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Open access and your funder

An increasing number of funding bodies now have policies in place that require grant holders to make any resulting publications open access. These policies are a condition of your research grant and it is important that you know how to comply. Failure to comply with your funder's policy may affect your eligibility for future funding. How you comply with your funder’s open access requirements will largely depend on the policy of the journal you are intending to publish in.
In addition to funder policies all Queen Mary researchers are affected by the Research Excellence Framework; see Open Access and the REF for more information. Please note that compliance with funder policy does not automatically mean compliance with the REF policy.

Funder requirements apply even if the research was only partially funded by that organisation. If your publication acknowledges support from more than one funder, you must ensure that all funder requirements are met.

 

The Queen Mary Open Access Fund is open to all current Queen Mary researchers and is primarily intended to cover the open access fees for research outputs that were unfunded or for which no other open access publishing funding is available.

This fund is managed by Library Services on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to the following eligibility criteria; these criteria are in line with other research funder’s open access policies:

  • Publication type must be either an original research article, review or conference paper
  • The author must be a current member of Queen Mary University of London staff or a current Postgraduate Research Student
  • The research must be published under a CC BY open access licence (a CC BY-NC licence may be permitted under exceptional circumstances)
  • The paper acknowledges that it is unfunded or funded by an organisation that does not provide additional funds for publishing
  • Only open access costs can be paid. Other publication costs, such as page and colour charges, are not covered by the fund
  • Support via the institutional fund is capped at £5,000 per paper (including VAT)
  • Monographs are not covered by the fund at present, but authors wishing to consider open access publication of monograph and other book-form outputs should contact Library Services

To make a request for support with open access fees or please fill in our Open Access Fees Request Form.

Summary

From 1st April 2022 all 'in scope' publications submitted to either a journal or conference proceedings produced as a result of research partly or wholly funded by UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) are subject to the UKRI Policy on Open Access.

Publications in scope of the policy

The policy applies to peer-reviewed research articles. This includes reviews and conference papers that are accepted for final publication in either a journal, conference proceeding with an international standards serial number (ISSN), or publishing platform.    

Monographs, book chapters and edited collections, will also be in-scope from 1st January 2024 Please see the UKRI Long form details section.

Publishing Requirements

You can make your article open access via one of two routes.

Route one
Publish your article open access in a journal or publishing platform that makes the version of record immediately open access via its website with a creative commons attribution (CC BY) licence or other permitted licence.*

*you can apply for an exception to use a creative commons no-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence from UKRI by filling in their licence exception form.

Route two
Publish your article in a subscription journal and deposit your author’s accepted manuscript in an institutional repository (Queen Mary Research Online) at the time of final publication with a CC BY or other permitted licence. A publisher embargo period on the manuscript is not permitted.

If intending to publish open access via a repository (route two), you must include this statement in the acknowledgement section of your manuscript and any submission cover letter or note, to ensure it is clear at the point of submission what licence you will apply to your author’s accepted manuscript:

"For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a creative commons attribution (CC BY) licence (where permitted by UKRI, ‘open government licence’ or ‘creative commons attribution no-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence’ may be stated instead) to any author accepted manuscript version arising."

If a publisher rejects your submission based on the inclusion of the statement or advises removal of the statement, contact openresearch@qmul.ac.uk for advice.

Include a data access statement in your article
You must also include a data access statement in your article, even where there is not data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible. 

Funding Eligibility for Open Access Fees

UKRI has provided the university with an open access block grant to support payment of open access fees for eligible articles. 

Articles eligible for support must be published in:

  • A fully Open Access journal that offers a CC BY licence. 
  • A journal that is included in a publisher transitional open access agreement or meets the requirement for a transformative journal (list of transformative journals)

To check if your chosen journal is eligible via either of these conditions you can use the online Journal Checker Tool(for more information about the Journal Checker Tool see our guide). You can also check our Publisher Open Access Agreements webpage to see which agreements you have access to. 

Please note the UKRI open access award can only be used for open access publishing fees. Other publishing costs (colour images, page over-length charges etc.) will not be met from the award. 

To make a request for support with open access fees or if you are unsure if your chosen journal is either compliant or eligible under the UKRI open access policy, please fill in our Open Access Fees Request Form.

Summary

From 1st January 2024 all 'in scope' Monographs, book chapters and edited collections produced as a result of research partly or wholly funded by UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) are subject to the UKRI Policy on Open Access. 

Publications in scope of the Longform Publications policy

The policy applies to Academic monographs, Book chapters and Edited collections. Definitions and clarifications of longform publications can be found in Annex 1 of the UKRI Policy on Open Access.

There is no requirement for monographs, book chapters and edited collections published before 1 January 2024 to be published open access.

Publishing Requirements

You can make your article open access via one of two routes.

Route one
Publish your monograph, book chapter or edited collection open access with a publisher that makes the version of record immediately available via its website with a creative commons attribution (CC BY) licence or other permitted licence.*

*you can apply for an exception to use a creative commons no-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence from UKRI by filling in their licence exception form.

To ensure the cost of publishing open access is met by the UKRI you must complete an application for funding. The application process is administered by the Open Research Services team in Library Services. UKRI will review each application on a case-by-case basis and decide whether to offer open access funding. If you wish to pursue open access publishing for your monograph, book chapter or edited collection please contact us at openresearch@qmul.ac.uk.

UKRI offer the following maximum levels of funding towards the cost of publishing open access. The maximum limits are as follow:

  • £10,000 (including VAT) for entire monographs and edited collections
  • £1,000 (including VAT) for book chapters

VAT is not charged in the UK for these models, but where VAT is chargeable, this is included in the maximum funding level.

To apply for funding via Route One please complete our online request form.

Route two

UKRI funded longform publications not published open access can met the UKRI open access policy requirements by the following route:

  • your final Version of Record or Author’s Accepted Manuscript must be free to view and download via an online publication platform, publisher’s website, or institutional or subject repository within a maximum of 12 months of publication
  • images, illustrations, tables and other supporting content should be included in the open access version, where possible
  • the open access version of your publication must have a Creative Commons licence, with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence preferred. An Open Government Licence is also permitted. (This requirement does not apply to third party materials included in your publication)

These requirements and definitions of in-scope and exempt types of publication are further detailed in the UKRI open access policy.

If you require more information on UKRI funded longform publications please contact the Open Research Services team at openresearch@qmul.ac.uk

Summary

This policy applies to journal articles submitted from 1st January 2021. For Wellcome-funded book chapters and monographs, the current policy will continue to apply.

If your research is funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust you must comply with their open access policy. Where there are multiple partners involved, all research articles supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must be compliant with this policy.

Requirements

All original, peer-reviewed research articles that are supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must:

  • be made open access through PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC by the official final publication date and be published under a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY), unless the Wellcome Trust has agreed, as an exception, to allow publication under a CC BY-ND licence.
  • include the following statement on all submissions of original research to peer-reviewed journals: 'This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.'
  • acknowledge Wellcome's support and include the grant reference number under which the reported research was funded.
  • include a statement explaining how other researchers can access any data, original software or materials underpinning the research.

Routes to compliance

1. Publish in a fully open access journal or platform that meets the Wellcome Trust's requirements.

2. Publish in a subscription journal that is part of a transformative agreement available to you through QMUL, or in a journal that has transformative journal status. The publisher takes responsibility for making the Version of Record freely available in Europe PMC at the time of publication, under a CC BY licence.

3. Publish in a subscription journal and retain the right to self-archive your Author Accepted Manuscript in EuropePMC with a creative commons attributions licence (CC BY 4.0) at the time of publication. Researchers must take responsibility for depositing their accepted manuscript in EuropePMC themselves using Europe PMC plus. When complying by this route, no article processing charge is payable to the publisher.

Researchers are required to use the following statement in their submitted manuscript:

'This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number xxxxx]. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.'

There is more information about these routes in the Wellcome Trust's guide to complying with the policyIf your publisher does not allow any of the above routes, then you will not be able to publish with them compliantly. 

Researchers should use the Journal Checker Tool checker to determine whether their journal of choice offers a compliant route (for more information about the Journal Checker Tool see our guide). 

Funding Eligibility for Open Access Fees

The Wellcome Trust has provided the university with an open access block grant to support payment of open access fees for eligible articles. 

Wellcome will no longer cover the cost of open access publishing in subscription journals (‘hybrid OA’).

Articles eligible for funding support must be either published in:

  • a fully OA journal that is listed in DOAJ and fulfils Plan S technical requirements
  • a journal that is covered by a transformative agreement available to you through QMUL, or a journal that has transformative journal status.

To check if a journal is eligible you can use the online Journal Checker Tool  (for more information about the Journal Checker Tool see our guide). You can also check our Publisher Open Access Agreements webpage to see which agreements QMUL has access to. 

Please note the Wellcome open access award can only be used for open access publishing fees. Other publishing costs (colour images, page over-length charges etc.) will not be met from the award. 

To make a request for support with open access fees or if you are unsure if your chosen journal is either compliant or eligible under the Wellcome open access policy, please fill in our Open Access Fees Request Form.

Summary

If you are funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) you must comply with their policy on open access.

Grantholders should ensure that an electronic copy of each primary research paper or non-commissioned review funded wholly or in part by BHF is made freely available in Europe PubMed Central as soon as possible and no later than six months after publication.

Requirements

  • The policy applies to primary research papers and non-commissioned reviews.
  • The policy does not apply to commissioned review articles or conference proceedings.
  • All full research articles and non-commissioned reviews arising from BHF-funded research should acknowledge them and state the relevant grant number. See Citing yourself, QMUL and your funder for more information.
  • The research must be deposited in Europe PMC immediately upon publication, or at the latest within six months of publication.

Gold open access

From 1st October 2020 BHF will provide a block grant to the University to cover the costs of article processing charges (APCs) for eligible papers. This fund is managed by Open Research Services. If your paper complies with the terms of BHF's policy you can apply for support to pay open access fees. See Apply for funding to pay APCs for more information.

These funds may be used to meet open access costs providing:

  • The article is made immediately open access on the date of publication.
  • The publisher deposits the published version, immediately on publication, to Europe PMC on the authors’ behalf.
  • The article is released under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY licence.

To make a request for support with open access fees or if you are unsure if your chosen journal is either compliant or eligible under the UKRI open access policy, please fill in our Open Access Fees Request Form.

Green open access

If a journal does not offer an immediate open access option, your article should still be made freely available in Europe PMC no later than six months after publication. If the journal offers a service to deposit your article in Europe PMC, you should choose this option. If not, you'll need to self-archive via Europe PMC plus

Authors are advised to check that their chosen journal's self-archiving policy allows for this. A small number of journals remain non-compliant with BHF's open access policy. If you wish to publish a paper in a journal that will not allow deposition in Europe PMC within six months of publication, a case must be made in advance to BHF, which will be granted only in exceptional circumstances.

Please refer to BHF's policy or contact them for further information: research@bhf.org.uk.

Summary

This policy applies to journal articles accepted for final publication on or after 1 January 2022.

As a CRUK-funded researcher, if you have an original primary article accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, you must comply with CRUK's open access policy.

Requirements

  • For articles accepted for final publication on or after 1 January 2022 CRUK require that your paper is made openly available in Europe PMC immediately on publication. (i.e. a 6-month embargo will not be permitted). 
  • If you've paid an article processing charge (APC) for the Europe PMC deposit, your paper must be published with a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY 4.0), so that it may be freely copied and reused (for example, for text- and data-mining purposes), providing that the original authors are properly credited. Other licences will not be compliant with your Grant Conditions.
  • Cancer Research UK will only fund APCs where the publisher is compliant with their policy. If you would like to check that the publisher of your chosen journal is compliant, search the SHERPA/FACT database. Select the name of the relevant journal and Cancer Research UK as your funder – as long as the results show at least one ‘tick’, the journal is compliant by that route.
  • Please also ensure that Cancer Research UK funding, including the grant reference number, is acknowledged on the paper.
  • At the time of submission for publication, provide Cancer Research UK with details of all publications arising from grants via their online manuscript submission form

Gold open access

CRUK provide a block grant to the University to cover the costs of article processing charges (APCs) for eligible papers. This fund is managed by Open Research Services. If your paper complies with the terms of CRUK's policy you can apply for support to pay open access fees. See Apply for funding to pay APCs for more information.

To make a request for support with open access fees or if you are unsure if your chosen journal is either compliant or eligible under the UKRI open access policy, please fill in our Open Access Fees Request Form.

Green open access

If a journal does not offer an immediate open access option, your article should still be made freely available in Europe PMC immediately on publication. If the journal offers a service to deposit your article in Europe PMC, you should choose this option. If not, you'll need to self-archive via Europe PMC plus

Please refer to CRUK's policy or contact them for further information: policies@cancer.org.uk.

Direct funding to support this funder's open access policy ended on 30th September 2020.

Please refer to Blood Cancer UK open access policy or contact them for further information: research@bloodcancer.org.uk.

Direct funding to support this funder's open access policy ended on 30th September 2020.

Parkinson's UK encourages grant applicants to include open access costs within their research grant applications.

Please refer to Parkinson's UK policy or contact them for further information: researchapplications@parkinsons.org.uk.

To comply with Versus Arthritis policy, authors should choose one of the two following options:

  • Self-archive your publication in Europe PubMed Central within six months of publication. 
  • Publish in an open access journal, which usually requires the payment of an article processing charge (APC).

Direct funding to support this funder's open access policy ended on 30th September 2020.

From 1st October 2020, authors requiring support to publish articles resulting from work funded by Versus Arthritis should apply directly to them via Grant Tracker.

Please refer to Versus Arthritis policy or contact them for further information: research@arthritisresearchuk.org.

European Research Council (ERC)

As of June 2012, it is the expectation of the European Research Council (ERC) that any publications resulting from projects receiving their funding should be open access. They have issued the following guidelines for academics working in the physical sciences and engineering:

  • Electronic copies of any research papers and monographs that are supported in whole, or in part, by ERC funding should be made publicly available as soon as possible, and no later than six months after the official publication date of the original article.
  • ERC funded researchers should make their publications available in open access using discipline-specific repositories. If there is no appropriate discipline specific repository, researchers should make their publications available in institutional repositories or on their own webpage. The recommended repository for Life Sciences is Europe PubMed Central and for Physical Sciences and Engineering Arxiv is recommended.
  • It is essential that primary data, as well as data-related products such as computer codes, are deposited in the relevant databases as soon as possible, preferably immediately after publication and in any case not later than six months after the date of publication.
  • ERC funded researchers are reminded that open access fees are eligible costs that can be charged against ERC grants.

These guidelines are subject to periodic review and may get updated. The ERC is currently reviewing the existing practices and infrastructures on open access publishing for researchers working in humanities and the social sciences, and will make recommendations in the future.

Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7)

Researchers funded by Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) projects must ensure open access to peer reviewed research articles resulting from funding in certain areas.

The policy applies to these research areas: Energy, Environment, Health, Information and Communication Technologies (Challenge 2: CognitiveSystems, Interaction, Robotics), Research Infrastructures (e-Infrastructures), Science in Society, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities.

Open FP7 Projects

Gold open access fees can be charged to project grants.

Green open access can be achieved by making papers available through QMRO within 6 months of publication (Energy, Environment, Health, Information and Communication Technologies, Research Infrastructures), or 12 months of publication (Science in Society, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities).

Closed FP7 Projects

The EC now provides some open access funding for closed FP7 projects. Researchers publishing in fully open access titles may be eligible to have their Gold open access fees paid subject to the following requirements:

  • Outputs must be published in fully open access titles (e.g. PLOS, BioMed Central).
  • The project must have closed on or after 1 January 2014.
  • Fees can also be paid for monographs, book chapters and conference proceedings.
  • A maximum of three publications per FP7 project will be funded.
  • Funding is capped at €2,000 per publication (€6,000 for monographs) - including VAT, where applicable.

Green open access can be achieved by making papers available through QMRO within 6 months of publication (Energy, Environment, Health, Information and Communication Technologies, Research Infrastructures), or 12 months of publication (Science in Society, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities).

See the FP7 Open Access Policy and the payment pilot webpage for more information.

Horizon 2020

Horizon 2020 grant holders must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed publications resulting from funded research.

Researchers can comply with the Horizon 2020 policy through Green or Gold open access.

Gold open access charges are eligible costs to Horizon 2020 grants. You will need to indicate expected costs in your grant proposal.

Gold open access

  • Pay the open access charges from your grant.
  • Deposit your final published version in an open access repository on publication.

When you deposit your paper in an open access repository, include the following information:

  • The terms ["European Union (EU)" and "Horizon 2020"] or ["Euratom" and “Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018"].
  • The name of the Horizon 2020 action, acronym and grant number.

Green open access

Provided your publisher's embargo is no longer than 6 months (12 for Social Sciences and Humanities), you can comply by depositing your final accepted version into an open access repository. This must be done ideally within 3 months of acceptance (but certainly no later than 3 months after first online publication). This will also make you compliant with the REF policy.

Summary

This policy applies to peer-reviewed articles describing NIHR funded research findings submitted on or after 1 June 2022. For articles submitted before 1 June 2022, please refer to the previous policy.

Publications in scope of the policy

The policy applies to all peer-reviewed research articles, including non-commissioned reviews and conference papers published in a journal or proceedings with an ISSN number, submitted for publication on or after 1 June 2022 and arising from:

Monographs (with the exception of NIHR Journals Library publications), book chapters, edited collections, or forms of non-peer-reviewed material, such as pre-prints, are considered out of scope of this policy.

Compliance

To comply with the policy, the most up to date Version of Record or the Author Accepted Manuscript of in-scope articles must be made freely available through PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC by the official final publication date, without any embargo period, and under a compliant licence.

Funded authors should establish if their chosen journal is compliant before submissionAuthors can use Sherpa Fact to identify if the journal they wish to publish in offers compliant publishing options under the NIHR open access policy.

There are two compliance routes:

The article should be made available through PubMed Central and Europe PMC. If an open access fee has been paid, a condition of the funding is that the publisher takes responsibility for this.

  • Publish in a subscription journal and provide immediate open access upon publication to the accepted manuscript.

Submissions to subscription journals must include the following text in the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission:

"For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence (‘Open Government Licence’ or where permitted by the NIHR, ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead) to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising".

The accepted version should be made available through PubMed Central and Europe PMC. This may be undertaken by the publisher or the author. Information on how to deposit can be found in the Europe PMC user guide.

NIHR provide a checklist to help authors comply with the policy.

Further requirements

In-scope research articles must include:

 

Funding for Open Access Fees

NIHR will pay reasonable fees required by a publisher to effect publication in line with the criteria of the NIHR open access policy. This will be managed by the grant holder.

From 1 June 2022 all eligible grant holders will be provided with an 'open access funding envelope' from which they can cover the costs of open access for a period extending to two years beyond the end point of their research funding.

Grant holders with awards issued before 1 June 2022 should use the open access budget included in their overall research costs to cover the costs of open access.

In the event that further open access funds are required once the allocated 'open access funding envelope' or budgeted open access costs have been spent, grant holders can apply for additional open access funds through an NIHR Open Access request form.

Further information

Authors can read the policy guidance for more information on how to comply with the policy, and the funding guidance for information on the terms and processes for accessing Open Access funding.

For any queries about the NIHR Open Access policy or related guidance please contact openaccess@nihr.ac.uk.

The Society is committed to the widest possible dissemination of research outputs through the awards it supports. 

All recipients of a Royal Society award are encouraged to publish peer-reviewed accepted articles and conference proceedings in open access journals. As a minimum, award holders are expected to follow green routes for open access by publishing in a journal which allows deposit of the accepted version in a repository providing free access with a maximum embargo of 12 months from the date of publication. The Society’s preference is for peer-reviewed publications to be freely accessible on publication to ensure the widest reach and maximum benefit to the scientific community.

See https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/grants/about-grants/.

The following funders also have open access requirements:

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
CERN
MNDA (Motor Neurone Disease Association)
World Health Organisation

You can check Sherpa Juliet, a searchable database of research funders who have registered open access requirements, for information on any other funders. The record will provide a summary of your funder's policy with links to further information online. Please note that if a funding body does not have any requirements registered with Sherpa no result will be shown. Try your funder's website or contact Open Research Services for guidance.

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