Our policy on open access
We believe that free access to and unrestricted re-use of published research is the best way to share and build upon new knowledge and ideas.
We believe that free access to and unrestricted re-use of published research is the best way to share and build upon new knowledge and ideas.
We’re dedicated to improving the lives of patients with all types of blood cancer, including leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Our life-saving work is focused on finding causes, improving diagnosis and treatments, and running groundbreaking clinical trials for all blood cancer patients.
We want to get the most patient benefit out of the investments we make in research. We believe that free access to and unrestricted re-use of published research is the best way to share and build upon new knowledge and ideas. It'll allow our researchers to build communities and share understanding so we can drive smarter, faster diagnosis and inspire new treatments and better care.
We:
We provide designated funds to support the payment of article processing charges (APCs). We're working in partnership with a number of leading medical research charities to do this, by forming the Charity Open Access Fund (COAF).
This pilot fund will enable a greater number of publications supported by us to be made immediately available to the public at the point of publication. This fund will be available to a number of UK institutions.
Authors should contact their host institution to access this fund. Researchers who receive funding from us, but who aren't based at an institution that receives support from the COAF, may use any unspent grant money to pay for APCs or contact us to discuss their situation. Alternatively, authors can comply with our policy by self-archiving their paper in Europe PMC within six months of publication*, if the publisher permits.
Our open access policy was last updated on 1 May 2015 and will be kept under review.
* We became a member of Europe PMC on 1 May 2015, allowing publications funded by us to be self-archived by the author from this time. For research papers published between 1 October 2014 and 1 May 2015 and for which no open access fee was paid, the six-month timeframe can be waived, although we encourage authors to self-archive in Europe PMC as soon as possible. Research papers published after 1 May 2015 should be made available through Europe PMC as soon as possible and, in any event, within six months of the journal publisher's official date of final publication.
** Researchers can determine which publishers are compliant with this policy by referring to the SHERPA/FACT database and checking against the Wellcome Trust’s policy, which has the same stipulations.
*** This requirement applies only to original research papers submitted for publication from 1 October 2014, where our funds have been used to meet an article processing charge. Please refer to Wellcome Trust’s CC-BY FAQs for more information.