We welcome UKRI’s recently announced new Open Access policy. It is clear that UKRI has listened to a wide range of stakeholders and tried hard to balance their many varied, and often contrasting, needs. As a result, the UK is now poised to complete the transformation to fully Open Access research. The policy does bring some challenges, but for us it is workable and we will work closely with the research and education sector in the UK to put it into practice.

For journals, we particularly welcome the commitment to funding Gold OA through Transformative Agreements. We are fortunate to already have in place an agreement with Jisc that will enable authors at most UKRI-funded research institutes to publish research articles as Gold Open Access. We are disappointed that UKRI has not, at least yet, shown support for Plan S’s Transformative Journals model, which provides an essential route to compliance for authors not based at institutions covered by Transformative Agreements.

UKRI’s new policy for books is more complicated for us. Monographs play crucial roles for researchers, and we do not yet have proven ways to sustainably publish OA monographs at scale. There are aspects of the new policy we welcome, particularly our ability to use Creative Commons licenses that protect a mixed model with OA digital copies and paid-for print copies. We cannot be certain that a 12-month embargo for local archiving of accepted manuscripts will be sustainable. We appreciate that UKRI has delayed implementation until 2024 and we will use this time to continue to build on our recently announced OA monograph pilot, Flip It Open, to develop a compliant Gold OA route for publication. Flip It Open will see selected books published and sold as normal, primarily through library collections for universities, before becoming Open Access once they meet a set amount of revenue. When necessary, however, we will allow authors to comply with UKRI policy through the local archiving route, and we will monitor the effect of this on the sustainability of publishing these books.

We publish a large number URKI funded authors each year, and UKRI’s new policy will have a significant, positive impact on our already extensive programme to transition to open research. We publish over 50 fully Gold OA journal titles, with more than 230 Transformative Journals registered with cOAlition S. We have signed more than 100 transformative agreements globally, covering authors at over 1000 institutions. Our open research platform, Cambridge Open Engage, provides researchers with a new and free way to share early and open research, connect and collaborate with their communities, and disseminate research, fast. In June it began hosting ChemRxiv, adding nearly 10,000 preprints in Chemistry and allied fields.

The full benefits of open research will only be realized when the transformation is global. We encourage other organizations around the world to follow UKRI in providing sustainable funding for open access publishing.