Wellcome Trust
Wellcome announced a revised open access policy to apply to research articles submitted for publication from 1 January 2021.
New Open Access Policy
The Wellcome Trust have announced a revised open access policy to apply to research articles submitted for publication from 1 January 2021. As a result, the University has changed its policies on whether or not they can cover researchers’ publication costs. For 2022-23 the Wellcome has allocated the University a block grant to support researchers to comply with their Open Access policy. All original, peer-reviewed research articles that are supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must be:
- deposited in PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC by the official final publication date, and
- published under a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY).
Authors 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.'
How to make your article open access
- When you get an article accepted for publication please send a copy to your local administrator following the usual process. The publication will be deposited in Pure, and if applicable, the Library will deposit in Europe PubMed Central as well. It will be helpful to include details of the research funder and grant award number if it is not already listed in the acknowledgements section of the paper.
- If your chosen journal requires payment then the Open Access team then please submit a claim via the Journal article open access claim form and we will check details then get back to you with your open access options. We aim to reply within 48 hours, but if you have an urgent query let us know and we'll do our best to reply sooner.
- Before placing an order for paid open access with the publisher please ensure that you have confirmation that funding is available, otherwise you will be liable for costs and will have to find an alternative source of funding.
Your Open Access options
Generally speaking there are three routes that are available to you to make your research open access. The default route is Green OA which you will automatically follow if you carry out step one above.
If you have published in a traditional subscription journal, with a paid open access option, the University will not pay the publication charges. Instead you can deposit the paper in Europe PubMed Central for free which will comply with the Wellcome open access policy. You will need the following information to hand:
1. Author's Accepted Mansucript - not the publisher's PDF
2. Grant Award information - e.g. 222228/Z/20/Z
3. Any Supplementary material that has also been submitted to the journal
If a manuscript is submitted correctly, and is reviewed promptly, the process can take as little as two weeks. Some more information can be found on the Europe PMC website:
Europe PMC manuscript submission user guide
The deposit process is really simple, but if you have any problems please contact openaccess@ed.ac.uk with the information above and we can do this on your behalf.
If you have published in a fully open access journal the University will cover associated article processing charges from the Wellcome block grant. A searchable database of journals that we can cover open access charges can be found here:
Directory of Open Access Journals
We will guide you through the options to pick if you let us know about the publication:
Journal article open access claim form
Once you have confirmation that funds are available then you can go ahead with publication and the Library will arrange payment, either via invoice or through an institutional billing agreement
If you have published in a journal where the University has a ‘Read & Publish’ deal and you are the corresponding author the article should automatically be made open access by the publisher for no extra charge. A list of publishers is available here:
Current 'Read & Publish' agreements
Each publisher has a different process, but the normal proceedure on the publishers web site is to confirm your affiliation as The University of Edinburgh and indicate your funding and the submission will be authorised by the Library.
Scholarly Communications Team
Contact details
- Email: scholcomms@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
Information Services
Floor F East, Argyle House
3 Lady Lawson Street- City
- Edinburgh
- Post Code
- EH3 9DR
Availability
You can book a one-to one video consultation with an expert from our team. If you want to find out more about open access (journals, funding, policies etc ), Copyright & Intellectual Property, General publishing activities (request an ISBN or DOI), or research metrics (using Web Of Science or Scopus) please contact our team via email to book a session at a time that suits you.