This page explains the options for authors with external funding and those without funding for achieving Open Access for books.
Most publishers fund Open Access publishing by charging authors a book (BPC) or chapter (CPC) processing charge. Some publishers recover costs through other means and do not charge a fee to authors.
The University has no central fund to pay Open Access book publishing costs, except for a small competitive fund for high scoring REF outputs.
Please make sure that you know the full cost of an Open Access fee (including VAT), who will be funding it and that you have their agreement, before you commit to a publisher. Recent BPCs charged to researchers at the University have ranged from £5,500 to £15,000.
Go to the Policies page to for summaries of the policies with which you should comply.
If you have a UKRI grant you can apply for funds from a central UKRI Open Access fund for monographs, edited collections and book chapters in scope of the UKRI Open Access policy for longform publications. The maximum amount available from UKRI for Open Access publishing costs is:
For monographs and edited collections (but not chapters) you can include up to £2,000 for rights clearance costs within these limits; however, you should use your grant for these costs by default so that you leave the maximum amount available to you from the UKRI Open Access fund to cover your BPC.
There is no central fund in the University for top-ups. If your publisher's charges will or may exceed the UKRI limit, you may choose to provide the additional funds (e.g. from your School) or to seek an alternative route to achieving UKRI compliant Open Access. If this applies to you, please contact oarequests@reading.ac.uk for advice.
Complete the Library's UKRI Open Access books request form. The Library will then register the application with UKRI for confirmation of eligibility (stage 1) and will inform you whether or not UKRI will provide Open Access funds. Please DO NOT commit to paying an Open Access charge BEFORE you receive confirmation from the Library that UKRI has agreed to provide funds that you requested. Once published, the Library will claim the funds from UKRI (stage 2)
1. Check that your preferred publisher offers a compliant route to Open Access:
2. Check that your chosen publisher offers an affordable route to Open Access. The maximum amount that UKRI will provide is £10,000 (incl VAT) for a monograph or £1,000 (incl VAT) for a chapter.
3. Inform any co-authors or collaborators (such as the editor of a collection that you are contributing to, or the contributors if you are the editor) that you need to comply UKRI’s Open Access requirements.
If your preferred publisher does not offer a compliant or affordable route, try to find a different publisher before opting for an exemption. If the publisher charges exceed the UKRI limit, ask them to reduce it. For support with negotiations or to apply an exemption , please contact oarequests@reading.ac.uk.
4. Complete the Library's UKRI Open Access books funding request form to request funds to cover Open Access publisher charges. Do this before you commit to the publisher. The Library will then contact UKRI on your behalf and then inform you of UKRI’s decision.
5. Inform your publisher about the amount of funding that UKRI has agreed. The Library will raise the PO with the publisher and will organise payment of the invoice up to the UKRI limit, unless you have provided an internal project code on the request form to which the Library can charge amounts above this.
6. Inform oarequests@reading.ac.uk that your book or chapter is now published
7. Add it to CentAUR
Open Access publication costs can be paid from the European Commission [Horizon Europe] grant but must be claimed within its lifetime.
If you have a Wellcome Trust grant, the Wellcome Trust has funds available for the payment of publishers’ Open Access processing charges but do not pay publishers directly. Please see Wellcome guidance about requesting Open Access funding. To request funds you will need to contact the Wellcome Trust and also OArequests@reading.ac.uk with details of your Wellcome Trust contacts and publisher contacts. The University will pay the publisher, then claim back the costs from Wellcome.
Use the Sherpa Juliet tool to find summaries of funder's Open Access requirements and for a link to their policy.
To find out about your funder's specific requirements and funds available for Open Access publishing always check the terms of the grant in your grant offer letter.
If you do not have access to funds to cover Open Access publishing charges for monographs, book chapters and edited collections, you will need to publish traditionally in hard copy and then deposit in CentAUR as much of the AAM as permitted by the publisher. Many publishers permit this for a small percentage of your book, such as a single chapter. They usually request an embargo on the version in CentAUR for a period of time (e.g. 12 months) after publication. When the embargo expires it will be freely available from CentAUR. This route to Open Access is sometimes called Green Open Access and does not incur a fee.
Check you publisher's policy to find out what you can deposit in CentAUR and whether an embargo is required.
Go directly to your publisher's website or use the Jisc search tool, Open Access for Books, for a summary of your publisher's Open Access options and a link to their website.
Some publishers do not charge authors a fee to publish Open Access because they recover the cost of publishing in other ways, for example by print sales or collective donations paid by institutions. These publishing models are sometimes referred to as Diamond Open Access.
A small number of university presses publish their own researchers' books for free and this may extend to work that you may be co-authoring with those researchers.
Another approach is to charge a fee for immediate Open Access or to provide delayed Open Access for free after a number of years.
These publishers are identified on the Publishers page in this guide.
The University has a small competitive fund to support the Open Access publishing costs for high scoring REFable monographs by unfunded researchers. Edited collections and book chapters are out of scope of the fund.
Criteria for requesting funding from the University's Open Access monograph fund, all apply:
There is no set limit for each request, but the amount that you ask for will be a factor that is considered as part of the request. Where possible you should include contributions from your School or Research Division.
A call for applications will be emailed to researchers in the early autumn. Requests will be assessed annually in December by our Open Access Monographs Panel and the results will be communicated to you as soon as possible after this.
To request funding, please complete the Open Access monograph funding request form. NB Applications should be submitted no sooner than 12 -18 months before the expected publication date.
The panel is responsible for managing the University's small Open Access monograph fund and for reviewing applications to the fund from University of Reading staff.
Panel members are: