Taylor & Francis’ response to the UKRI Policy Announcement

Taylor & Francis is supportive of the goals of the UKRI Open Access Policy to achieve full and immediate Open Access. Over the past decade we have invested heavily in OA tools and services, including OA journals, F1000 and transformative agreements which have helped to propel Open Access in the UK.

We have concerns about elements of the policy, particularly the emphasis on zero embargo, zero payment OA for the Accepted Manuscript. This is not something that we are able to support, as it removes the ability for publishers to be remunerated for the considerable amount of work that goes into progressing an article to acceptance.

We also have concerns about the potential implications for society partners who shape and develop subject communities and rely on journal funding to support their mission, and for communities where funding is not typically available – such as humanities and social sciences.

We have been a willing contributor to the consultation that fed into this policy and we believe that many of the concerns expressed by publishers and other stakeholders during this process have not been adequately addressed. Achieving OA is a huge systemic change and we believe a more collegiate approach would provide better results all round.