Technical report: Monitoring and evaluation of UKRI's Open Access Policy - Exploring the use of open data sources to inform baseline values

UKRI published this report on the development of a set of baseline values for open access research articles, against which future progress can be assessed. The work was undertaken by Research Consulting and Sesame Open Science. 

The baseline values show a steady increase in alignment with UKRI’s policy requirements in the years preceding the policy.  

In 2022, the year the policy started, 63% of articles acknowledging UKRI funding were fully policy compliant. This means they were available immediately at the time of publishing, via a journal or repository with a licence allowing reuse.  

In the wider UK this figure was much lower at 39%, largely driven by lower uptake of an open access licence.  

The underpinning analysis was based exclusively on open data sources and the data and code have been made available to enable reuse, in line with UKRI’s commitment to open research.  

This report outlines key observations and lessons learned to inform future monitoring and evaluation.  

UKRI will consider these and other outcomes of this work in its ongoing monitoring and evaluation work, including the 2024 Light Touch Review of the UKRI open access policy for research articles.