- The shared UKRI foundation
- How MRC and BBSRC diverge in practice
- Common questions from grant administrators
- REF 2029 open access alignment
- Implications for multi-council award administrators
Grant administrators handling awards that straddle more than one UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) council quickly discover that “one policy” does not mean “one set of instructions.” The MRC open access policy and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) open access policy both sit inside UKRI’s single overarching open access framework, yet the Medical Research Council (MRC) and BBSRC apply distinct additional expectations around Europe PMC deposit, embargo language and preprint citation. For institutions administering multi-council grants, those gaps — not the shared UKRI baseline — are where compliance actually breaks down.
The shared UKRI foundation
Since 1 April 2022, UKRI has run a single open access policy covering peer-reviewed research articles, conference papers and reviews acknowledging funding from any of its seven councils, including MRC and BBSRC. From 1 January 2024 the policy extended to monographs, book chapters and edited collections, requiring open access within 12 months of publication.
For journal articles, the UKRI policy sets out two routes to compliance:
- Route 1 (Gold): the publisher’s version of record is made immediately open access, typically under a CC BY licence.
- Route 2 (Green): the author’s accepted manuscript is deposited in a repository and made immediately available at the point of publication.
Both MRC and BBSRC researchers must comply with this baseline. The divergence begins with what each council layers on top of it.
How MRC and BBSRC diverge in practice
MRC’s own policy page states plainly that funded researchers are “expected to comply” with the UKRI policy and must ensure a copy of every in-scope publication is deposited in Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) at the time of final publication — a requirement MRC treats as mandatory, with a named contact ([email protected]) for compliance queries.
BBSRC’s published guidance, by contrast, frames Europe PMC archiving as something researchers are “strongly encouraged” to do rather than an enforced condition, and separately states that BBSRC-funded results must be made freely available “no later than six months from the formal date of publication” — language that sits alongside, rather than fully aligned with, UKRI’s 2022 immediate-access requirement. In practice this means MRC administrators treat Europe PMC deposit as a hard compliance gate, while BBSRC administrators are working from softer, less current wording.
| Requirement | MRC | BBSRC |
|---|---|---|
| Base policy | UKRI open access policy | UKRI open access policy |
| Europe PMC deposit | Required, tied to funding terms and conditions | Strongly encouraged, not stated as mandatory |
| Stated access timeline | Immediate, per UKRI policy | Guidance still references a 6-month freely-available window |
| Preprints in applications | Accepted, subject to MRC preprints policy | Accepted; must carry a DOI and be under 5 years old |
| Block grant / OA funding route | UKRI block grant plus institutional strategic funding | UKRI block grant plus a dedicated BBSRC Open Access Grant for strategically funded institutes |
The block grant distinction matters for multi-council awards: a BBSRC-funded institute receiving strategic funding is eligible for a separate BBSRC Open Access Grant on top of the standard UKRI block grant allocation, whereas MRC funding does not carry an equivalent parallel grant line. Administrators reconciling publication costs across a joint MRC–BBSRC award therefore need to identify which funding pot a given article’s costs should be drawn from, rather than assuming a single shared allocation.
Common questions from grant administrators
What is the MRC open access policy?
The MRC open access policy requires researchers funded by the Medical Research Council to comply with the overarching UKRI open access policy and to deposit a copy of every in-scope publication in Europe PMC at the time of final publication, whether via the gold or green route.
Does BBSRC require Europe PMC deposit?
BBSRC’s guidance encourages researchers to archive published articles in Europe PMC but does not state this as a mandatory condition in the way MRC does, making it a softer compliance expectation that administrators should still track for biomedical-adjacent outputs.
What is the difference between MRC and BBSRC open access requirements?
Both follow the same UKRI baseline, but MRC treats Europe PMC deposit as compulsory while BBSRC treats it as encouraged, and BBSRC’s own guidance still references a six-month access window that predates UKRI’s 2022 immediate-access requirement.
Will REF 2029 use the same open access policy as UKRI?
The UK’s four higher education funding bodies have signalled that REF 2029 open access requirements will move closer to the UKRI framework, including extending expectations to long-form outputs, but REF policy is set separately from UKRI’s council-level rules and administrators should not assume identical scope or timing.
REF 2029 open access alignment
The Research Excellence Framework is administered by the four UK higher education funding bodies — Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland — not by UKRI’s research councils directly. For REF 2021, the open access policy applied to journal articles and conference proceedings, with a deposit window measured from acceptance rather than publication.
For REF 2029, the funding bodies have indicated closer alignment with UKRI’s current policy, including bringing long-form outputs such as monographs into scope in a manner consistent with UKRI’s January 2024 monograph requirement. For a multi-council award spanning MRC and BBSRC funding, this means outputs already compliant with the UKRI open access route are well placed for REF eligibility, but administrators should confirm the specific REF 2029 rules once published rather than relying on UKRI compliance as an automatic proxy.
Implications for multi-council award administrators
The practical risk on a joint MRC–BBSRC grant is not non-compliance with the UKRI baseline — most institutions have that workflow embedded — but under-tracking the council-specific layer on top of it. Three things follow from the comparison above:
- Treat Europe PMC deposit as mandatory for any output acknowledging MRC funding, and as strongly recommended (verify locally) for BBSRC-only outputs.
- Do not assume a single open access funding pot covers a joint award; check whether the receiving institute holds a BBSRC Open Access Grant in addition to its UKRI block grant.
- Flag REF 2029 scope changes as a live item rather than a fixed rule, since final funding-body guidance may extend beyond the current UKRI monograph policy.
Institutions supporting research administration across multiple UKRI councils benefit from building compliance checklists that separate “UKRI-wide” requirements from “council-specific” additions, rather than treating open access as a single monolithic policy. As REF 2029 guidance solidifies and UKRI continues its open access policy review, the gap between MRC’s stricter Europe PMC language and BBSRC’s older embargo wording is the clearest signal that “UKRI open access policy” is a floor, not a uniform standard — and that administrators verifying terminology such as gold, green and embargo routes should consult a maintained research administration dictionary alongside each council’s primary source.