You are free to publish in any journal you choose, providing UKRI's open access requirements are met. This includes:

• publish in a full open access (OA) journal [listed in DOAJ] - funds are available to pay, contact Open Research at submission to apply for funds
• publish open access in a journal included in a Transformative Agreement that the University signed up to, when you are corresponding author, OA publication has already been paid for
• publish not-OA in a subscription or hybrid journal (no publishing fees will be paid) and make your accepted manuscript OA with CC BY licence immediately upon publication, in a repository ('repository route')

Always include UKRI's set text in article submissions - in the manuscript acknowledgements section and in any covering letter: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising'. (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead) 

Check compliance before submitting using Journal Checker Tool. If your chosen journal does not offer a compliant publishing option, contact the publisher to explain your funder requirements and ask if they can offer a compliant publishing option. If the publisher is unable to offer a compliant publishing option, contact the Open Research team for advice or consider submitting elsewhere.

Check compliance of journals with new UKRI open access policy using Journal Checker Tool. This will show you if it's:

• a full open access journal with CC BY licence, eligible for central UKRI funds
• a journal included in a Transformative Agreement that the University signed up to - when you are corresponding author, you can publish open access at no extra cost, as it has already been paid for
• a journal that offers a compliant self-archiving option
• a hybrid journal that offers OA with CC BY but is not in a transforamtive arrangement - in this case it's not eligible for UKRI funds

We recommend submitting to journals that are compliant with UKRI OA policy via the first three routes above. If you wish to submit to a hybrid journal that's not in any transformative arrangement, we cannot pay the APC using UKRI funds. Make sure you include UKRI's set text (see FAQ above) in your submission and in the first instance, seek a compliant self-archiving option from the publisher. If they do not agree, contact us to discuss your options.

UKRI open access block grant (OABG) is administered by the Open Research team. This can be used to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) in full OA journals. If you are publishing in a journal that's included in a Transformative Agreement, you can publish open access without APCs, as it has already been paid for.

UKRI no longer pay APCs for hybrid journals without any transformative arrangement; UKRI no longer paper other publication charges, such as page or colour charges.

To pay an APC from UKRI OABG, lead or corresponding author must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria. Contact us to discuss when this does not apply, we can consider paying APCs in full OA journals when the lead / corresponding author is not affiliated if the fee must be paid to publish and no OA funds are available from lead / corresponding author institution.

If a journal is not full open access and not in any transformative arrangement, we cannot pay the open access publishing fee (or other publication charges) using UKRI funds. You will need to select the subscription (not open access) publishing option and comply by uploading the accepted manuscript via Symplectic for immediate open access in ORE with a CC BY licence.

Ensure you include UKRI's set text in your submission: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising' (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead). Check the publishing contract before signing to ensure there is no conflict with new UKRI open access policy. You may wish to contact the publisher before submission to advise of your funder obligations.

If the research being published was funded by UKRI and your output is within scope of the policy, it must be made open access in line with UKRI's requirements. If you hold UKRI funding but you are not the corresponding author, you will need to discuss your funder obligations with your co authors and the corresponding author, to ensure the output is published compliantly - it's a good idea to do this before submission, so you can be certain the journal you are submitting to offers a compliant publishing option.

To access Exeter's central open access funds e.g. to publish in a full open access journal, lead or corresponding author must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria. If the lead / corresponding author are affiliated with another institution, please approach that institution to apply for open access funding.

To publish open access through Transformative Agreements, corresponding author must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria. If the corresponding author is affiliated with another institution, you may be able to publish open access through that institution's publishing agreement. If the corresponding author is not affiliated with an institution that has a Transformative Agreement in place, you cannot publish open access at no cost and it's unlikely we will be able to pay the open access publishing fee. In this case, you will need to rely upon the 'repository route' to open access - uploading the accepted manuscript to ORE for immediate CC BY open access there. Ensure you include UKRI's set text upon submission ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead) to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising'. Check the publishing contract before signing (or liaise with the corresponding author who will be signing on your behalf) to ensure there is no conflict with UKRI open access policy.

Ensure you include UKRI's set text in all article submissions: 'For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising' (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead)

If a publisher rejects your submission based on the inclusion of UKRI's set text and the journal does not offer a compliant open access publishing option, consider publishing elsewhere.

If a publisher has accepted your submission with the statement included, they should allow you to make your author's accepted manuscript open access in a repository under a CC BY licence to comply via Route 2 of UKRI’s policy. If the publisher subsequently refuses to permit this, contact the Open Research team.

In-scope publications that are required to acknowledge UKRI funding must comply with the policy, even if they are only partly UKRI funded or if they are published with co-authors who are not UKRI funded. As a UKRI funded researcher, you will need to be clear on funder requirements that you are subject to when agreeing collaborations, ensure that UKRI funding is acknowledged on the paper including UKRI's set text (see FAQ above) and published in compliance with UKRI policy with a compliant licence.

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. Apply for an exception using this form, then submit the form by email to UKRI at openaccess@funding.ukri.org. Allow ten working days for a response from UKRI. Please include openaccess@exeter.ac.uk in 'cc' to the exception request email, or as an additional email contact on the ND exception request form. This helps the Open Reseach team when monitoring compliance to keep track of ND exceptions that have been granted by UKRI. If we come across your published article with CC BY-ND licence and we are not aware of an exception having been granted, we may get in touch to check that the appropriate process was followed before selecting the No-derivatives licence.

UKRI open access policy allows CC BY-ND licence for open access monongraphs, without any exception needed.

The new UKRI open access policy applies to peer-reviewed journal articles including reviews and conference papers accepted to a journal, conference proceedings (with an ISSN) or publishing platform that are submitted for publication on or after 1st April 2022. This refers to the date of first submission to the publisher.

The new UKRI open access policy does not require open access publication of monographs, chapters or edited collections published by 31st December 2023. Open access publication of these output types is only required if they are published from 1st January 2024 onwards, in which case they must be open access within 12 months of publication.

UKRI are making funding available to support open access publication of monographs, this will be via a centralised fund that will be applied for. This fund will be available from 1st January 2024. In the meantime, we cannot pay publishing fees for UKRI funded long-form outputs from the UKRI open access block grant but these can continue to be included in UKRI grant applications and they continue to be eligible costs against UKRI grants.

An exception to the UKRI open access requirements for monographs is available when a contract has been signed between the author and the publisher before 1st January 2024 that prevents adherence to the policy.

This FAQ relates to: Nature, Nature Research and Palgrave hybrid journals.

Springer Nature has guaranteed a compliant route to publication for UKRI-funded corresponding authors submitting to these titles from 1st April until 31st December 2022. Ensure you identify UKRI funding on the publisher forms during submission and include UKRI’s set text in your submission in the acknowledgements section and in any covering letter: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a ‘Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising’ (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licencemay be stated instead)’ 

Upon editorial acceptance, request a “UKRI exceptional publishing agreement". This allows you to publish on a subscription (not open access) basis then deosit the accepted manuscript via Symplectic to ORE for immediate release under a CC BY licence.

Open Research Exeter (ORE) is the University of Exeter’s institutional repository for storing, preserving and providing access to the research outputs of the institution. ORE is integrated with Symplectic, the University's Current Research Information System (CRIS).

All research publications produced by University of Exeter researchers should be made available in ORE, providing a showcase for the University's research activity.

An embargo is a period of time following publication before an output can be made available as open access in a repository such as ORE. Many publishers allow you to upload your accepted manuscript to a repository, but they may require than an embargo is applied. Upload upon acceptance, Open Research will apply the embargo as part of the process of checking your upload before approving to ORE. The embargo will run from the date of publication and lift automatically once the embargo period has passed.

An embargo often applies to the accepted manuscript. Always upload upon acceptance.

If your article has not yet been published, we will apply a temporary indefinite embargo, then revisit it upon publication to add metadata including DOI and a link to the publisher version. We will also set the publisher embargo, which runs from the date of publication and will lift automatically once the period has passed.

Check individual journal policies using SHERPA/RoMEO. If the journal embargo period for the accepted manuscript exceeds the maximum allowed by your funder, you may need to pay for open access.

Please upload all of your University of Exeter research outputs via Symplectic to ORE.

All outputs should be uploaded via Symplectic to ORE. If you are publishing open access with a Creative Commons licence, you may wait and upload the final published PDF, as soon as possible after publication.

Most funders, including Horizon Europe, NIHR, UKRI and the Wellcome Trust will no longer pay other publication costs such as page charges, colour, figure or excess length charge. We recommend seeking a publishing option that does not incur these types of costs, or requesting a waiver from the publisher.

To publish open access in journals included in publisher Transformative Agreements, corresponding author must must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria.

In order for us to pay an open access publishing fee using our central open access funds, lead / corresponding author must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria.

If the lead / corresponding author is not affiliated with University of Exeter, please apply to the current institution / organisation of the lead / corresponding author for open access funding. If the lead / corresponding author has no open access funding and the open access fee is mandatory to publish e.g. in a fully open access journal, you are welcome to contact us to discuss whether the fee can be paid using the University of Exeter's open access funds, we will consider such requests on a case by case basis.

If you received an invitation to publish, we suggest using Think, Check Submit to ascertain whether this is a journal that you wish to publish in, especially if the publisher is charging a fee to publish your work.

If the publisher is inviting / commissioning you to write a specific piece, we recommend agreeing with the publisher that it will be published open access at no extra cost, as part of agreeing to do this.

Your funder might pay your open access fee, providing the publication is within the scope of their open access policy. Invited / commissioned reviews are excluded from institutional open access funds.