Open access in the UK vs. internationally
The summer is gone, the population of golfers in St Andrews is giving way to the return of staff and students. Almost half of the student body at the University of St Andrews is comprised of international students, and similarly, a large portion of staff—both support and academic—have come from far and wide to work here.
That includes me! I am from western Canada, and when I arrived here, I had to quickly get up to speed on open access in the UK, learning as many of the ins-and-outs of not only St Andrews own institutional open access policy, but also the open access policies of important funding bodies and organisations like UKRI, REF, and more.
The UK is big leader in the open access space—according to data collected from Scopus, almost 80% of academic articles were made open access in the UK in 2023, either through the publisher or in repositories.
At the University of St Andrews, our institutional open access policy, which applies to all current staff, requires staff to deposit upon acceptance the accepted manuscript of any scholarly article published in a journal or conference proceeding, creating a record with the file and date of acceptance in Pure. The manuscript is then made available upon publication with zero embargo and a CC BY licence. This is supported by our rights retention strategy, though sometimes isn’t possible depending on the publisher.
Our policies are in keeping with the rest of the UK HEI sector and other organisations, including UKRI and REF, but if you are coming from a university abroad, then you may be used to something different. Back in 2015, we published a series of posts on international open access activity, but a decade later, an update seems warranted.
Here, we’ll explore what a small selection of other countries do.
United States
In 2023, the United States published over 420,000 articles; however, just short of half of these were published open access, either through the gold or green route, or additionally through the bronze route, in which licensing is unspecified but the output is still freely available.
This will likely change though, given recent national policy changes. In 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced that by end of 2025, any research funded by federal agencies must be freely and immediately available to the public, with zero embargo. This is an update from the 2008 policy, which allowed a 12-month embargo.
Many agencies have made their policies public and implemented them earlier though, so it is a good reminder to check the fine print if you are funded by US bodies.
China
In 2023, researchers in China published a whopping 920,000+ articles. 36% of these were made open access through various means. Open access has been a priority in China, with two large Chinese organisations requiring green open access in 2014. This was then followed by an announcement made in 2018 that saw librarians and Chinese funding agencies supporting Plan S, an initiative that saw many universities and organisations pledging to make their research publicly and freely available by 2020.
While this support was monumental, it has not translated into explicit policies yet, though many expect this to be on the horizon.
Germany
The University of St Andrews has a long-standing connection with the University of Bonn, with much cross-collaboration between the institutions by students and staff alike.
Similarly, Germany has a robust open access culture, with over 65% of their research outputs in 2023 being made open access through various routes. DFG, the German Research Foundation, can provide funds to subsidise open access costs, though while they expect projects to publish in open access journals or be made available via open access repositories, this is not a requirement so much as a request.
Worldwide developments
This is only a small picture of the open access policies, mandates, and movements occurring around the world. Across the globe, researchers are increasingly publishing gold open access—that is, freely available on the publisher website—which is exciting, though there are sometimes considerable costs involved.
In the shuffle of publishing and agreements, it can sometimes be forgotten that green open access—in which authors self-archive their accepted manuscript in an institutional repository or research system like Pure—is also compliant with most funders and is also usually completely free.
Whether gold or green or diamond, though, open access is on the rise, with 48% of research outputs in 2023 published open access in some way.
If you are publishing your research, please take a look at the University’s open access policy, and take a look at our website for more information.
If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected].