Depositing your Wellcome-funded research

If you’re funded by Wellcome, you must make the results of your research freely available to comply with our open access policy. This applies if you’re wholly or partly funded by us.

Depositing your research articles 

No further action is required to ensure compliance with our open access policy if the journal in which you are publishing your Wellcome-funded research:

  • makes the Version of Record (the final publisher's version) for the publication freely available under a Creative Commons, Attribution licence (CC BY) immediately on publication
  • deposits the article in PMC/Europe PMC on the author’s behalf.

If the publisher does not provide this service, you must self-archive the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in Europe PMC.

By applying a CC BY licence to all AAMs (that arise from submissions to peer-reviewed journals), authors keep the necessary intellectual property rights to self-archive the AAM in this way. This is irrespective of any later agreement signed between the authors and the publisher.

Europe PMC plus

Manuscript files are submitted to Europe PMC – via Europe PMC plus – by the author or anyone given access to the author's files (for example, administrative personnel, graduate students, librarians).

To submit a manuscript to Europe PMC, the author or administrator should create a user account on the Europe PMC plus website.

View a user guide on the submission process on the Europe PMC plus website.

Approval

Approval of the PDF receipt and web version of the manuscript requires review and authorisation.

This is usually given by the Principal Investigator (PI) of the grant linked to the publication, but it can also be done by authors on the publication.

In cases where research has been undertaken by staff other than the PI (for example, research assistants), it might be more practical to grant approving rights to the actual author of the paper – not the named PI.

Once approved, the citation in PubMed – and the full text in PMC and Europe PMC – will cite the authors as listed in the manuscript.

What, when and how

The version of the paper that should be archived is the Author Accepted Manuscript that is:

  • accepted for journal publication, and
  • includes all modifications from the publishing peer-review process.

It should be archived when the Version of Record is made available online or in issue.

When self-archiving, the publisher's PDF version should not be deposited.

All author depositions should be made via Europe PMC plus.

Depositing your monographs and book chapters 

Authors of monographs or book chapters funded by Wellcome must use the deposit form to archive work for inclusion in Europe PMC and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Bookshelf.

Read more about how to use the deposit form.

To deposit a journal article please use Europe PMC plus.

Differentiating between book series and journals

It may be unclear whether your work is being published in a journal or as part of a book series.

Some journals indexed in MEDLINE are marketed as book series. However, we count these as journals because all publications indexed by MEDLINE have been submitted for indexing as journals by the publisher.

Articles published within such a series should be deposited in PMC and licensed under the Creative Commons, Attribution licence (CC BY).

If you’re still unsure, you can check the publication status or email openaccess@wellcome.org.

Using the deposit form

The copyright holder or their representative must complete the monograph and book chapter deposit form.

To complete the form you will need the following:

  • relevant Wellcome grant number or grantholder name
  • full text monograph or book chapter file(s), plus associated metadata files if available (this should be the final version of your monograph or book chapter)
  • licence details of the publication
  • embargo release date, if applicable.

If you have any questions or need help completing the form, please email openaccess@wellcome.org.

Depositing in OAPEN

Wellcome is collaborating with Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN).

OAPEN will automatically add open access Wellcome-funded books in PubMed Bookshelf and Europe PMC to its collection.

More information 

Contact us 

Contact us if you have a question about open access.

openaccess@wellcome.org

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