24 March 2022
The NIHR has published a suite of guidance and resources to support stakeholders in the implementation of the revised NIHR open access publication policy, which applies to publications submitted from 1 June 2022.
Following the announcement of the revised open access publication policy last year, the NIHR worked with stakeholders to develop these new published resources, which include policy and funding guidance.
Policy guidance and resources
We heard from researchers and their organisations that open access can be technically complex, and they needed further support and guidance to better understand what the NIHR policy required of them.
To address researchers concerns about complexities, NIHR developed a step by step policy guidance and a short checklist as a quick summary of how to comply with the policy. This guidance will be a living document with an FAQ section which will be updated from time to time based on experience of supporting authors and their organisations.
NIHR are also working with Jisc to add the revised NIHR open access publication policy to Sherpa FACT, a journal compliance tool. Authors will be able to check which publishing routes different journals offer to comply with the NIHR open access publication policy, rather than needing to check individual journal websites. This will be available to use before the implementation of the revised policy on 1 June 2022.
Funding guidance
NIHR has reviewed its funding processes to support the revised open access publication policy, aiming to ensure equitable access to funds for all NIHR-funded researchers, irrespective of employer, career stage or study discipline. The new process will remove the need for researchers to predict open access costs upfront, and will instead allocate a funding envelope that can be drawn from during and after the award. The new process will apply to all eligible research award contracts issued across NIHR Programmes, NIHR Personal Awards and NIHR Global Health Research Portfolio from 1 June 2022.
For NIHR Infrastructure awards that lie in scope of the open access policy, open access costs will continue to be budgeted and earmarked by applicants at application stage.
Where relevant and appropriate, there will also be a formal process available to all current and future NIHR awards to request additional open access funding, which will be managed by the NIHR on a case by case basis.
This new funding envelope allocation process will increase standardisation and transparency of NIHR open access funding and will see NIHR committing over £5M per year to support implementation of the revised NIHR open access publication policy.
Read the Open Access Funding guidance for more information.