5 ways we’re helping grant-funded researchers to choose open
A growing number of grant funders are updating their instructions to researchers on how the outputs of funded projects should be published. What was once an encouragement to make journal articles open access (OA) is increasingly becoming a requirement.
At Taylor & Francis we’re already committed to working collaboratively and creatively with funders, institutions, researchers and policymakers to drive a sustainable shift towards open research.
However, the increasing complexity of different requirements is creating additional challenges for researchers. Many are not aware of the new instructions or are uncertain which publishing options will respect the policies of both their funder and their chosen journal.
In this post we outline some of the ways Taylor & Francis is helping researchers to understand and comply with their funders’ policies.
Understanding new funder policies
Funders aligned to Coalition S have been implementing their interpretations of Plan S over the last couple of years. The most recent Plan S inspired OA policy applies to new article submissions that acknowledge UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) funding.
These new funder policies typically:
Require a version of the article to be made immediately OA on publication.
Prefer researchers to publish OA in full open access journals or platforms, which have no pay-to-read content. Exceptions are usually made for hybrid journals that are part of a transformative agreement (see below).
Supporting grant-funded researchers by …
1. Expanding our author guidance
Our Author Services website, visited by millions of researchers each year, has a section dedicated to funder open access policies. This introduces the important principles researchers need to be aware of and outlines the publishing policies of the major funders.
There’s a new pop-up notification on Taylor & Francis Online which appears when researchers click to go through to a journal’s submission site. This asks them to check their funding agreement before submitting, to make sure that it’s compatible with the journal’s publishing policy.
Authors submitting via our Submission Portal are now asked to acknowledge that Taylor & Francis’ publishing terms will apply and are directed to guidance on Author Services about sharing their article.
3. Growing our range of transformative agreements
Taylor & Francis has an increasing number of transformative agreements with institutions and consortia around the world. Sometimes called ‘read & publish’ agreements, they allocate an increasing proportion of library spend to support open access publishing services, while enabling users to continue reading subscription content.
Some funders will only allow grant money to be used for publication in hybrid journals (publishing both OA and pay-to-read articles) if the journal is in a transformative agreement. These partnerships therefore give funded authors at participating institutions a much wider choice of journals to submit to.
2. Introducing new processes
We’re bringing in new checks to identify submissions that acknowledge funding which might impact authors’ publishing options.
Where a funder’s policy may not be compatible with the journal, we’ll contact the authors to alert them to the potential conflict and work with them to find a solution that prioritizes continuing the submission with their chosen journal. We will let you know before introducing this process to your journal.
It won’t always be possible to identify impacted articles at submission, especially because researchers sometimes don’t declare all their funding at this stage. So, we will also be providing similar support to researchers at the later stages before publication.
4. Providing data sharing advice
Funders are also increasingly encouraging researchers to share their research data. For example, the new UKRI policy states that research articles must “include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible”.
Our suite of data-sharing policies, now adopted by over 2,000 journals, is supported by extensive guidance for authors on topics such as data sharing myths, data sharing ethics, choosing a data repository, and writing a data availability statement.
Find out more about how Taylor & Francis is supporting data sharing.
5. Launching new full OA journals and platforms
For those researchers who are unable or do not wish to submit to hybrid journals, we have an expanding range of full OA venues:
There are now hundreds of full OA Taylor & Francis journals, covering every discipline, including the extensive portfolio of Dove Medical Press.
We are also committed to converting hybrid journals to full OA, when that becomes a sustainable option for a journal and is supported by its community. 26 Taylor & Francis Science, Technology and Medical journals are fully OA for the first time in 2022.
In addition to F1000Research, F1000 partners with major research funders worldwide, including Wellcome, the European Commission, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to establish new open research platforms.
With the launch of Routledge Open Research we also have a full OA platform dedicated to serving Arts, Humanities, and Social Science researchers.
Immediate green OA (Rights Retention Strategy)
Most Coalition S funders have adopted the Plan S ‘Rights Retention Strategy’ (RRS). This asks authors to include a statement in their journal submission claiming a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) over any Accepted Manuscript (AM) that results from the journal’s peer review and editorial processes. This aims to allow authors to immediately deposit the AM in a repository under the most permissive license.
This policy is not compatible with the article sharing policies for subscription-based works in most Taylor & Francis journals. These journals have an embargo period of either 12 or 18 months before the AM can be shared in a repository as an openly available deposit. We are retaining these embargos and therefore cannot support the RRS in our subscription-based content as this undermines progress towards a fully open future.
For open access content, posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository with the author’s consent is permitted.
If you would like to discuss any of the initiatives introduced on this page, please get in touch with your Taylor & Francis contact.
Choose open access
Our comprehensive Author Services guide to publishing OA includes:
What is OA?
Why should I publish OA?
How do I publish OA?
What are my funding options?