CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: open policy finder

  • Open Policy Finder: The Sherpa Romeo Successor

    Open Policy Finder is Jisc’s consolidated platform for checking publisher self-archiving rules and funder open-access requirements. It replaced Sherpa Romeo, Sherpa Juliet and Sherpa Fact with a single search interface in 2024, and it is now the standard first stop for research administrators running Plan S or rights-retention compliance checks. Search one journal or publisher and see accepted-manuscript deposit rules, embargo periods and funder mandates together, rather than cross-checking three separate Sherpa tools.

    Open Policy Finder is a free, Jisc-managed database that standardises open-access self-archiving and funder-policy information for thousands of publishers and major funders worldwide, built on the data and legacy of the Sherpa services founded in 2006 at the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research Communications.

    What is Open Policy Finder?

    Open Policy Finder is an online platform, managed by Jisc, that aggregates and standardises open-access policies for publishers, journals, books and funders into one searchable index. It answers the question research administrators ask most often: which version of a manuscript — submitted, accepted or published — can be deposited in a repository, and after how long an embargo.

    The service traces its lineage to Sherpa Romeo, founded in 2006 at the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research Communications and later transferred to Jisc. Rather than running Romeo, Juliet and Fact as three separate lookups, Jisc rebuilt them as one platform, launched under the Open Policy Finder name. Sherpa Romeo as a standalone service no longer exists; its URL now redirects to openpolicyfinder.jisc.ac.uk.

    According to Jisc’s published service profile, Open Policy Finder currently holds data on 3,503 global publisher open-access policies, including 28,000 journal-level policies, plus 178 major global funders’ open-access requirements. Its companion directory, OpenDOAR, separately tracks 5,868 institutional repositories worldwide, supporting global harvesting and aggregation of deposited outputs.

    How does Open Policy Finder differ from Sherpa Romeo?

    The core content is inherited from Sherpa Romeo, but the presentation and scope have changed substantially. Romeo was known for a colour-coded traffic-light system (green, blue, yellow, white) requiring a key to interpret; Open Policy Finder replaces this with plain-language labels — “Published,” “Accepted” and “Submitted” — describing which manuscript version a policy applies to, without needing a legend.

    Three previously separate Sherpa services are now unified behind one search box:

    • Sherpa Romeo’s publisher and journal self-archiving policies
    • Sherpa Juliet’s funder open-access policy summaries
    • Sherpa Fact’s journal-versus-funder compliance checking

    Open Policy Finder also extends coverage beyond what Romeo offered: it now includes open-access book policies searchable by publisher, and a dedicated Transitional Agreement look-up showing which “read and publish” or “publish and read” deals an institution holds and which journals they cover. Neither feature existed in the legacy Sherpa Romeo interface.

    How does it fit a Plan S / rights-retention compliance workflow?

    cOAlition S, the funder consortium behind Plan S, requires that funded research be made immediately open access on publication, either via a compliant journal/platform route or via self-archiving of the accepted manuscript under an open licence. Since 2021, cOAlition S funders and UKRI have applied a Rights Retention Strategy (RRS): authors declare, at submission, that any resulting accepted manuscript carries a CC BY licence, regardless of the publisher’s own self-archiving terms.

    This is precisely where Open Policy Finder earns its place in a compliance workflow. A research administrator checking whether a submission will satisfy a funder’s Plan S obligations needs three facts at once: the journal’s standard embargo, whether the publisher accepts a rights-retention statement or CC BY licence on the accepted manuscript, and whether the funder’s own policy overrides the journal default. Open Policy Finder’s unified record — journal policy plus funder policy in one view — replaces what used to require cross-referencing Sherpa Romeo and Sherpa Juliet separately, then manually checking Sherpa Fact for the funder-journal match.

    A practical compliance check typically runs as follows:

    1. Search the target journal or publisher in Open Policy Finder.
    2. Check the accepted-manuscript (“Accepted”) deposit terms and embargo length.
    3. Cross-reference the relevant funder’s policy (for example, a cOAlition S member or UKRI) shown in the same record.
    4. Check the Transitional Agreement look-up if the institution holds a read-and-publish deal with that publisher.
    5. Record the compliant route (repository deposit, RRS declaration, or agreement-covered gold OA) before submission, not after acceptance.

    What data and features does the platform cover?

    The table below summarises what changed between the legacy Sherpa suite and the current Open Policy Finder platform.

    Feature Legacy Sherpa suite (pre-2024) Open Policy Finder (current)
    Publisher/journal self-archiving policies Sherpa Romeo, colour-coded Included, plain-language labels
    Funder open-access policies Sherpa Juliet, separate search Included in the same record
    Funder–journal compliance check Sherpa Fact, separate tool Built into the unified search
    Open-access book policies Not covered Searchable by publisher
    Transitional Agreement look-up Not available Dedicated look-up tool
    Publisher policies indexed ~2,500 (Romeo, historic) 3,503, including 28,000 journal-level policies
    Funders indexed Fewer, via Juliet 178 major global funders
    Access model Free, web UI Free, web UI plus open API

    All Open Policy Finder data is published under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-SA for most content), and the underlying dataset remains free to query via its open API — a design choice that lets institutional repository systems and compliance dashboards pull policy data directly rather than screen-scraping.

    Frequently asked questions

    How do I find open access journals?

    Search the journal or publisher name directly in Open Policy Finder to see its self-archiving and open-access route. For fully open-access titles specifically, cross-check the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which indexes journals that publish exclusively OA under a peer-reviewed quality standard.

    What is an open access policy?

    An open-access policy is a publisher’s or funder’s stated rule on how and when a research output may be made freely available — covering which manuscript version can be deposited, any embargo period, and licensing terms. Open Policy Finder standardises these policies into one comparable format across publishers and funders.

    Is Sherpa Romeo still available?

    No. Sherpa Romeo was retired as a standalone service when Jisc consolidated it with Sherpa Juliet and Sherpa Fact into Open Policy Finder in 2024. Its former web address now redirects to the new platform, and all of its publisher policy data has been migrated and is actively maintained there.

    Do I have to pay for open access?

    Not always. Many journals offer a free, no-cost “green” self-archiving route — depositing the accepted manuscript in a repository after an embargo — alongside a paid “gold” article processing charge (APC) route for immediate open publication. Open Policy Finder shows both routes, plus any Transitional Agreement that may waive the APC.

    What this means for research administrators

    For institutions running Plan S, UKRI or REF-linked open-access compliance checks, the consolidation into Open Policy Finder removes a genuine workflow inefficiency: three separate Sherpa look-ups have become one. Research administrators building institutional compliance guidance, submission checklists, or automated repository-deposit reminders should update internal documentation and any embedded links that still reference “Sherpa Romeo,” since the standalone service is discontinued.

    The open API is the detail most compliance teams should act on now. Because policy data can be queried programmatically, institutional repository platforms and CRIS systems can surface a journal’s current self-archiving terms directly inside the deposit workflow, rather than requiring staff to check a separate website — reducing the single biggest source of missed Plan S embargo deadlines: manual, one-off policy lookups that go stale between check and submission.

    As transitional agreements expand and funder rights-retention policies mature, expect Open Policy Finder’s funder-policy and Transitional Agreement data to become the reference layer that institutional research-administration systems query by default, in the way Sherpa Romeo’s colour codes once were for a previous generation of repository managers.

  • Jisc Open Access Agreements: A cOAlition S Compliance Route Map

    UK research administrators juggling funder mandates now face a genuinely confusing question: does a given Jisc open access agreement actually satisfy a cOAlition S-aligned funder’s Plan S requirement, or does it only cover the invoice? Jisc negotiates centrally on behalf of UK higher education institutions, but the resulting deals are not automatically interchangeable with Plan S’s own compliance routes — and conflating the two is a common source of avoidable non-compliance findings at grant closeout.

    This route map sets out, mechanism by mechanism, how Jisc’s negotiated agreements map onto cOAlition S’s three approved compliance routes and the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) open access policy, so research offices can advise authors with confidence rather than by rule of thumb.

    What Jisc open access agreements actually negotiate

    Jisc negotiates three broad categories of open access agreement on behalf of its member institutions, governed by the UUK/Jisc Research Licensing Strategy Group and informed explicitly by the principles of Plan S and the OA2020 initiative:

    • Transitional (transformative) agreements — convert existing subscription spend into a combined fund covering both continued read access and open access publishing costs at hybrid and subscription titles (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and others).
    • Fully open access agreements — membership or flat-fee arrangements with born-open-access and society publishers, including current deals with ACM (2026–2028), MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program (2026–2027) and PLOS’s flat-fee and Community Action Publishing licences (2026–2027).
    • Compliant green agreements — publisher commitments to an immediate, embargo-free, CC BY-licensed repository deposit route for authors who cannot or do not use a paid option.

    Springer Nature alone reports over 100 UK institutions participating in its Jisc-negotiated agreement, illustrating the scale of collective bargaining involved. These agreement types are the practical instruments; the compliance routes they need to satisfy come from cOAlition S itself.

    The three cOAlition S Plan S compliance routes

    cOAlition S launched Plan S in 2018, with implementation beginning on 1 January 2021. Its implementation guidance sets out exactly three routes by which a funded output can be considered compliant. Understanding these routes independently of any single publisher deal is the foundation for everything that follows.

    Plan S route What it requires Typical publication type
    Route 1 — Open access venue Publish in a fully open access journal or platform, immediately available under CC BY Gold OA / Diamond OA journals
    Route 2 — Transformative arrangement Publish in a subscription/hybrid journal covered by a recognised transitional agreement Hybrid journals under a Jisc transitional deal
    Route 3 — Repository deposit Deposit the author accepted manuscript (or, increasingly, version of record) immediately, with no embargo and a CC BY licence, often invoking the Rights Retention Strategy Any subscription journal, including those with no Jisc deal at all

    Route 3 matters most for institutional risk management: it is the fallback that keeps every author compliant even when no Jisc agreement exists for their chosen journal, or when an agreement’s funding allocation has already been exhausted for the year.

    Matching Jisc agreement types to each compliance route

    Jisc’s own three agreement categories were designed with these routes in mind, but the mapping is not always one-to-one, and research offices need to check eligibility at the point of submission rather than assume coverage.

    Jisc agreement type Plan S route satisfied Practical caveat for research offices
    Fully open access agreement Route 1 (OA venue) Confirm the specific journal or platform is listed under the current licence, not just the publisher brand
    Transitional (transformative) agreement Route 2 (transformative arrangement) Fund caps and corresponding-author eligibility rules mean coverage can lapse mid-year
    Compliant green agreement Route 3 (repository deposit) Requires active AAM deposit workflow — Jisc’s Publications Router can automate metadata and full-text delivery to the repository

    UKRI, a founding cOAlition S funder, layers its own 2021 open access policy on top of this framework: immediate open access is required for journal articles and conference proceedings from grants awarded on or after 1 April 2022, and for monographs, book chapters and edited collections from 1 January 2024. UKRI’s policy is designed to align with Plan S principles but is administered separately — an author can be UKRI-compliant via the same Gold, transformative, or Green routes described above, but institutions must check UKRI’s specific embargo and licensing terms rather than assume Plan S compliance automatically satisfies UKRI, or vice versa.

    Common questions from UK research offices

    What is a read and publish deal?

    A read and publish deal is a single institutional agreement, usually negotiated by a consortium such as Jisc, that bundles subscription access to a publisher’s journals with funded open access publishing rights for eligible corresponding authors, replacing separate read and pay-to-publish invoices.

    What are the three routes to Plan S compliance?

    cOAlition S recognises three routes: publishing in a fully open access journal or platform; publishing in a subscription journal under a recognised transformative arrangement; or depositing the accepted manuscript in a repository immediately, with no embargo and a CC BY licence.

    Is the UKRI open access policy the same as Plan S?

    No. UKRI is a cOAlition S founding funder and designed its 2021 open access policy to align closely with Plan S principles, but the two are administered separately, with UKRI setting its own effective dates, embargo rules and licensing requirements that research offices must check independently.

    Is Jisc’s Open Policy Finder the same as the Journal Checker Tool?

    No — they are commonly confused. Open Policy Finder is Jisc’s own tool for checking publisher and funder policies, while the Journal Checker Tool is operated independently by cOAlition S at journalcheckertool.org to confirm a specific journal-institution-funder combination against Plan S routes.

    A practical compliance checklist

    Research offices advising authors on a submission should work through the following before a manuscript goes out:

    1. Confirm whether the funder is a cOAlition S signatory, and separately whether UKRI-specific terms also apply.
    2. Check the target journal against the current Jisc agreement list for the author’s institution and publisher — agreement coverage varies by title, not just by publisher.
    3. Run the combination through cOAlition S’s Journal Checker Tool to confirm which of the three routes applies before submission, not after acceptance.
    4. Monitor transitional agreement fund caps; many UK institutions see APC allocations exhausted before the calendar year ends.
    5. Maintain a documented Green-route fallback — immediate AAM deposit with a Rights Retention Statement — for any journal outside a live agreement.
    6. Record the compliance route used against each output for funder reporting and REF-adjacent audit trails.

    Implications for research offices

    The practical risk sits less in the headline agreements than in their edges: mid-year fund exhaustion on transitional deals, journals moving in or out of coverage between renewal cycles, and corresponding-author eligibility rules excluding co-authors at non-participating institutions. Jisc’s multi-year renewals — the ACM Open Journals agreement running 2026–2028, PLOS licences renewed for 2026–2027 — give planning stability, but offices should treat every agreement as time-bound and re-verify eligibility annually rather than relying on a static internal list.

    There is also a structural shift underway toward Subscribe to Open and community-based membership models, which remove per-article APC decisions entirely but still require a compliant Green fallback under current Jisc guidance, since S2O agreements depend on enough institutions subscribing to unlock full participation. For research administration teams building durable workflows, the safest design principle is to treat Route 3 — immediate repository deposit — as the permanent baseline, with Jisc’s negotiated Routes 1 and 2 as opportunistic upgrades rather than the primary compliance mechanism.

    Looking ahead

    As UKRI’s open access policy embeds further into monograph and long-form publishing and Jisc continues renewing its publisher portfolio, the institutions with the least audit risk will be those that stopped treating “which Jisc deal applies” as the first question. The first question should be which Plan S route the output needs to satisfy; the applicable Jisc agreement, if one exists, is simply the most convenient way to deliver it. Research offices that build their author guidance and internal tooling — including terminology drawn from a shared open access dictionary — around the three compliance routes, rather than around individual publisher brands, will adapt fastest as agreements are renegotiated, replaced or allowed to lapse.