Subject Guides: Open Access Publishing: a Practical Guide: Understanding Open Access Policies

Understanding Open Access Policies

Whilst the University encourages its researchers to publish open access both for their own personal benefit and for the public good, it is useful for authors to be aware of the open access policy framework in the UK and Europe that may place requirements on how they publish.

The largest funding bodies in the UK and Europe (UKRI, Wellcome, Horizon) all have open access policies for their funded research. In the UK, there are similar open access requirements governing submissions to the Research Excellence Framework. These have been designed to mirror funder policies. If you are publishing in compliance with UKRI policy, for example, then you will already be meeting REF requirements.

The University's institutional open access policy is designed to make it easier for York authors to publish in compliance with their funder mandates.

Helping York researchers achieve open access
Read about the updated approach to open access taken by the University in its Research Publications Policy.

Open Access Policies and how to meet your requirements

	What does the policy apply to?	What are the open access requirements?	What are the licensing requirements?	How can I meet the requirements?
REF 2029	Any research article or conference proceeding intended for submission to REF 2029.	If published prior to 1st January 2026: If published on or after 1st January 2026:
UKRI	Any research article or conference proceeding reporting UKRI funding submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022.	1. Article must be made openly available on publication. 2. Article can be openly available either via a journal's platform (the Gold route) or via deposit into a repository (the Green route).	Article must be made available under a CC-BY licence (or Open Government Licence where appropriate). More restrictive CC-BY-ND licence will be permitted in certain cases through application to UKRI.	To meet these requirements either: a) deposit the author accepted manuscript of your article into Pure. The Library will make the paper openly available on publication. or; b) Publish in a fully open access journal and ask UKRI to pay the publishing charge. Apply via the York Open Access Fund request form.