RCUK OA Policy:
Insights from 
independent review 
of implementation
 ARMA / FOSTER, March 2015
Ben Ryan Mark Thorley
EPSRC / RCUK NERC / RCUK
ben.ryan@epsrc.ac.uk mark.thorley@nerc.ac.uk
@MarkRThorley
Research Councils UK
£3B
Why ‘open’ ?
• Public good agenda.
• Support for innovation and growth:
– remove barriers to access;
– get the stuff out there and get it used.
• Research transparency and integrity.
• Expectations of a digital age.
• Data intensive science.
The challenges of research in a 
digital age
Life was so much 
simpler in the 
‘good old days’
Laurentius de Voltolina - Liber ethicorum des Henricus de Alemannia
See: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg
The digital & networked world is a 
real game changer
• Expectations and opportunities have changed.
• We are in a world where:
– The expectation is ‘I want it now and I want it for 
free’;
– Anybody can ‘publish’ anything on the web;
– People expect to develop services based on other 
people’s material;
– Experts have to earn trust.
• Funders are responding to these drivers.
RCUK Policy in a nut-shell
• Authors must publish in RCUK Open Access 
compliant journals.
• Journal achieves compliance through:
– Gold CC-BY, else 
– Green, 6(12) months embargo, author accepted 
manuscript, CC-BY-NC or equivalent.
• RCUK preference is for Gold, though choice is 
with authors and their institutions.
• Five year transition to 75% Gold.
• Longer 12(24) month embargo in transition.
Compliance and block grant
Future funding depends on OA review and CSR
Initial year-5 target 100% compliance
75% Gold to 25% Green.
Year-1 Year-2 Year-3
% compliance 45% (√) 53% (?) 60% (?)
APC fund £17M £20M £23M
Potential gold 10k 12k 14k
Flexibility on how OA funding spent
• RCUK provide flexibility on how block-grant spent:
– Expectation that primarily for payment of APCs;
– Has also been spent on repository development, 
staff for advocacy and training etc;
– Up to institutions to decide, provided can justify 
that the spend helps deliver the requirements of 
RCUK OA policy;
– Innovative activity encouraged eg flip-deals, 
support of HEI press etc - provided institution can 
justify this delivers policy requirements.
How much OA?
• Expectation for year-1 of 45%
(mix of green and gold).
• Many institutions ‘seem’ to have achieved this
(though data are sparse / estimated).
• Will be reviewing year-2 data closely to see if 53% 
target met and if OA funds are being spent 
effectively.
• Year-2:
– Reporting period: August 2014 to July 2015;
– Report by September 2015.
2014 Independent Review
• Report to be published week beginning 23 March.
• RCUK will formally respond to recommendations.
• Key issues from the evidence provided to RCUK:
– The administrative cost of implementing OA;
– Confusion and miscommunication over many 
aspects of policy and its implementation;
– Many institutions don’t have data on publications 
they produce.
The administrative cost of 
implementing OA
• Effort to gather necessary compliance data.
• Some organisations had to re-construct outputs 
data.
• Time spent providing advice and guidance.
• Time spent dealing with publishers.
Can dispute the
exact figures.
However, need to
reduce the costs.
Confusion and miscommunication 
What 
exactly is 
the RCUK 
OA policy?
Is this 
journal 
compliant?
Why is RCUK 
different from the 
REF policy?
How can the 
block grant be 
used?
What 
monitoring 
data are 
required?
Need to reduce the admin burden
• More efficient payment of APCs.
• Easier ways to measure compliance.
• Better ways of reporting block grant spend.
• Support for:
– JISC Monitor;
– RIOXX;
– CASRAI OA reporting workgroup.
Looking ahead
• Great majority of journals are compliant with 
RCUK OA policy:
– Misplaced concern with non-compliance.
Monitoring is at institutional level, not article level, 
so it’s not individual decisions but their cumulative 
effect that matters;
– More focus on repository deposit.
• Consistent and significant underspend of block 
grant and/or other indications of systemic 
‘non-compliance’ could be cause for serious 
concern… 
Open data
AND
the next
big challenge
for research
institutions
QUESTIONS ?