If your research is funded by an external organisation such as the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Research Councils or charities such as the British Heart Foundation, you may have an obligation to publish your work Open Access. Failure to do so may affect your ability to apply for new funding in the future.
Check the requirements of your funder and make sure that you comply with their Open Access policies.
The University policy applies to all staff and students publishing peer reviewed research.
The University believes that decisions about where research is published should be made by the authors. However, the following should be noted in relation to Open Access:
This was introduced by Research England for the 2021 REF. It continues to apply to the current REF cycle (2029) until a new REF OA policy is announced (expected timescale late 2024).
The policy requires final versions of journal articles, and conference proceedings with an ISSN, to be deposited in an Open Access repository no later than 3 months after acceptance for publication, in order to be eligible for the Outputs component of the Research Excellence Framework (REF).
Outputs which have been deposited within 3 months of acceptance will comply with the policy, either by meeting the policy’s Open Access requirements or will be covered by its exceptions.
Even if your article is published as gold Open Access, you should still make sure that you upload the article to CentAUR as soon as possible after acceptance.
It applies to authors whose publications result from funding from UKRI:
Further information on how to comply with the policy for Journal Articles are below. For Monographs, Book Chapters and Edited Collections see the Open Access for Books Libguide.
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Route 1. (Gold Open Access) Publish your article as Gold Open Access with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. The Version of Record must be available for access and download as soon as it is published. Route 1 includes publication in:
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Route 2. (Green Open Access) Publish your article in a subscription journal and deposit the Author's Accepted Manuscript (or the Version of Record if it is permitted by the publisher) in the institutional repository, CentAUR. It must have a CC BY licence. No embargoes are permitted. |
Apply licensing requirements
UKRI requires the Open Access version of a research article to be published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This applies to both Route 1 and Route 2.
For Route 2 article submissions, the following text must be included 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 ‘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
There are exceptions to this licence:
UKRI requires in-scope research articles to include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible.
Some research councils have further requirements regarding deposit in specialist repositories and making preprints available. Check the terms and conditions of the offer document.
Under Horizon 2020, beneficiaries of ERC grants must ensure Open Access (free of charge, online access for any user) to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to its results. The detailed requirements on Open Access to publications are contained in the Horizon 2020 ERC Model Grant Agreement (Article 29.2).
All grant holders. It applies to:
1. Ensure that the publisher offers an Open Access option compliant with the Gold or Green routes defined below.
2. Check that you have funds to cover the Open Access publishing costs. Charges are eligible for reimbursement from the grant during the duration of the project. If the grant has closed you will need to comply with the funder's policy via the Green Open Access route.
If funds are not available, investigate publication on the dedicated platform, Open Research Europe. This platform has been funded by the European Commission for 4 years to publish research from funders who received a Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe grant. Researchers who received funding are not charged an APC for publication.
3. Archive your peer-reviewed manuscript in a suitable repository as soon as accepted for publication. ERC strongly encourages ERC funded researchers to use discipline-specific repositories for their publications. Also, deposit it in CentAUR.
4. Make the final version of the article Open Access, by either the Green or Gold Open Access route:
Green Open Access route - archive a final version in a repository as soon as accepted for publication. The maximum embargo periods permitted are 6 months for STEM disciplines, and 12 months for Humanities and Social Sciences.
Gold Open Access route - publish it as Open Access on the publisher's website, and archive a copy in CentAUR. It should be available immediately, without embargo. Authors are encouraged to retain copyright and grant an adequate licence to publishers e.g. CC BY. The minimum requirement is that the licence must allow people to read, download and print an article.
If the repository allows for this, beneficiaries of ERC grants are strongly encouraged to ensure that the bibliographic metadata also includes additional information such as the European Research Council (ERC) as funding source, the grant number, the title of the action and its acronym, the publication date, and the length of the embargo period (if applicable). For ease of tracking, beneficiaries should include the digital object identifier for the 'European Research Council' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781) in the funding acknowledgement field in their metadata, in addition to the digital object identifier for 'Horizon 2020' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100007601).
In Horizon 2020 the European Commission has been encouraging Open Access to and reuse of digital research data generated by Horizon 2020 projects through the Open Research Data Pilot (ORD Pilot), following FAIR data principles - all research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR)
Research funded by the British Heart Foundation should be made freely available to the broader scientific community and to the public to maximise its reach and benefit.
All Grantholders funded wholly or in part by the British Heart Foundation. It applies to:
Exclusions: The University receives a small block grant from the British Heart Foundation to cover Open Access publication charges. The terms of the grant do not cover charges associated with commissioned or invited review articles, conference proceedings, editorials, letters or commentaries and any other charges associated with publication, such as page and colour charges.
Gold Open Access route
The published version of record must be immediately available without restriction on the publisher website and deposited in Europe PMC. The article must have a CC BY licence. Deposition in Europe PMC is usually handled by the publisher of your article but you should check that this will be included in their processes.
Green Open Access route
The author final version of the article after peer review must be available without restriction in Europe PMC no later than 6 months after publication. If the publisher offers to deposit it, select this option. If not, then the author should upload it via the Europe PMC submission system.
It is a condition of the grant that Grant Holders acknowledge BHF support by quoting “British Heart Foundation” followed by the award reference number in the appropriate section of all publications arising from BHF funded research.
The overarching aim of the Open Access (OA) policy is to make sure that knowledge and discoveries resulting from Wellcome Trust funding are shared and used in a way that maximises their benefit to health.
Grant recipients whose publications include original research that is funded in whole, or in part, by Wellcome. It applies to:
Use the Journal Checker Tool to check if your preferred journal enables you to comply with the Wellcome Trust policy and to decide which of the routes described below that you should take.
1. Ensure that the publisher supports the following Open Access criteria:
2. Ensure that the journal accepts that the Author Accepted Manuscripts arising from submissions from Wellcome-funded researchers will already be licensed under a prior CC BY licence
3. Ensure that you have funds to cover the cost of any Open Access publishing charges.
There are three publishing routes you can follow to comply with Wellcome’s policy. Routes 1 and 2 are preferred.
Route 1: Publish in a fully Open Access (pure gold) journal or platform.
Route 2: Publish in a hybrid (subscription) journal through a transformative arrangement that is available to you via your organisation.
Route 3: Publish in a subscription journal and take responsibility for making the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) freely available from Europe PMC at the time of publication.
Grant holders must also 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.'
All research articles supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must include a statement explaining how other researchers can access any data, original software or materials underpinning the research. This is in line with the funder's data, software and materials management and sharing policy.
All Wellcome-funded researchers are strongly encouraged to:
Where there is a significant public health benefit to preprints being shared widely and rapidly, such as a disease outbreak, the posting of preprints is required.
Authors should consult the Wellcome Trust web pages. These include advice on definitions, deposit processes, exceptions and waivers, meeting Open Access costs, step-by step processes and links to forms and templates.
The Leverhulme Trust does not have a mandate for Open Access and has made no stipulations regarding mandatory archiving or Open Access publication for grant holders (last checked September 2024).
It is possible to include Open Access charges in your budget when you apply for funding from the Trust. If you need help in estimating APCs for planned outputs, please contact the oarequests team.
The Open Access charges must be incurred during the period of the grant. If the costs are not incurred during the life of the grant, funds allocated for Open Access must be returned to the Trust.
The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has an Open Access Policy that is based on 4 principles
Many funders and sponsors have requirements or have expressed a preference that research publications resulting from their grants are made Open Access. The agreements that you have signed will specifiy what you need to do.
Use SHERPA/JULIET to find summaries of and links to funders' Open Access policies