Most government funding for research in UK universities is directed through Research Councils UK (RCUK), Wellcome Trust, and UK Research and Innovation. Those three funders have all adopted mandates for open access dissemination of the research outputs that they fund. Major charity funders include Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation, both of whom have open access policies. Further information on funding requirements and publisher policies in the UK and internationally are available through the Sherpa/JULIET and Sherpa/ROMEO services.

Jisc and Jisc Collections have been foremost in their efforts to promote open access initiatives: promoting the desiderata for what publishers could do; the designing and building of such services as the Publications Router and Jisc Monitor, and the continued development of Counter compliant metrics through IRUS. RIOXX standards also are aligned with various UK repositories and with the work done for OpenAIRE Advance