive Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence for the open access version of a research article. Further guidance will be provided in due course, as outlined on our website at Shaping Our Open Access Policy.
UKRI’s licensing requirements do not apply to any materials included within a research article that are provided by third-party copyright holders. Research articles published under a CC BY or CC BY-ND licence can include third-party materials (such as images, photographs or maps) that are subject to a more restrictive licence. UKRI considers this approach compliant with its policy.
From UKRI documentation ‘UKRI Open Access Policy – explanation of policy changes’
Our assessment is that a significant majority of venues that publish UKRI-funded articles will be able to offer suitable open access options to UKRI-funded authors by April 2022. This includes publication options via fully open access venues, and articles published in hybrid journals under (or expected to be under) transitional agreements, and self-archiving options.
UKRI will be supporting the Jisc SPA-OPS project to scale up transitional agreements with the diversity of publishers and research organisations. This is in recognition that smaller publishers and societies have specific issues to negotiate, and that small research organisations face specific challenges in participating in such agreements.
We expect a small minority of subscription-only venues will be unable to (or choose not to) offer full open access options that are aligned with our policy proposals. Our policy provides the option for these venues to still offer zero-embargo self-archiving to UKRI-funded authors. We note that some publishers already offer this option.
Examples of the number of journals included in Transitional/Read and Publish Agreements with Ulster from a few major publishers (see https://agreements.sherpa.ac.uk/), August 2022. The numbers of journals should generally mean that researchers do not need to make comprising decisions when it comes to choice of journal.
| Publisher | Number of journals included in the agreement |
|---|---|
| Cambridge University Press (Holdings) Limited | 399 |
| Elsevier B.V. | 1,891 |
| SAGE Publications Limited | 940 |
| Wiley Subscription Services Inc | 6,040 |
Two examples from universities who are working on implementing a Rights Retention Strategy at an institutional level offer some perspective on how ‘no embargoes/CC BY licence’ plays out in reality with publishers.
Edinburgh and Cambridge University both recently presented during a JISC webinar to outline the approach they have taken to adopting a Rights Retention Policy (July 2022). In the first instance, Edinburgh contacted 15 of its largest publishers to send Notice of Grant of Licence. Two of these publishers indicated they will request payment for immediate OA and CC BY licensing. One publisher sent aggressive follow-up. Cambridge sent a notification to the top 30 publishers used by Cambridge researchers of the agreement which the university had reached with researchers to declare rights retentions in their publications. Only two of the publishers told Cambridge that they will reject papers before review if they contain a rights retention declaration. Other publishers have quibbled but ultimately accepted rights retention.
Edinburgh and Cambridge University both recently presented during a JISC webinar to outline the approach they have taken to adopting a Rights Retention Policy (July 2022). In the first instance, Edinburgh contacted 15 of its largest publishers to send Notice of Grant of Licence. Two of these publishers indicated they will request payment for immediate OA and CC BY licensing. One publisher sent aggressive follow-up. This aggressive publisher was American. Cambridge sent a notification to the top 30 publishers used by Cambridge researchers of the agreement which the university had reached with researchers to declare rights retentions in their publications. Only two of the publishers (both US-based learned societies) told Cambridge that they will reject papers before review if they contain a rights retention declaration. Other publishers have quibbled but ultimately accepted rights retention
From UKRI documentation ‘UKRI Open Access Policy – explanation of policy changes’
Author choice
Author choice of publication venue was an important consideration for UKRI’s review. Our assessment is that a significant majority of venues that publish UKRI-funded articles will be able to offer suitable open access options to UKRI-funded authors by April 2022. This includes publication options via fully open access venues, and articles published in hybrid journals under (or expected to be under) transitional agreements, and self-archiving options.
UKRI will be supporting the Jisc SPA-OPS project to scale up transitional agreements with the diversity of publishers and research organisations. This is in recognition that smaller publishers and societies have specific issues to negotiate, and that small research organisations face specific challenges in participating in such agreements. We also highlight that the SPA-OPS project, which UKRI co-funded, has developed a toolkit to help learned society publishers identify routes transition to open access.
We expect a small minority of subscription-only venues will be unable to (or choose not to) offer full open access options that are aligned with our policy proposals. Our policy provides the option for these venues to still offer zero-embargo self-archiving to UKRI-funded authors. We note that some publishers already offer this option.
This is not a problem. The policy requirement for Route 2 is only on the AAM, not the published version. The publishers hold rights on the Version of Record and these must be adhered to.
All Open Access queries are currently being treated centrally by the library and the library requests that the library open-access mailbox is used: Library-OpenAccess@ulster.ac.uk
The Read and Publish agreements are blanket deals with academic publishers and gaining accessing these agreements is not restricted to UKRI funded research. Read and Publish agreements are a means for complying with UKRI policy rules but they can and should be accessed more broadly.
You can publish in any journal of your choice by paying for OA but you cannot use UKRI resources to meet these costs.
Quoting UKRI on author choice from UKRI documentation ‘UKRI Open Access Policy – explanation of policy changes’
'Our assessment is that a significant majority of venues that publish UKRI-funded articles will be able to offer suitable open access options to UKRI-funded authors by April 2022. This includes publication options via fully open access venues, and articles published in hybrid journals under (or expected to be under) transitional agreements, and self-archiving options.
We expect a small minority of subscription-only venues will be unable to (or choose not to) offer full open access options that are aligned with our policy proposals’.
From UKRI documentation ‘UKRI Open Access Policy – explanation of policy changes’
UKRI will be supporting Jisc to scale up transitional agreements with the diversity of publishers and research organisations. This is in recognition that smaller publishers and societies have specific issues to negotiate, and that small research organisations face specific challenges in participating in such agreements.
We expect a small minority of subscription-only venues will be unable to (or choose not to) offer full open access options that are aligned with our policy proposals. Our policy provides the option for these venues to still offer zero-embargo self-archiving to UKRI-funded authors. We note that some publishers already offer this option.
As this is an Open Access journal, it first needs to be registered in DOAJ. The Journal Checker Tool pulls in data from DOAJ (as one of its data sources). DOAJ is recognised as a global trusted source of quality peer-reviewed Open Access Journals, so it would be good to have open access journals which university staff manage visible in this index.
Once the journal is registered use the ‘send us feedback’ button on the Journal Checker Tool to expedite the process further.
Correct.
This webinar focuses on complying with the new UKRI OA policy and does not discuss compliance with the next REF OA access policy, the details of which are yet to be released.
As quoted in the webinar ‘In due course there will be guidance from the UK funding bodies about the submission of outputs to the next REF, but we can assure authors now that any outputs which satisfy the UKRI policy will also satisfy any future REF policy.’ (UKRI, Aug 2021)
The requirements covered in the webinar only relate to UKRI funded research. As mentioned in the webinar, the Wellcome Trust and Science Foundation Ireland have changed grant conditions with changed open access requirements which need to be followed.
