United Kingdom

The UK Research and Development Roadmap (2020) reiterated the UK’s commitment to open access and data sharing. The UK Science and Technology Framework (2025), highlights the UK government support for research and innovation investment, digital infrastructure and skills, including realising the ambitions afforded by AI and establishing a National Data Library.

The UK has made significant investments in infrastructure, services and skills that support open research. Some examples:

• UKRI’s Digital Research Infrastructure Programme – a £129 million initiative to develop a coherent state-of-the-art national digital research infrastructure. It recently commissioned Jisc to explore federation journeys for DRI.
• UKRI’s £47M annual investment to support its aims for open, transparent and sustainable open access publishing. Including grants to research organisations and other investments in infrastructure and strategic collective action.
• Jisc’s development of innovative routes to open access via publisher licensing agreements and other schemes such as Subscribe to Open and the Open access Community Framework.
• Supporting the development of long-standing internationally used services such as Open Policy Finder (formerly Sherpa services), DMPOnline and CORE.
• Development of a strong repository network, and participation in the setting of standards and tools for interoperability, such as registries and deposit interfaces. UKRI is also looking, in partnership with others, at how to improve the open access research information landscape.
• A diversity of programmes and organisations supporting open research practice, skills and capacity building such as Digital Curation Centre, Software Sustainability Institute and UK Reproducibility Network Open Research Programme.
• A focus on better supporting skills, training and career pathways for technicians and other technical roles (e.g. data managers and software engineers) that work with research teams. For example, UKRI is a signatory to the cross-sector UK Technician Commitment and has developed a People and Teams Action Plan.
• In addition to EOSC, the UK has, and continues to support, a range of other international multilateral initiatives and organisations support open research such as the G7 Open Science Working Group and International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA).
• As part of its Public Engagement Strategy, UKRI, in partnership with funders, invests in core national infrastructure that supports public engagement across the UK, for example Sciencewise, STEM Ambassadors and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement.