From 1 January 2025, the HRB Open Access policy will move to the ‘full and immediate Open Access’.

The new policy is in line with PlanS, an international drive to reform the research publication approach, which was launched in September 2018.

Plan S is driven by cOAlition S, a global consortium of major research funders, with the support of the European Commission and Science Europe and includes Irish membership from Research Ireland (formerly Science Foundation Ireland).

The policy will apply to peer-reviewed research articles, conference proceedings and review articles.

The revisions to HRB’s OA policy include:

  • Publications must be made immediately open without embargo.
  • All articles must be published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY), unless a more restrictive licence is exceptionally approved.  This new requirement ensures that HRB-funded research can be freely reused for new discoveries.
  • Authors or their host institutions must retain intellectual property rights to comply with OA requirements.
  • The HRB will no longer fund OA publishing in subscription journals (‘hybrid’ journals) outside of transformative agreements because this model does not support a transition to full OA.
  • HRB’s contribution towards Open Access publication cots or Article Processing Charges (APCs) is increased to 2,200 per publication.

The current and new HRB Open Access policy, effective from 1 January 2025, is available on the HRB website grant policy pages.

For queries, contact: openaccess@hrb.ie