Our role in open access

We are committed to removing the barriers to accessing research outputs. Working for and with the higher education sector, we are enabling the UK's academic research community to realise the rewards of open access.

A woman studies in a cafe.

Our open research services are easing the move to open access by providing user-friendly and cost-effective ways to automate workflows, assessing compliance, sharing good practice, carrying out benchmarking, and influencing third parties such as publishers and funders.

Find out more about the role Jisc plays in open access policy creation, expression and engagement, sector negotiations with publishers, and the different routes to open access.

Policy and engagement

Our work is developed in line with UK government, funding councils and research funders' policies. We are working to ensure that the open access policy environment offers the maximum benefit with minimum burden for UK research and the wider economy and society, but we do not have a policy position on how this is achieved.

We are in regular contact with officers within UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Wellcome, as well as maintaining close relationships on this topic with Universities UK (UUK).

In all this work, we benefit from reflection and advice from our open access sector group, with representatives from:

  • Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL)
  • Research Libraries UK (RLUK)
  • Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) 
  • United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR)

European and international policy

We participate in a small number of highly influential networks to benefit UK universities in this area:

Policy expression

While we inform policies themselves we can also see that, in some cases, total alignment of policies will not be possible. Having those differences expressed clearly is important for those trying to implement them. We have worked with SHERPA/Juliet, the Registry of Open Access Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) and others to develop a schema for funders’ and institutions’ open access policies, which we are now promoting.

Publishers have policies too, for example, associated with the journals they publish. These are documented in our SHERPA/RoMEO service, but we are also working directly with publishers, alongside funders, libraries and others, to see whether the expression of those policies can be made clearer.

Negotiating a transition to open access

Jisc is supporting higher education with the transition to open access through the negotiation of a range of transitional (transformative) and open access agreements which enable UK research output to be published open access in accordance with UK funder policies. Our strategic groups set the direction of negotiations and ensure that our members' requirements are embedded into our service. 

Approach to negotiations

Our negotiations are sector-led and governed by the UUK Jisc content negotiation strategy group and our Jisc content expert group. We work with our members and strategy groups to review their priorities and develop their requirements for open access agreements. The requirements are endorsed by the UUK/Jisc content negotiation strategy group. Our approach is also informed by LIBER principles for publisher negotiations, the principles of Plan S, and the objectives of the OA2020 global initiative to accelerate the transition to open access.

Our objective is to put in place agreements that reduce and constrain costs, accelerate open access publishing, support innovation and increase transparency. Our agreements enable our members to comply with and implement research funder policies. UKRI and Wellcome have confirmed that the open access block grants they award to institutions can be used to contribute to the costs of the agreements we negotiate to meet the sector's requirements.

Our negotiations encourage publisher participation in Publications Router for the delivery of publication metadata and full-text articles to repositories, and JUSP to support institutions in their evaluation of agreements.

We seek agreements with all reputable publishers and societies that have received payments for open access publishing services from major UK funders. In this work, we guide smaller publishers (including societies and fully Open Access agreements) in developing offers that support the transition to open access. Read our guidance materials for publishers.

Funder-compliant agreements

Publisher negotiations

Jisc is seeking to engage with all publishers to provide funder compliant publishing options for our members’ researchers. 

Download an "at a glance" summary of these discussions (.xlsx). (The information in this spreadsheet is updated daily. Please consult the ReadMe tab for guidance on the data. If you believe that any information in this document is incorrect or you have any other comments or questions, please contact licensing@jisc.ac.uk)

UKRI

Jisc is playing a key role in implementing the new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) open access policy. This involves identifying UKRI funded articles and the venues in which they are published, evaluating which routes these publishers provide and their compliance with UKRI policy and then working to secure agreements that are both UKRI compliant and meet sector requirements. We are also providing tools for authors and institutions to help them navigate the available open access options and ensure that associated workflows are as efficient and simple as possible.

Find out more about complying with the UKRI open access policy for publishers.

Routes to open access

Transitional

Our transitional agreements convert subscription expenditure to support immediate open access publishing of research output and continued access to read content that remains behind a paywall.

Our requirements for transitional agreements are informed by analysis of previous offsetting agreements and have been endorsed by our strategic groups, SCONUL, RLUK and UK universities. Publishers must meet these requirements for an agreement to be deemed transitional. Our transitional agreements oversight group has been set up to monitor the progress and impact of these agreements.

There are several different models that meet the cOAlition S requirements for transformative agreements and we've prepared a guide to the various models. For agreements that incorporate ‘read’ and ‘publish’ elements, standard rate VAT will be applied to the publish fee only.

We register all agreements that meet our requirements in the ESAC registry and publish contracts here in line with OA2020 transparency requirements. Summary descriptions of all our agreements and current negotiations can be found in licence subscriptions manager. Read our guide on working with transitional agreements, which aims to help institutions understand, manage, communicate and evaluate these agreements.

The knowledge and discoveries resulting from the investment and collective effort of UK academic institutions, researchers, publishers and research funders must be available for maximum benefit and use.

UK academic institutions and sector agencies, working alongside Jisc, have established the following requirements, which set out the measures required to transition to full and immediate open access and enable the move to fair, affordable and financially sustainable models for publishing services.

These objectives are in line with the LIBER principles for publisher negotiations, the principles of Plan S, and the objectives of the OA2020 global initiative to accelerate the transition to open access.

The requirements are:

1. Agreements must reduce costs

Academic publishing is a shared endeavour between publishers, research funders, academic staff, and institutions. The UK punches above its weight both in terms of research quality and the benefits that publishers realise through peer review and editorial services and this must be reflected in publisher proposals.

A global transition to open access requires funders, publishers, and institutions to work in unison to implement agreements that offer the maximum benefit with the minimum burden on public finances, researchers and institutions.

The cost of agreements must reflect the current and future financial circumstances of institutions. Universities are already taking measures to reduce their costs and further increase efficiency through actions including recruitment freezes and tighter spending controls. University and research libraries ask their suppliers to similarly strive for efficiency to provide affordable options that reflect the financial context universities now operate under.

Many, if not all, institutions need to reprioritise investment and are unable to commit to agreements that lock in funds through TAs unless they provide full and immediate access to research and provide budgetary stability.

The agreement must:

  • Provide unlimited open access publishing to all research and review articles for all eligible authors with no caps on article numbers for an affordable and sustainable fee. For clarification, the total fee charged for both access to paywalled content and open access publishing must result in a reduction on existing subscription expenditure
  • Offer fair, affordable, and sustainable fees for access and publishing services
  • Commit to constraining costs for all elements of the agreement, including APCs
    • Fees should not reflect payments made for publishing services "in the wild" by individual researchers
    • The publisher should not charge the author or their institution any further publishing fees, including page charges
  • Recognise that institutions are diverse with differing research profiles. Publishing output can vary dramatically each year
  • Ensure that charges for paywalled content and collections reflect the volume of content made open access – reconciliation of the volume of content made open access should be undertaken each year and reflected in the price paid by all customers
  • Ensure that open access titles remain OA. Public funds and collective efforts have assisted the transformation of titles to OA. OA titles should not revert to paywall access under subscription models

Agreements that include APCs paid by individual researchers or arrangements with illusory or complicated discount mechanisms, such as the application of discount codes, add costs and inefficiencies to the system and must be avoided. Uncapped agreements that convert all output to open access are the most efficient and result in greater author satisfaction.

2. Agreements must be transitional and temporary

Publisher proposals must:

  • Demonstrate a commitment to an open access transition through the conversion of subscription expenditure to support immediate open access publication. Funders’ support for OA is both limited and temporary and publisher agreements must maximise existing subscription expenditure and not require additional commitment such as a requirement to pay to access additional titles
  • Provide a rapid increase in UK authored articles published open access – 100% of UK output as quickly as possible
  • Demonstrate their commitment to a full and global transition to open access. This includes changing their underlying financial accounting and pursuing agreements that convert their portfolio to other institutions, consortia or countries, particularly those with high levels of research output. As stated in ESAC’s guidelines for transformative agreements, “while individual transformative agreements have the potential to convert 100% of a given institution or consortium’s output to open access publishing, it is the sum of many agreements together that will induce the transition at scale.”
  • Show how the agreement breaks the link from legacy pricing models to support the implementation of clear, fair and transparent pricing models more suited to an open access environment
  • Provide permanent full-text access to all content. This is to secure future access and remove the need for publishers and institutions to maintain entitlement records relating to paywalled content

3. Agreements must permit compliance with funder mandates

The agreement must enable institutions and their authors to comply with funder mandates by:

  • Supporting open access via the green route by allowing the "Version of Record" first made publicly available (such as on the publisher's website) or the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to be openly available immediately in repositories in full alignment with funder policies, including the application of the required licence
    • If an article is not eligible under an agreement, authors must be able to make their AAM available with no embargo and under a licence that allows reuse by all, in perpetuity under CC-BY licensing terms
  • Allowing the author or the author's institution to retain their copyright and the rights necessary to make a version of the article immediately available under a compliant open licence
    • This includes not inhibiting the use of the Rights Retention Strategy either by rejecting articles, rerouting articles to other journals or by presenting an author, (including co-authors) with terms that prevent them from making their AAM immediately open access in compliance with their funder policies
  • Implementing workflow processes that assign CC-BY as the first and default option and make clear to the author that the application of the licensing terms is a requirement of their funder
  • Joining Jisc's Publications Router to provide the systematic transfer of metadata and deposit of full-text articles into repositories
  • Depositing articles into PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC by the first publication of the version of record, in accordance with funder policies

4. Agreements must be transparent

It is in the public interest, not only that publicly funded research has the widest possible reach, but that the costs, progress, and details of the transition to open access are openly available.

This allows the sector to benchmark, improve processes, and better understand where investment or divestment is required. The goal is the implementation of fair, transparent, affordable and sustainable pricing for publishing services.

It will be a requirement of an agreement that the publisher enters into open and transparent conversations with the sector and Jisc on the transition of their portfolio, business models and underlying financial accounting. This will be monitored by the transitional agreements oversight group. Publishers should also adhere to at least one of the cOAlition S Price and Service Transparency Frameworks.

In advance of consultations with institutions, publisher proposals must provide article level metadata and provide the following as a minimum:

  • The number of articles published by each UK institution in all the publisher's journals including, on an article basis, the DOI of the article, details of article processing charges and corresponding author information
  • All available information that identifies whether the research was funded by UK research funders and whether the applicable article processing charge was supported by UK research funders

On agreement completion details of the costs, pricing models and the agreement terms (contract) will be made publicly available on the Jisc website. The agreement will be logged in the ESAC registry.

Throughout the agreement, the publisher will be contractually obligated to provide the following data split by institution:

  • Total spend within and outside the agreement
  • The total number of open access articles published in each journal
  • The number and details of all open access articles published in fully open access and subscriptions journals included and outside the agreement by year
  • UK articles as a proportion of the global output
  • Article level data for all articles published by UK corresponding authors including information on funder and licence type
  • Details of which titles have "flipped to open access" that were previously paid for through subscriptions
  • In addition, and to support discussions with the Transitional Agreements Oversight Group, we seek the following:
    • Number of titles expected to flip in the current calendar year
    • Predicted growth in each journal portfolio, and
    • Publishers’ journal portfolio predictions

5. Open access content must be discoverable, and agreements must support improvements in service and workflow for authors and administrators

An effective transition to open access is reliant on developments in technical infrastructure and the adoption of national and international standards which can deliver efficiencies for publishers, authors and institutions, and enhanced discovery and re-use.

The agreement must:

  • Evidence a commitment to improving the processes and workflows associated with managing open access to deliver greater efficiencies and discovery of open access material
  • Include the service and performance levels stipulated in the Jisc model licence, which reflect several of the ESAC recommendations and provide a compensation mechanism should the agreed levels not be met

The publisher shall be responsible for the identification of eligible authors and eligible articles from a given individual and institution as part of the submission and publication process.

The publisher shall build ORCID, Ringgold or other recognised identifiers into submission, production, and peer review workflows and expose author ORCIDs in published articles and AAMs via AI services, Crossref and other discovery services.

The publisher shall identify eligible authors through a combination of the following parameters:

  • Authors stating their affiliation(s) at article submission, including the use of RORs
    IP ranges
  • Email domain(s)

The publisher undertakes to:

  • Register the article's DOI with Crossref upon acceptance, and inform all co-authors
  • Identify funders of institutional research by populating funding metadata, including funding body and grant number, in Funding Data (on Crossref) and on the publisher's site so institutions can report to funders and show compliance levels
  • Include clear licensing terms at article level to ensure institutional readers/users understand what they may do with a given article and that repository staff and related services can act upon the correct article licensing terms. Article level information is required for each version of the article and ideally by populating the LicenseRef metadata on Crossref as well as in a human-readable form

These requirements apply to contracts negotiated in 2022 between institutions, consortia (including Jisc) and publishers for open access journal agreements and are targeted at transitioning hybrid titles to open access. The requirements may be updated in response to developments in higher education (HE), research and changes to funder policies.

For transitional agreements still being negotiated with publishers under existing Jisc agreements, that are not in place by 1 April 2022, or with a start date after 1 April, publishers are asked to provide a green compliant option to apply from the 1st April until the start date of the new agreement. Where a publisher decides not to offer this option, authors may wish to consider alternatives venues or the assertion of the right to self archive with a CC-BY or other permissible licence.

Jisc will evaluate proposed agreements against these requirements and make the results of the evaluation available to the publisher. The evaluation will also make clear if a proposed agreement is compliant with current and prospective UK research funders’ policies. Agreements that meet the requirements and are accepted by the UK sector will be registered in the ESAC transformative agreements registry.

We are undertaking a critical review of open access and transitional agreements. Reporting in early 2024, our review will examine the rate, costs and progress in transitioning research outputs to immediate open access and determine where next for transitional agreements. Find out about our transitional agreement critical review.

Current transitional agreements

Transformative journals (TJs)

Transformative journals are subscription/hybrid journals that commit to transitioning to a fully open access journal. The requirements for transformative journals have been set by UK higher education (HE) and research institutions and endorsed by the UUK Jisc content negotiation strategy group.

Requirements for transformative journals

The requirements are governed by our strategic groups and aim to complement current international initiatives including the Criteria for Transformative Journals drawn up by cOAlition S.

Jisc may amend the requirements in response to UK sector developments or changes in individual funder policies.

The requirements apply to subscription and hybrid journals.

Only a journal that meets both requirements 1 and 2 below will be recognised as a Jisc transformative journal:

  1. Journals must provide one of the following routes to publishing:

1.1 The journal must be included in a Jisc approved Transitional Agreement and make the Version of Record immediately open access via its website in accordance with Route 1 of the UKRI open access policy

1.2. The journal must permit the deposit of the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (or Version of Record) in an institutional or subject repository at the time of final publication in accordance with Route 2 of the UKRI open access policy. The deposited version must be free and unrestricted to view and download and include a CC BY licence, or other licence permitted by UKRI. A publisher-requested delay or "embargo period" between publication of the Version of Record and open access of the deposited version is not permitted.

2. Journals must demonstrate their commitment to a transformation and transparency by meeting Jisc agreed criteria and be listed in a Jisc approved registry. Jisc is currently using the criteria listed in the Addendum to the Implementation Guidance for Plan S.

The requirements apply to paper types specified in the UKRI OA policy submitted for publication from 1 April 2022. Institutions may utilise UKRI funds to support eligible costs for transformative journals.

Checks required if applying under an exception basis

Where a publisher seeks to offer route 1.2 by exception, ie to a subset of authors only, the publisher must communicate the availability of the deposit route in parallel with the option to publish open access via the payment of an article processing charge (APC).

This may be communicated within the post-acceptance workflow visible to authors or via the publisher proactively emailing the author, upon identification that they fall into the eligible subset of authors, to offer the deposit option.

This should be at the point they elect to publish open access.

All applications to become a Jisc approved transformative journal (TJ) by exception shall be presented to the content expert group (CEG) for approval where the group will review the workflow and communications to authors. A workflow that only presents an author the option to pay an APC without a clear instruction on how to publish under the deposit route (1.2) is unlikely to be approved by the strategic groups if the deposit route is not presented in a way that is actionable.

Publishers seeking to apply to become a Jisc approved TJ under an exception, should email licensing@jisc.ac.uk whereby Jisc will be in contact to discuss the process and the information required for review by the CEG.

How the requirements were developed

As with the requirements for transitional agreements, the requirements for transformative journals were developed with UK HE and research institutions through Jisc’s content expert group and agreed by the UUK Jisc content negotiation strategy group. These groups are responsible for reviewing the sector’s requirements for open access agreements and update them annually to reflect changes in research, education and policy.

The key principles the requirements seek to support

In setting the requirements, the strategic groups wanted to ensure that:

  • The requirements for transformative journals work alongside and do not erode the efficacy of transitional agreements
  • The requirements should enable choice of open access route for authors and their institutions
  • The requirements should enable publishers of all sizes and types to participate
  • The requirements should seek to minimise additional bureaucracy by alignment with existing definitions where relevant

The difference between a hybrid journal and a transformative journal

A hybrid journal is a subscription journal that provides an author with the option to publish their article immediately open access via payment of an article processing charge (APC), which ensures the Version of Record (VOR) is published as open access on the journal website. A hybrid journal may fulfil Route 1 requirements in the UKRI policy and therefore be compliant but will not eligible to receive UKRI open access funds unless it is part of a Transitional Agreement or meets the requirements to be a Jisc approved transformative journal.

A transformative journal is a hybrid journal that actively, publicly and transparently commits to transforming away from the hybrid model, to a fully open access model.

In order for a hybrid journal to be deemed a Jisc approved transformative journal it must meet the requirements of the UK higher education and research sector.

Only journals that meet the requirements will be eligible to receive payments from an institution’s UKRI open access funds.

To be clear, a hybrid journal can comply with the UKRI policy, but is only eligible for APC payments from UKRI open access funds if it is either part of a transitional agreement or has met the sector’s requirements and is a Jisc approved transformative journal.

The difference between a transitional agreement and a transformative journal

Transitional agreements (TAs) repurpose existing subscription expenditure to fund open access publishing and read access across a collection of journal titles for an organisation or a consortium. A transformative journal (TJ) is an individual subscription/hybrid journal that is actively committed to transitioning to open access. A TJ must demonstrate how it offsets subscription income. TJs enable UKRI open access funds to be used for journals seeking to transition to OA, where the journal is currently unable to offer a TA or where an institution is unable to participate in a TA.

The Plan S definition of transformative journals

The UK sector requirements for TJs differ from the Plan S definition by requiring hybrid journals to be part of a transitional agreement (TA) or to meet the Route 2 (green) criteria in order to be considered a TJ. Jisc are working to support publishers to put in place open access routes that comply with the UKRI open access policy.

The Journal Checker Tool will be updated to make clear which titles are Jisc approved TJs for UKRI funded authors.

Why is there a requirement for immediate deposit if a journal is not part of a transitional agreement?

UK universities, research organisations and their researchers must be able to prioritise and manage their funds effectively. The requirement for immediate deposit enables this by ensuring that there is choice, either to make the author accepted manuscript (AAM) available (Route 2 in the UKRI policy) or to pay the relevant Article Processing Charge (APC) to the publisher (Route 1). The decision on which route to take will be at the discretion of the researcher and their institution.

Journals in a transitional agreement that qualify as a transformative journal

Only those journals that also apply to become a TJ and meet the sector’s requirements will qualify. Jisc and UKRI are working with the Journal Checker Tool to ensure information on journal publishing options is available by the policy start date.

How to easily tell which journal are covered

We will provide a list of Jisc-approved transformative journals (TJs) before the policy start date and maintain this list until automated tools provide accurate information. The Journal Checker Tool will be updated to make clear that if you are a UKRI funded author, a title is or isn’t a Jisc approved TJ.

How requirements for transformative journals work with other models such as community-based open access models and Subscribe to Open

Journals that are part of other Jisc open access agreement models, such as Subscribe to Open, can register as TJs as long as they fulfil the sector requirements by offering an immediate open access option. They would then be eligible to receive APC payments from UKRI open access funding and UKRI funded authors affiliated with institutions that have not signed up to the open access agreement would be able to publish open access in them and comply with UKRI’s policy.

Fully open access agreements

With established publishers our agreements seek cost savings and workflow efficiencies. Agreements with new publishers allow institutions to support and promote alternative and innovative publication venues and formats.

Current fully open access agreements

Compliant green

We require publishers to provide a Green open access option that complies with funder policies, including CC-BY licensing. Some of our Green open access agreements provide the option to receive direct deposit of articles to institutional repositories via Publications Router. Green compliant open access is referred to as Route 2 in the UKRI’s open access policy.

The three current requirements are:

1. Agreements must reduce costs

Academic publishing is a shared endeavour between publishers, research funders, academic staff, and institutions. The UK punches above its weight both in terms of research quality and the benefits that publishers realise through peer review and editorial services, and this must be reflected in publisher proposals.

A global transition to open access requires funders, publishers, and institutions to work in unison to implement agreements that offer the maximum benefit with the minimum burden, on public finances, to researchers and institutions.

The cost of agreements must reflect the current and future financial circumstances of institutions.

Universities are already taking measures to reduce their costs and further increase efficiency through actions including recruitment freezes and tighter spending controls. University and research libraries ask their suppliers to similarly strive for efficiency to provide affordable options that reflect the financial context universities operate in.

Many, if not all, institutions need to reprioritise investment and are unable to commit to agreements that lock in unless they provide full and immediate access to research and provide budgetary stability.

The agreement must offer:

  • Fair, affordable, and sustainable fees for access and services which enable green compliant open access 
  • Costs should be constrained over the lifetime of the agreement and not require additional commitment such as a requirement to pay to access additional titles

2. Agreements must permit compliance with funder mandates

The agreement must enable institutions and their authors to comply with funder mandates by:

  • Supporting open access via the green route by allowing the "Version of Record" first made publicly available (such as on the publisher's website) or the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to be openly available immediately in repositories in full alignment with funder policies. This includes the application of the required licence, for example, with no embargo and under a licence that allows reuse by all, in perpetuity, under CC-BY licensing terms
  • Allowing the author or the author's institution to retain their copyright and the rights necessary to make a version of the article immediately available under a compliant open licence
    • This includes not inhibiting the use of the Rights Retention Strategy either by rejecting articles, rerouting articles to other journals or by presenting the author (including co-authors) with terms that prevent them from making their AAM immediately open access in compliance with their funder policies
  • Implementing workflow processes that make clear to the author that the application of CC-BY licensing terms to articles deposited in a repository is a requirement of funding
  • Joining Jisc's Publications Router to provide the systematic transfer of metadata and deposit of full-text articles into repositories

3. Content must be discoverable

Content must be discoverable, and agreements must support improvements in service and workflow for authors and administrators.

An effective transition to open access is reliant on developments in technical infrastructure and the adoption of national and international standards which can deliver efficiencies for publishers, authors and institutions, and enhanced discovery and re-use.

The agreement must:

  • Evidence a commitment to improving the processes and workflows associated with managing open access to deliver greater efficiencies and discovery of open access material
  • Include the service and performance levels stipulated in the Jisc model licence, which reflect several of the ESAC recommendations and provide a compensation mechanism should the agreed levels not be met

The publisher is responsible for providing clear guidance on Green open access terms enabling funder compliance either during the submission process or on journal author instruction webpages.

The publisher will build ORCID, Ringgold or other recognised identifiers into submission, production, and peer review workflows and expose author ORCIDs in published articles and AAMs via AI services, Crossref and other discovery services.

The publisher will:

  • Register the article's DOI with Crossref upon acceptance, and inform all co-authors
  • Identify funders of institutional research by populating funding metadata, including funding body and grant number, in Funding Data (on Crossref) and on the publisher's site so institutions can report to funders and show compliance levels

These requirements apply to contracts negotiated in 2022 between institutions, consortia (including Jisc) and publishers for journal agreements including hybrid titles. The requirements may be updated in response to developments in higher education, research and changes to funder policies.

Current compliant Green open access agreements

Subscribe to Open (S2O)

As open access via S2O depends on participation by enough institutions to reach a subscription target, agreements must also include a compliant green option for funded authors.

Current Subscribe to Open agreements

Open access community framework

The Open Access Community Framework (OACF) was launched in 2022 as a new approach to supporting publishers or initiatives operating under the Diamond Open Access (OA) model – open access publishing with no subscription or author facing fee – which is a competitive and sustainable alternative to the Book Processing Charge (BPC) model.

Open Access Community Framework (OACF) 2023

Following on from the success of last year’s pilot scheme, the aim in 2023 was to support new university, library led and community-based monograph publishers. We restricted applications to monographs and books in series to align it with the strategic objectives of sector libraries and the new UKRI Open Access Policy for monographs, which commences in January 2024.

We have selected the following three initiatives for 2023, and institutions can support them for the three year period 2023 to 2025:

All three publishers also participated in the pilot scheme last year and so it is fantastic to see how the OACF is meeting their needs in producing additional content and gaining support from within the sector to further disseminate key humanities research.

We hope that institutions are able to support these three OACF initiatives which will help to consolidate and grow a thriving diverse number of agreements with small university, library led and non-commercial presses as an alternative to the large commercial presses.

Participate in the open access community framework

The deadline for applications to participate OACF 2023 has now passed. We will seek applications from publishers/initiatives for OACF2024 in Quarter 1 2024.

Publishers wishing to participate in the Open Access Community Framework (OACF) should  follow instructions in the submission form (.docx).

OACF agreements awarded in 2022

Other community-based agreements

Our agreements based on a collective action/supporter membership model enable institutions to support the running costs of disciplinary tools and invest in new open access publishers and initiatives for the benefit of the whole scholarly community.

Current community-based agreements

Monitoring open access

We collect data to monitor the effectiveness and administrative implications of open access agreements and use this evidence to inform our negotiation objectives.

Each year we invite UK universities to submit their article processing charge data using the standard UKRI and Wellcome open access reporting template (.xlsx). This data provides hard evidence of the state of the UK's article processing charge market.