The United Kingdom (UK) is a leader in Open Access policy and practice. Since the mid-2000s, leading UK research organisations and funding agencies have introduced Open Access mandates, and the government leads global discussions on the value of open research.

We outline the UK’s mandates and current policies for those looking to submit research or read it.

Open Access is the new paradigm

Open Access refers to a publishing model for scholarly research that makes information immediately available to readers at no cost. This research is also often free to reuse for scholarly purposes.

The benefits of publishing Open Access include potentially gaining more citations and therefore having a greater impact, reaching a wider audience, advancing scientific innovation, retaining copyrights, and increasing the potential for collaboration and recognition.

Open Access can also help institutions like universities and research agencies in low- and middle-income countries by removing any price barriers to access academic research.

History of Open Access in the UK

The UK was an early adopter of Open Access policies and continues to implement them. Here is a brief history of Open Access in the UK:

• 2005: The Wellcome Trust implemented an Open Access policy for Wellcome-funded research.
• 2006: After a promising draft of an Open Access policy, Research Councils UK (RCUK, now called the UKRI) reduced its OA requirements, letting individual Research Councils implement their own policies. Generally, RCUK advocated green Open Access.
• 2007: Cancer Research UK pledged to adopt and realise Open Access.
• 2011: The Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (‘The Finch Report’) was tasked with examining how UK research can be made more openly accessible.
• 2012: The UK government accepted the findings of the Finch Report, accepting gold Open Access as the preferred route.
• 2013: RCUK implemented a policy requiring all funded research to be published Open Access.
• 2016: The Research Excellence Framework (REF) introduces policy tying eligibility to submit a publication to the REF to compliance with OA sharing.
• 2023: The UK rejoins the Horizon Europe funding programme.
• 2025: The REF tightens its requirements on the open publication of research.

The UK engaged with Open Access very early, with its primary funding agencies exploring and implementing policies in the 2000s. This continued on a governmental level, with the 2011 Task Force and the UK playing leading roles in G7 meetings on OA in 2016 and 2023.

The UK continues to lead conversations on the practice of Open Access policy, with multiple of the leading research funders and organisations mandating it.

Current Open Access laws in the UK

The UK has many of the highest-ranking universities in the world, including 4 in the global top 10, as of June 2026. Therefore, its Open Access policies, primarily reflected by its funding agencies, will affect some of the world’s leading scholars and institutions.

RCUK was reorganised into UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in 2018. This organisation is a non-departmental body of the UK government and represents the UK’s primary funding agency. Over a spending period from 2026 to 2030, the UKRI is committed to £86 billion in investment, and it actively aspires to maintain the UK’s position as a leader in open research.

UKRI partners with universities, research organisations, businesses, charities, and the government to “push the frontiers of human knowledge and understanding” and more specifically “deliver economic impact”.

UKRI Open Access policy

The UKRI introduced a single Open Access policy across all its research councils in 2021. For peer-reviewed articles, researchers can make them OA via one of two routes:

1. Publish an article in an Open Access journal or platform.
2. Deposit the author accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository at the time of final publication.

Regardless of the route, the article must be free and unrestricted to view and download and have a CC BY license. A publisher-requested delay or embargo period is not permitted.

Furthermore, the research must include a data access statement, even when there are no data associated with the article or are inaccessible. This informs readers where the underlying research materials are available and how they can be accessed.

UKRI also requires the final version of books to be free to view and download within a maximum of 12 months of publication and have a CC BY license.

Click here if you want to learn more about CC BY and other Creative Commons licenses.

Plan Shttps://blog.mdpi.com/2025/04/08/open-access-copyright/

The UKRI is a signatory of the international initiative cOAlition S, which is built around Plan S.

Plan S mandates “full and immediate Open Access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications from research funded by public and private grants”. This is supported by ten principles that address copyright, transparency, and criteria for openness, among other things.

Additionally, cOAlition S provides guidance for the implementation of Open Access, news about the movement, and two services for scholars, the Journal Comparison Service and the Journal Checker Tool.

Horizon Europe

In 2023, a new deal for the UK to rejoin Horizon Europe was established, enabling UK scientists to have access to the world’s largest research collaboration programme.

Horizon Europe will last until 2027 and has a budget of €95.5 billion. Its aims are to facilitate collaboration and strengthen the impact of research and innovation in developing, supporting, and implementing EU policies whilst tackling global challenges.

Accordingly, Open Access is mandatory for researchers receiving funding. This is so Horizon Europe can support the “creating and better dispersing of excellent knowledge and technologies”. Its aims revolve around tackling climate change, achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and boosting growth.

Click here to learn more about the EU’s Open Access policy.

Jisc Consortium

Jisc is a not-for-profit membership organisation that provides digital, data, and technology solutions to support tertiary education, research, and innovation in the UK.

They are committed to removing barriers to accessing research outputs and supporting higher education institutions in realising Open Access. Their work includes:

• Policy and engagement.
• Policy expression.
• Knowledge exchange.
• Negotiating and developing requirements for Open Access.

In 2026, Jisc renewed its agreement with MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Partnership (IOAP) program. This reflects MDPI’s strong partnerships with UK institutions and emphasises the shared commitment to advancing OA publishing and ensuring broad accessibility to high-quality research.

More than 60 UK institutions will have access to MDPI’s IOAP, including substantial discounts on article processing charges (APCs). Click here to see the full list of members.

Wellcome

Wellcome is the UK’s largest provider of non-governmental funding for scientific research. Its primary focus is on supporting science to solve urgent health challenges.

Original published research that arises from Wellcome funding must be openly accessible to everyone. Wellcome only fund APCs for research articles publishing in fully OA journals or platforms indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The version of record or author accepted manuscript are subject to the following requirements:

• Must be made freely available from Europe PubMed Central upon publication.
• Be under a CC BY license or CC BY-ND by exception.
• Include a data availability statement.

Research Excellence Framework

The REF is the UK’s system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. This includes the allocation of block-grant research funding, providing accountability for public investment, and providing insights into the health of research.

REF outcomes are used to inform the allocation of around £2 billion per year of public funding for universities’ research.

The REF Open Access policy is being finalised formally in 2026. As of June 2026, articles and conference proceedings must be published as fully Open Access, with the minimum standard for compliance being to deposit in a suitable repository or platform within three months of publication.

The requirements focus on three main aspects:

• Discovery: research must be discoverable by readers and automated tools such as search engines.
• Access: research must be presented in a form that allows anyone with internet access to search electronically within the text, read it, and download it without charge.
• Licensing: research must be shared as openly as possible, preferably with CC BY or other license formats with the same standards of openness.

UK Open Access statistics

The UK is rapidly moving away from subscription-only to open publication of its scholarly research. Here are some statistics from Scopus:

• 2014: 51% of articles were subscription-only, 19% were green Open Access, and 20% were gold Open Access.
• 2019: 26% of articles were subscription-only, 30% were green Open Access, and 37% were gold Open Access.
• 2024: 22% of articles were subscription-only, 7% were green Open Access and 68% were gold Open Access.

Evidently, the proportion of subscription-only articles has rapidly decreased from 2014 to 2024, whilst the proportion of gold Open Access articles has reached more than two-thirds of the total output.

This demonstrates the success in the UK’s approach to policy and the overall determination to share openly research results among researchers and institutions.

Future trends

As a leader in research globally, the UK plays an important role in setting the standard for openness.

The UKRI and REF both enable researchers to pursue multiple routes to achieve openness, i.e., through publication in an Open Access journal or through an institutional or subject repository. This flexibility is key to increasing the adoption of open practices without introducing new barriers.

Given the country’s long-standing embrace of and engagement with open science, it is likely the UKRI and leading funding organisations will continue to explore ways to increase the access, reuse, and impact of UK research.

Value of Open Access

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an Open Access license. This means:

• Everyone has free and unlimited access to the full text of all articles published in MDPI journals;
• Everyone is free to re-use the published material if proper accreditation/citation of the original publication is given;
• Open Access publication is supported by the authors’ institutes or research funding agencies by payment of a comparatively low Article Processing Charge (APC) for accepted articles.

Researchers can satisfy the UK’s developing Open Access policy and pre-empt any stricter legislation by publishing with an MDPI journal. Alternatively, if you want to publish an early version of your article, try Preprints.org, our service for publishing early versions of research that are not peer-reviewed and report on either ongoing or complete research.

Open Access makes vital information accessible to all readers and researchers and brings together scholars from across the world. Thus, it is ideal for tackling global challenges that require urgent and coordinated attention.

The United Kingdom is a leader in Open Access policy and practice. Click here if you would also like to learn more about Open Access around the world.