Here is the place to find briefings and information as well as BERA’s public statements on open access developments.

BERA continues to monitor developments around Plan S and open access. Our Executive Director is part of a small AcSS working group of learned societies and also contributing to a Wellcome Trust funded research project looking at the implications. We are also working with other societies as part of the recently formed Society Publisher’s Coalition (SocPC).

We remain concerned at how current proposals might negatively impact UK researchers’ freedom to publish in a journal of their choice, researchers from the global south, the pathways to publications for practitioners and ECRs as well as the financial sustainability of journals and learned societies. Some of these concerns were outlined in the AcSS’s response to the UKRI consultation earlier this year. 

Learned societies such as BERA use our publishing surpluses to fund our charitable objectives and to support our discipline. As part of the SocPC, we are a diverse range of academic disciplines which face an equally diverse range of challenges in making this transition. Our author base is truly global and we believe that authors must be able to publish in our journals regardless of their funding status or ability to pay. 

The SocPC also submitted a response to the latest consultation. 

The UKRI’s draft policy was updated in 2023. This can be seen below or on the UKRI website. 

The consultation for the REF 2029 Open Access policy aimed to collate the views of those impacted by OA requirements. The consultation was 19 questions long and a total of 279 responses were received. The outcome of the consultation and those who engaged with it can be found here. This was published on 11 December 2024. Following the consultation, the REF 2029 OA policy has been published.

In 2022, Plan S launched the Journal Comparison Tool, a price and service transparency tool that aims to provide libraries, library consortia and funders with information to help them compare publishing services, journal characteristics and article publication charges (APCs) in order to inform their publishing decisions.

After reflecting on the major developments in scholarly publishing since the launch of Plan S in 2018, cOAlition S published a new draft proposal in October 2023, Towards responsible publishing, which shared an updated vision and set of principles that a future scholarly communication system should aspire to, along with a mission that enables research funders to deliver this.

Separate to the above consultation, in July 2024 cOAlition S also released a new pricing framework ‘designed to foster global equity in scholarly publishing’ and encourage publishers to ‘implement more equitable pricing across different economies’.

Authors can submit an application for funding through their research organisation. UKRI published final guidance for applying to the fund and opened applications in late November 2023. Full guidance for applying to the fund is available here.

Back in 2013, we published a special issue of Research Intelligence on the subject. Many of the issues raised in this are still to be resolved.