1. M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries Directors
David Sweeney Executive Chair, Research England
20 September 2019

2. UK Research and Innovation
More that £6.5 billion per year
3900 research and business grants each year
151 universities funded
38 research and innovation performing organisations

3. UKRI vision
UK Research and Innovation intends to be an outstanding organisation that ensures the UK maintains its world-leading position in research and innovation
We will do this by creating a system that maximises the contribution of each of the component organisations and which creates the best environment for research and innovation to flourish
We will preserve the strengths which have made today’s system successful, in particular around the Haldane Principle, dual support and recognition for the particular strengths and roles of each partner body

4. Open science in research culture
Incentives
Pressure on staff
Reproducibility

5. Open Science Open data Different forms of peer review
Intellectual property

6. Open everywhere
Research is a process of investigation leading to new insights, effectively shared

7. Open for accountability
By Maurice from Zoetermeer, Netherlands (The British Parliament and Big Ben) CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

8. Open for innovation
Minimising the barriers to:
Ideas
Data
Tools

9. Knowledge Exchange Policy
KEF – two pillars
Knowledge Exchange Policy
Concordat
Good practice portal
Commitment to improve processes
KEF Metrics
Performance measurement & improvement
Public accountability/ user visibility

10. KEF Purpose(s)
More accessible information and data for institutions to understand and improve their own performance.
More information for businesses and other users of university knowledge and resources
Increased public visibility and accountability for £250m of funding

12. Open for researchers

13. Policy instruments – UK Research and Innovation

14. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) and open research
To be eligible for assessment journal articles and conference proceedings must be deposited and available OA with maximum embargo periods of 12 or 24 months
Environment template will require information on:
OA beyond minimum requirements
Approach to open research data
Other aspects of open research
Overall quality
Outputs
Outputs required
Impact
Impact case studies
Environment
Environment data and template
60%
25%
15%

15. REF2021 timeline
January 2019
Publication of final ‘Guidance on submissions’, ’Panel criteria’, and ‘Guidance on codes of practice’; appointment of additional EDAP members 
Spring/summer 2019
Institutions intending to make submissions to the REF submit their codes of practice; invitation to request multiple submissions, case studies requiring security clearance, and exceptions to submission for small units (staggered deadlines in May, September and December 2019); beta versions of the submission system will be available in both test and live environments for institutions to use
Autumn 2019
Pilot of the REF submission system; survey of submissions intentions opens; proposed date for inviting reduction requests for staff circumstances

16. REF2021 timeline
December 2019
Survey of submissions intentions complete; final deadline for requests for multiple submissions, case studies requiring security clearance, and exceptions to submission for small units; publication of approved codes of practice
Early 2020
Formal release of the submission systems and accompanying technical guidance; invitation to HEIs to make submissions; invitation to nominate panel members and assessors for the assessment phase; deadline for staff circumstances requests
Mid 2020
Appointment of additional members and assessors to panels
31 July 2020
Census date for staff; end of assessment period (for research impacts, the research environment, and data about research income and research doctoral degrees awarded)

17. REF2021 timeline 27 November 2020 Closing date for submissions
31 December 2020
End of publication period (cut-off point for publication of research outputs, and for outputs underpinning impact case studies)
29 January 2021
Deadline for providing further details for outputs pending publication; redacted versions of impact case studies; and corroborating evidence held for impact case studies
Throughout 2021
Panels assess submissions
December 2021
Publication of outcomes
Spring 2022
Publication of submissions, panel overview reports and sub-profiles

18. REF2021 OA policy REF OA policy is not there to catch institutions out
REF aims to assess excellent research
Exceptions to the policy, policy flexibility (1 April 2016 – 1 April 2018)
Policy presentation
Increased open access to research is resulting from considerable effort on the part of researchers, libraries, research offices

19. National progress towards open access
UUK (2017) Monitoring the transition to open access.

20. Issues to Address:UK policy environment
Changing researcher and university behavior
Leading to significant progress on OA
Resulting in increasing costs
Stimulating move to hybrid journals rather than fully OA
Limited evidence on open data
Need to consider promotion and recruitment criteria

21. Plan S: Making full and immediate Open Access a reality
M25 Libraries
David Sweeney
Sldes last updated: 3rd Sept 2019

22. Agenda Plan S and summary of changes to the Implementation Plan
Working with key stakeholders
Other activities
Questions

23. Plan S : Built on strong principles
No publication should be locked behind a paywall
OA must be immediate, i.e. no embargo periods
No copyright transfer; publication under a CC BY license by default
Transparency about pricing and contracts
Funders commit to support publication fees at a reasonable level
Multiple routes to OA compliance
Commitment to assess research outputs based on their intrinsic merit and NOT venue of publication

24. Implementation guidance – key changes (1)
Timeline extended by one year:
Calls published as of 1 January 2021 onwards
Transformative arrangements will be supported until end of 2024
Greater clarity on compliance routes:
cOAlition S supports a diversity of business models
Plan S is NOT just about Gold OA
Options for range of transformative arrangements are supported
Transformative agreements and transformative journals)

25. Implementation guidance – key changes (2)
Funders commit to implement DORA principles when undertaking research assessment
Greater emphasis on the transparency of OA publication fees
Option to request a CC-BY-ND licence as an exception
Technical requirements for journals, platforms and repositories revised and simplified

26. cOAlition S: alignment of Open Access policies

27. OA Champion of cOAlition S appointed
Johan Rooryck appointed as OA Champion of cOAlition S
Will represent cOAlition S in discussions with key stakeholders, globally
Over the next 3 months speaking at many meetings including: ALPSP, OASPA, AmeliCA, OA2020, and United Nations
Will help promote and develop Plan S and advise cOAlition S on the ways to implement the transition to full and immediate Open Access as smoothly as possible

28. Working with key stakeholders: researchers
Working with researcher groups to ensure we understand their concerns and find ways of mitigating them
Seeking to work with Global Young Academy (and others) on developing indicators to measure impact of Plan S on ECR’s. A Task Force has been established to progress this.
Ambassador network established – to engage with research community and share concerns with cOAlition S leadership team

29. Working with key stakeholders: publishers
In active discussions with publishers – such as the Society Publishers’ Coalition, Springer Nature and others – to explore the “transformative journal” model

30. Working with key stakeholders: learned societies
Wellcome and UKRI, in partnership with ALPSP have funded a study to explore alternative business model for learned society publishers
Key deliverable will be the development of a model Transformative Agreement and implementation framework
Expectation is that a number of Societies will this Agreement to offer TA’s as early as 2020

31. Working with key stakeholders: other OA initiatives
Plan S is acting as a spur to encourage a transition to OA – as witnessed by the upsurge in transformative agreements

32. Other activities – Transparent Pricing
Plan S Guidance specifies:
“cOAlition S, in partnership with publisher representatives and other stakeholders, will define the various services (e.g., triaging, peer review, editorial work, copy editing) publishers will be asked to price.”
Wellcome - in partnership with UKRI and on behalf of cOAlition S - have appointed Information Power to lead a collaborative project to develop a framework for these communications
cOAlition S aims to help make the nature and prices of OA publishing services more transparent, and to enable conversations and comparisons that will build confidence amongst customers that prices are fair and reasonable
The project will not explore costs, nor current or future pricing.

33. Other activities – cOAlition S Secretariat
Establishing a formal cOAltion S Secretariat /Office to ensure that we can appoint staff, award contracts etc to take forward the work associated with the implementation of Plan S
Budget defined – which will be funded by cOAlition S members who are able to make a financial contribution
No obligation for cOAlition S funders to make a financial contributions
Office expected to be up and running by January 2020

34. Other activities

35. Questions and discussion

36. OA - a global transition

37. Plan S – one main shared objective
“After 1 January 2021 scientific publications on the results from research funded by public grants provided by national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.”

48. Where next? UKRI review of open access policies:
A future open access policy for UKRI
Cap on APCs? Preference for gold or green? Preference for fully OA journals? Linkage to off-setting policy?
Monographs and other long form outputs
REF-after-next policy (will apply to monographs published from 1 Jan 2021 onwards)
Open research data
Publication practice and author choice
Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), Leiden Manifesto, Metric Tide