Open access

Open access position statement

The Academy’s purpose is to advance and promote excellence in engineering for the benefit of society.  Unrestricted online access to research publications for everyone – open access – aligns with this purpose and the Academy therefore supports the ambition of open access.  

Encouraging and fostering collaborations between industry and academia are key components of the Academy’s activities, and the Academy does not believe that this is incompatible with open access.  What this means for applicants and awardees: 

• The Academy encourages awardees to use open access routes for their peer-reviewed publications, choosing the best route to maximise the social and economic impact of their work. 
• All awardees must be familiar with the open access policies of their host institution and ensure that they comply with them, whilst seeking appropriate venues of publication to promote the beneficial social and economic impact of their work 
• Applicants can choose to apply for costs associated with open access directly from the Academy as part of their application up to the limit of non-salary costs or total costs within the particular programme, so long as the costs are clearly identifiable and applicants can demonstrate that no other institutional funding is available to cover them. 
• Award holders may use all flexible funds (i.e. those not reserved for staff, equipment or similar) within their existing grants to cover open access costs, so long as costs are clearly identifiable and they have validated that no other institutional funding is available to cover them. 
• There will be no additional funding provided to existing award holders towards open access costs.