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Open Access policy

wellcome trust open access policy

Wellcome requires all research papers to be freely available under a CC-BY licence from Europe PMC at the point of publication, and to include a data sharing statement.

The full policy can be found on the Wellcome Trust website. The Bodleian OA website also has detailed information about how to comply.

Does this apply to my publication?

This policy applies to original, peer reviewed research papers. See here for information about publishing books and monographs. Protocols, reviews and meta-analyses do not have to comply with the policy, but APCs can be paid from the block grant if published in a fully OA journal.

This policy applies to your publication if the salary of any of the authors comes (wholly or partly) from a WT grant, or if the research was supported by a WT grant, including e.g. using the WIN labs, IT facilities, or core staff support. This will be the case for almost all work done at WIN.

If your paper acknowledges the WIN centre grant, the policy always applies. Listing WIN as your affiliation only does not necessarily mean the policy applies.  

The policy does not apply if you are new to Oxford and publishing work completed fully at your old institution. If you are a minor co-author on a publication by an external collaborator that does not acknowledge the WIN grant or any other WT grants, the policy does not apply, unless your salary is funded by a WT grant.

What do I need to do?

Before writing your paper:

  1. Check compliance of the journal(s) you want to consider through the Journal Checker Tool. APC fees can only be paid for journals that are either fully OA, or have a Transformative Agreement with the corresponding author's institution (see here if the corresponding author is not at Oxford). If your journal is not compliant, you will need to self-deposit your paper (the 'Green route' below). See here for examples of how to interpret different Journal Checker results.
  2. Note that submission charges, page charges and colour charges can not be paid by the university's Wellcome block fund or from Wellcome grants. If you are choosing a journal that has those charges, make sure that you have alternative funding to cover them (for example a GL account).

Before submitting:

  1. Include all mandatory information in your manuscript:
    1. Include all relevant grants with their reference numbers, including WIN and (for human studies) the BRC, in the acknowledgements. See here for template text.
    2. Include a Data Sharing Statement in the acknowledgements. (See bottom of this page for resources on sharing data, software and other material).
    3. Include the Rights Retention Text in the acknowledgements as well as in your cover letter, to notify the publisher and reader that you are applying a CC-BY licence to your manuscript:

“This research was funded in whole or in part by [Funder] [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.”

    When your paper is accepted:

    1. Ensure that your paper is immediately freely available through Europe PMC. You have two options to do this:
      1. Gold Route: You pay an APC fee to the journal to publish your paper Open Access, from a Wellcome 'block grant' held by the central university. Paying from this block grant is only possible if your journal is compliant, as determined by the Journal Checker in step 1 under 'Before writing' above. You can apply online for payment of the APC via the Bodleian OA team. Usually the OA team handles payment directly with the publisher, so do not request an invoice yourself unless asked to do so.
      2. Green Route: You do not pay an APC fee, but deposit your paper yourself in Europe PMC as soon as it is published. Including the Rights Retention Text in your paper gives you the right to do this. The Green Route is only relevant if you are publishing in a hybrid journal; one that publishes both OA and non-OA papers. If your journal is fully OA, you have to publish Gold OA and pay the APC.
    2. When filling in your publisher's forms, choose a CC-BY licence, without -ND, -NC or other derivatives. In certain circumstances you can request a CC-BY-ND licence by exception.
    3. Deposit your paper in the Oxford Research Archive (ORA) via Symplectic (also called 'Act on Acceptance'). This is not a Wellcome Trust requirement, but means your paper can be included in the REF.

     Click here for a visual 'decision tree' diagram of these steps.

    NIHR (BRC) Open Access Policy

    WIN researchers for whom the majority of their research costs are funded by one of the Oxford BRC's should ensure they also meet the NIHR Open Access policy. The requirements for these in-scope publications are very similar to those of the Wellcome Trust: peer-reviewed original research articles must be made freely available through Europe PMC at the point of publication.

    Peer-reviewed research articles which are otherwise out of scope (e.g. NIHR Infrastructure research studies with minority NIHR funding), but which acknowledge NIHR support/funding must be deposited and made freely accessible through Europe PMC, as soon as possible, but no later than 12 months post the official final publication date.

    The policy does not apply to protocols, commissioned reviews, and book chapters. 

    A step-by-step guide to compliance is available on the NIHR website and Oxford-specific information and template text can be found on the Oxford Open Access pages. APCs for NIHR-funded publications are paid from the grant itself, rather than a university-administered block fund. Additional funds can be requested from NIHR if necessary. Please contact admin@win.ox.ac.uk for help with paying APCs.

    Where can I get help?

    If you have any questions, feel free to contact: 

    The Bodleian APC team: apc@bodleian.ox.ac.uk 

    For OA publishing at WIN: Kaitlin Krebs and Iske Bakker at admin@win.ox.ac.uk

    For general questions about Open Science and sharing research: open@win.ox.ac.uk

    You can find out more about sharing data, software, tasks and analysis pipelines on the WIN Open Science Community pages, Wellcome Open Research, and Research Data Oxford.

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