The UKRI open access block grant is an annual allocation UK Research and Innovation pays to eligible research organisations to help them meet the costs of complying with UKRI’s open access policy for research articles. It is not paid to individual researchers, and it is separate from — and administered differently to — the wider RCUK/Plan S open access mandate debate. This guide explains how the allocation is calculated, what it can and cannot fund, and what institutions must now report back to UKRI.
A UKRI open access block grant is a lump-sum award, calculated from an institution’s UKRI-funded research volume, that research organisations distribute internally to cover open access publication costs rather than a grant researchers apply for directly.
How is the UKRI block grant calculated and paid?
UKRI does not divide a fixed pot equally between universities. Instead, the amount an organisation receives is calculated using an algorithm that uses directly incurred and directly allocated staff costs on UKRI awards as a proxy for research volume, according to UKRI’s own open access funding and reporting guidance. Institutions with a very small UKRI research footprint may receive nothing at all.
For administrative reasons, only organisations whose calculated entitlement is £5,000 or more are offered an award. Every block grant allocated from 2022 onwards is published on UKRI’s Gateway to Research service, giving institutions and auditors a transparent, checkable record of what each organisation received and when.
Payment is not a single annual cheque. Under the 2025–26 block grant terms and conditions, the grant covering 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 is paid via the EPSRC Research grants pay run process in four quarterly instalments, mirroring the cash-flow pattern of a standard research grant rather than a one-off subvention. UKRI’s own figures put total block grant spend at approximately £40 million per year across the research-article scheme, separate from the long-form publications fund described below.
What can the block grant fund — and what can’t it fund?
The block grant is deliberately flexible. Research organisations can spend it on any activity that supports compliance with UKRI’s open access policy, not just article processing charges (APCs). UKRI’s terms and conditions and the sector guidance built around them (for example Jisc’s publisher-facing compliance guide) converge on a consistent list of eligible and ineligible spend.
- Eligible: APCs for fully open access journals and platforms.
- Eligible: the “publish” element of Jisc-approved transitional (read-and-publish) agreements.
- Eligible: membership or participation fees for alternative open access models, such as subscribe-to-open schemes.
- Eligible: repository and green-route infrastructure costs, and staff time spent administering compliance, deposit checking and the block grant itself.
- Not eligible: APCs for hybrid journals outside an approved transitional agreement.
- Not eligible: page charges and colour charges.
- Not eligible: long-form outputs — monographs, book chapters and edited collections sit under a separate, dedicated £3.5 million UKRI open access fund with its own caps (up to £10,000 for a book processing charge, £1,000 for a chapter processing charge, and £6,000 for participation in an alternative open access model, rising by a further £3,000 where an organisation has two or more eligible outputs in a period).
Researchers cannot normally claim these costs directly from their research grant budget; the block grant exists precisely so that publication costs are pooled and administered centrally by the research organisation rather than budgeted line-by-line inside every award.
How does UKRI’s grant compare with Wellcome, CRUK and BHF?
Institutional open access teams frequently administer several funders’ block grants side by side, and confusion between them is a real, current problem. In particular, Cancer Research UK is winding down its own open access block grant from 1 April 2026, with a new CRUK policy taking effect on 1 October 2026 under which CRUK will no longer pay for open access publishing at all. That change concerns CRUK’s scheme only — it does not alter UKRI’s block grant, its eligibility rules or its payment schedule, though several university library guides bundle the funders together in ways that can make the two easy to conflate.
| Funder | Scheme status (mid-2026) | Hybrid journals covered? | Repository deposit required? |
|---|---|---|---|
| UKRI | Ongoing annual block grant, ~£40m/year | Only within Jisc-approved transitional agreements | Europe PMC deposit required for MRC/BBSRC-funded articles |
| Wellcome | Ongoing; DOAJ-listed journals only | No | Europe PMC deposit required; rights retention statement required |
| Cancer Research UK | Ending — no APC funding after 1 October 2026 | N/A (scheme closing) | N/A |
| British Heart Foundation | Ongoing | Yes, for original articles | Europe PMC deposit required |
For research administrators, the practical takeaway is to treat each funder’s block grant as a distinct compliance stream with its own terms, rather than assuming a single institutional “open access fund” rulebook covers all of them.
What are institutions’ reporting and assurance duties?
Reporting obligations on the UKRI block grant have tightened materially for the 2026–27 cycle. Research organisations must already provide high-level information about their block grant spend through their Final Expenditure Statement, the same mechanism used for standard UKRI grant financial reporting, and block grant expenditure now falls within scope of UKRI’s Funding Assurance Reviews. Institutions need governance, financial and risk-management processes capable of demonstrating that funds were used for their intended purpose if selected for review.
The most significant near-term change is that UKRI is reintroducing dedicated block grant reporting in 2026 to 2027 through a co-developed, lightweight, standardised template, explicitly designed to close evidence gaps around what institutions actually spend the money on. This marks a shift away from the lighter-touch, largely self-certified approach that has applied since the block grant scheme was last simplified, and research offices should expect to log spend by category (APCs, transitional agreements, repository costs, staff time) in a form that maps to that template rather than an internal ad hoc breakdown.
- Confirm which team owns block grant financial tracking (library, research office, or finance).
- Categorise 2026–27 spend against UKRI’s eligible-cost list as it is incurred, not retrospectively.
- Retain invoices and journal/agreement documentation in case of a Funding Assurance Review.
- Complete the Final Expenditure Statement and the new standardised reporting template on time.
Answer-first Q&A
What is the UKRI block grant policy?
The UKRI open access block grant policy gives eligible UK research organisations an annual lump sum, sized to their UKRI-funded research volume, to cover eligible open access publication costs for research articles. It is administered by the institution, not claimed per-article from a researcher’s own grant.
How is the UKRI block grant amount calculated?
UKRI uses an algorithm based on directly incurred and directly allocated staff costs charged to UKRI awards as a proxy for an organisation’s research volume. Only organisations whose calculated entitlement reaches £5,000 or more are actually offered a grant.
Do researchers apply for the UKRI block grant directly?
No. Researchers do not apply to UKRI for block grant funding. The research organisation receives and administers the award, and individual authors instead request an APC payment or transitional-agreement cover through their own institution’s open access team.
Do institutions have to report block grant spending to UKRI?
Yes. Institutions must summarise spend through the Final Expenditure Statement, and block grants are now included within Funding Assurance Reviews. From 2026–27, a new standardised reporting template is being reintroduced specifically to capture more granular cost evidence.
What this means for research administrators
The direction of travel is towards more visibility, not less. A scheme that has run for over a decade on light-touch institutional discretion is moving into a period where UKRI wants comparable, standardised cost data across the sector. Institutions that build 2026–27 spend-tracking around UKRI’s eligible-cost categories now, rather than retrofitting records later, will find the reintroduced reporting template far less disruptive.
Research administration teams should also keep the funder distinctions in this guide close at hand: UKRI’s own scheme continues on broadly the same basis it has run under since 2022, even as other funders in the same open access landscape — Cancer Research UK most visibly — withdraw block grant support altogether. Conflating the two risks under-claiming funding UKRI still provides, or over-promising APC cover a funder such as CRUK will no longer honour after October 2026.
