NIHR Publishes Guidance to Support the Implementation of New Open Access Policy

The NIHR have worked alongside stakeholders to develop a suite of guidance and resources to help authors comply with the updated policy.

The revised open access policy applies to publications submitted from 1st June 2022. It focusses on the NIHR’s expectations in relation to publishing academic, peer-reviewed journal articles and covers the following four main principles principles set out by the NIHR:  

  1. Articles must be immediately, freely, and openly accessible to all.
  2. There should be no barriers to the re-use and dissemination of NIHR funded articles
  3. Articles must be freely discoverable
  4. NIHR will pay reasonable fees to enable immediate open access

To support stakeholders with the new policy, the NIHR have provided resources including step by step policy guidance and a short checklist. This support was set up with direction from authors and researchers based on what they highlighted as needing the most support with.

Alongside developing the new policy, the NIHR have also reviewed its funding process which aims to ensure equitable access to funds for all NIHR-funded researchers, irrespective of employer, career stage or study discipline. The process will apply to all eligible research award contracts issued across NIHR Programmes, NIHR Personal Awards and NIHR Global Health Research Portfolio from 1 June 2022.