Open Access: Research Funders

The British Heart Foundation supports immediate, unrestricted (‘Gold’) open access to primary research articles and non-commissioned reviews and has provided block grant funding to research institutions to support open access fees.

To comply with the BHF Open Access Policy, authors must ensure that every paper acknowledging BHF funding is deposited in Europe PMC, to be made freely available as soon as possible and no later than 6 months after publication. Either the Author's Accepted Manuscript or the published version is permissible.

Many journals will deposit the version of record in Europe PMC immediately on publication, if the author has chosen a Gold OA route.

In addition, you should deposit your accepted manuscript in Worktribe, so that the University's record of its authors' research output is as complete as possible.

Cancer Research UK Policy on Open Access (Oct 2022):

If you have a research paper accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, you and your Host Institution must ensure that the following requirements are met:

1. An electronic copy of the final paper must be made freely available in Europe PubMed Central at the time of final publication.
2. The open access version of your research paper must be published with a CC-BY 4.0 licence.

The above requirements can be met through the following routes:

Route 1 ['gold OA']: Publish in a fully open access or hybrid journal which makes the Version of Record (VoR) freely available immediately on publication. Typically, the journal deposits the final publication in Europe PMC on the authors' behalf. [Authors can also self-deposit in EPMC].

The University of Hull does not receive an Open Access Block Grant from CRUK. Researchers can pay any article processing charges incurred using any available underspend on their active CRUK response mode grant.

When no funding is available, researchers are directed to:

Route 2 ['green' OA]: Publish in a subscription journal and make the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) available immediately on publication . Typically, the author self-deposits the AAM on Europe PMC at the time of final publication. [University of Hull authors should also deposit their accepted manuscript in Worktribe].  CRUK encourages, but does not require, a CC-BY 4.0 licence.

In March 2021 the European Commission launched Open Research Europe (ORE), its own multi-disciplinary open access publishing platform for all types of article, including Registered Reports, Data Notes, Brief Reports and more.  ORE articles are indexed in bibliographic databases including Scopus and Dimensions, and crawled by Google Scholar.

All researchers involved in projects or grants funded by the European Commission (including Horizon, H2020, Euratom, MSCA and others) are eligible to publish with ORE free of charge, to maximise the audience for their research without paying publishers' article processing charges.  Submissions are published rapidly as pre-prints for open peer review (authors can suggest their own reviewers).

Horizon 2020

H2020-funded authors “must provide open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications that stem from project activities, immediately or otherwise within 6/12 months of publication where publisher embargoes apply.”  

The European Commission's "Guidelines to the Rules on Open Access" (2017)  for Horizon 2020-funded projects do not express a preference for for gold or green as a means of complying with this obligation.

Jisc's Frank Manista has published a helpful summary of Open Access Requirements for Horizon 2020-Funded Projects (April 2019).

See also RDM Policies for a summary of Horizon criteria for open data.

Horizon Europe

The UK Research Office advises that Horizon Europe beneficiaries must ensure immediate Open Access to their peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to their results, no later than the publication date and through trusted repositories.

The repository copy must have the latest version of CC-BY licence or equivalent.  For monographs and other long-text formats, the licence may exclude commercial uses and derivative works (e.g. CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND).

In a change from Horizon 2020 rules, funding will only be made available for publication fees in fully open access venues (also known as '100% gold').  Fees for 'hybrid' journals (journals which have both paywall and OA publishing options) will not be covered.  However, authors whose chosen journal is ineligible will be able to comply with Horizon OA criteria by making their accepted manuscript openly available without embargo, or by publishing their findings as a preprint ahead of submission to a journal.

 For further details, see Annex 5 of the Annotated Model Grant Agreement for EU Funding Programmes 2021-2027 (version 1.0, 1 Apr 2023): Specific Rules on Communication, Dissemination and Visibility.

NIHR's updated Open Access Policy came into force for all peer-reviewed research outputs arising from NIHR-funded research studies submitted for publication on or after 1 June 2022.  

• The policy applies to research articles, reviews and conference papers arising from NIHR-funded Programmes, Personal Awards and the Global Health Research Portfolio.  Long-form publications such as monographs, chapters and edited collections are out of scope.
• Works in scope must be published with immediate Open Access and a CC-BY licence (or CC-BY-ND by exception). 
• Articles must include a Data Sharing Statement.
• All eligible research award contracts issued on or after 1 June 2022 will have an open access funding envelope allocated to them on top of the Approved Cost of the award, which is ring-fenced for open access costs.  Further guidance.
• Awards with contracts issued before 1 June 2022 should use the open access budget included in their overall research costs, or request additional open access funding if necessary.
• Additional funding can be requested up to 2 years after the contract completion date. Extended access to the fund for up to 5 years post contract completion will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• If the article is published in a paywalled journal, the author must retain the right to self-archive their accepted manuscript in their institutional repository, with a CC-BY licence.  A Rights Retention Statement for the author to include with their submitted manuscript is stated within Principle 2 of the Policy.
• The published article or the accepted manuscript must also be made available through PubMed Central and Europe PMC by the "official final publication date".  Where NIHR money has been used to pay a publisher's article processing charge, compliance is the responsibility of the publisher.

An email address is provided for queries: openaccess@nihr.ac.uk.

The Plan S Open Access initiative was published in 2018 by cOAlition S, a consortium of global, national and disciplinary research funders, to accelerate scholarly publishers' transition to open access models by setting stringent OA criteria for funded authors. Early members include the World Health Organisation, Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation. UKRI is supportive of Plan  S aims.

Key principles of Plan S,  applicable to grants arising from new calls Jan 2021-:

• Any funded research article must be published in an open access journal or platform, or made available without embargo in a repository which meets technical criteria (such as Worktribe)
• COAlition S funders will cover any charges associated with publishing in a fully open access journal, providing these are transparent
• However, these funders will not pay for open access in a 'hybrid' journal (part-paywalled), unless it is in the process of transforming its business model to fully open
• The author or their institution must retain their copyright, by providing a Rights Retention Statement to the publisher if necessary.
• The output must have a Creative Commons licence or equivalent open licence.  CC-BY is preferred.
• A policy for books and chapters is in preparation
• Funders will value the "intrinsic merit" of research outputs, and not the publisher or distribution channel
• Compliance will be monitored, and sanctions applied.

Researchers with a cOAlition S funder can identify whether a journal is compliant with Plan S principles using the Journal Checker Tool.  COAlition S has also compiled a directory of major publishers' journal titles which meet Plan S 'transformative' criteria.

The Wellcome Trust Open Access policy is aligned with Plan S:

• All research articles must be published under a Creative Commons ‘attribution’ licence (CC-BY),  and made freely available through PubMed Central and Europe PMC by the official publication date.


• In addition, a statement explaining how readers can access any underlying data or software must be published with the research.


• Wellcome will provide grant-holders with funding to cover any open access article processing charges incurred,  providing the journal is a) fully open access,  or b) in transition to full open access through what’s known as a ‘transformative agreement’ with subscribing institutions.   The Plan S Journal Checker Tool can be used to establish whether Wellcome will cover any author fees in your chosen journal.


• If you wish to publish in a journal which does not offer open access under these terms, you can comply with Wellcome’s policy by depositing your ‘accepted manuscript’ in Worktribe for immediate open access, with a CC-BY licence.


• Include Wellcome's Rights Retention Statement (stated in the Policy) with your submitted manuscript, to indicate to your publisher that you will be following Wellcome's terms re open access.

To request Wellcome funding for an APC, follow the instructions for 'Organisations not in receipt of a block grant'.

All research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal and are supported by the Award should be made open access within 6 months of publication... The Charity encourages the use of the CC-BY license for all journal publications. (Yorkshire Cancer Research Publishing and Open Access Policy, Sept 2022).

Funding to pay article processing charges associated with 'gold' open access is made available through YCR's Publication Costs Award Scheme - apply through the YCR Flexi-Grant portal.  (NB any VAT incurred will not be covered).

If your target publisher does not offer gold OA with a CC-BY licence, you can comply with the policy by depositing your accepted manuscript in Worktribe ('green' open access), with an embargo of no more than 6 months. Authors are asked to insert the following phrase in their submitted manuscript:

"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”.

Research England has advocated the use of quality-related (QR) research funding to support Gold Open Access APC payments which are not associated with an externally-funded project.

The University of Hull has not adopted an institution-wide policy on covering the costs of APCs; funding may be available at Faculty level.