Open access means that anyone with an internet connection can access the output of research – be it a journal article, algorithm or methodology, as well as reports, case studies and blog posts – without the need to pay for access via a subscription or other mechanism.

Health Data Research UK’s guiding beliefs on open access

  • Transparency is a Health Data Research UK value.
  • Health Data Research UK receives funding from various sources, including government and charitable organisations. It therefore acts for the public good and must deliver value for money to the taxpayer and/or charitable donor.
  • By being open we can share more and learn quicker from each other’s successes and failures.
  • The public voice is at the heart of all we do – non-researchers must be able to access the outputs of Health Data Research UK research.

Open access of Health Data Research UK attributed research outputs

Scope

These principles apply to Health Data Research UK Members, as defined in the Health Data Research UK Attribution Policy.

Principles

  • Expects authors to maximise the opportunities to make their results available for free.
  • Expects outputs of work supported by Health Data Research UK to select publishing routes that ensure the work is available immediately on publication in its final published form, where possible.
  • Will allow those in receipt of Health Data Research UK funds to use their funding to pay an open access fee (e.g. article processing charges, where appropriate, to meet these principles). Noting the use of HDR UK funds for publishing in a ‘hybrid’ journal that is not part of a transitional agreement* (TA) will not be permitted.
  • Expects outputs published in a peer-reviewed journal, and supported in whole or in part by Health Data Research UK funding, to be immediate open access; outputs should be made available through Europe PMC at the time of publication.
  • Encourages – and where it pays an open access fee and/or the work is supported in whole or in part by Health Data Research UK funding requires – authors and publishers to licence research papers using the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY) so they may be freely copied and re-used (for example, for text and data-mining purposes or creating a translation), provided that such uses are fully attributed. An Open Government Licence is also permitted when authors are subject to Crown Copyright.
  • Expects outputs published in  peer-reviewed journal articles to include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible. Use of the Innovation Gateway should be attributed in such statements as follows :
    • ‘Data discovery and access was facilitated by the Health Data Research UK Innovation Gateway- https://www.healthdatagateway.org/ YEAR.’’This statement is in addition to, and does not replace, any other acknowledgements required by the data custodian.
  • Expects data outputs, such as algorithms/software, to be uploaded to the Health Data Research UK GitHub Organisation repository (https://github.com/HDRUK) and made available to an open permissive licence (such as Apache Licence 2.0, MIT, MPL or BSD).

*TAs, also referred to as  “read and publish” agreements, are contracts negotiated between institutions and publishers that transform the business model underlying scholarly publishing towards a fully open access model. They align with the OA objectives of the UK’s major research funders, including UKRI and are further desribed by JISC. You can find title lists for all Jisc TAs on the Knowledge Base+ public export page. Use the search function to find a specific TA package.

Open access of Health Data Research UK Company Documents such as Reports, Blogs and Case Studies

Scope

These principles apply to Health Data Research UK Members – which includes HDR UK Central staff – as defined in the Health Data Research UK Attribution Policy.

Principles

  • All outputs published in a peer-reviewed journal and supported in whole or in part by HDR UK funding, must be made immediately open access (via ‘green’ or ‘gold’ routes) under a CC BY license; an Open Government License may be used where the output is subject to crown copyright.
  • Outputs should be made available through Europe PMC at the time of publication and ideally also added to the Health Data Research Gateway (linking to the relevant datasets and data analysis scripts or software used by the research project). In the Gateway, a publication can be either about a dataset (when describing a cohort) or using a dataset.
  • Those in receipt of HDR UK funds may use their funding to pay an open access fee (e.g. article processing charges, where appropriate, to meet these principles). Note that the use of HDR UK funds for publishing in a ‘hybrid’ journal that is not part of a transitional agreement is not permitted.
  • Outputs published in peer-reviewed journal articles must include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible.
  • Use of the Health Data Research Gateway should be attributed in a Data Access Statement as follows, noting this statement is in addition to, and does not replace, any other acknowledgements required by the data custodian:
  • ‘Data discovery and access was facilitated by the Health Data Research Gateway- https://www.healthdatagateway.org/ YEAR.’’
  • Where applicable, outputs published in peer-reviewed journal articles should include a Software Availability Statement detailing any code created for data management and analysis including: a link to the version-controlled source code, a link to a permanently archived version of the code, and the license under which the code may be reused. This link can also be added to the Gateway within “Analysis Scripts and Software” and associated with the datasets it can be applied to along with relevant associated publications.
  • The publication of preprints via recognised preprint servers is actively encouraged; preprints should be linked to and/or cited in the final peer-reviewed output.
  • All contributors (including: patients, data custodians, researchers, HDR UK, funders, etc) must be appropriately acknowledged in-line with HDR UK Attribution Policy.
  • Author contributions should be captured using the CRediT taxonomy; special care should be taken where applicable to include investigators located at institutions in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) that led original study implementation.
  • Engagement with open peer review models is encouraged to support transparency and integrity.

Please read the full terms of the Creative Commons licence here.