Published outputs that arise from our funding must be open and accessible to everyone.
The overarching aim of our open access (OA) policy is to make sure that knowledge and discoveries resulting from our funding are shared and used in a way that maximises their benefit to health.
Providing free, online access to published research will:
Our OA policy for journal articles is in line with the key principles of Plan S(opens in a new tab). Wellcome is a member of cOAlition S(opens in a new tab) and is committed to working in partnership with other funders to make all research articles OA.
Our policy for monographs and book chapters remains unchanged.
Both of these policies apply to publications that include original research that is funded in whole, or in part, by Wellcome.
All original, peer-reviewed research articles that are supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must be:
and
Where there are multiple partners involved, all research articles supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must be compliant with this policy.
Grantholders should read our Complying with our open access policy page for detailed practical guidance on how to comply.
We updated our grant conditions in January 2021 to include:
'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.'
These changes seek to ensure that grantholders (and anyone supported/associated with the grant) can:
and
All research articles supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome must include a statement explaining how other researchers can access any data, original software or materials underpinning the research. This is in line with our data, software and materials management and sharing policy.
All Wellcome-funded researchers are strongly encouraged to:
Where there is a significant public health benefit to preprints being shared widely and rapidly, such as a disease outbreak, we require the posting of preprints.
We believe that the peer review process adds significant value to research articles. To comply with our OA policy, researchers must make sure that the article, after peer review – either publisher Version of Record or the Author Accepted Manuscript – is made freely available in PMC and Europe PMC at the time of publication, and with a CC BY licence.
We provide grantholders with funding to cover fair and reasonable article processing charges (APCs) for articles published in fully OA journals or platforms that:
and
We do not cover the costs of OA publishing in subscription journals. Grant applicants cannot ask for these costs in their grant application, and grantholders will not be allowed to use their grant funds to pay for these costs.
We also provide funds to support open access fees for monographs and book chapters. See open access funding for more information.
We are working with cOAlition S funding partners to agree a consistent approach to define what a ‘reasonable’ APC amount is.
We recognise that different journals and publishers provide different, or additional value-added services, which means that they can have different APCs (for example, creating infographics).
Publishers for which Plan S requirements apply must publish a full price transparency based on the various services provided (for example triaging and peer review).
We expect our grantholders to:
All original scholarly monographs and book chapters authored or co-authored by Wellcome grantholders as part of their grant-funded research, must be:
and
Funding is available to cover publishers' open access monograph and book chapter processing charges.
Grantholders should read our Complying with our open access policy page for detailed practical guidance on how to comply.
We are committed to making sure that when we assess research outputs during funding decisions, we consider the intrinsic merit of the work, not the title of the journal or publisher.
All Wellcome-funded organisations must also publicly commit to this principle. For example, they can sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment(opens in a new tab), Leiden Manifesto(opens in a new tab) or equivalent. We’ve produced guidance for organisations on responsible and fair approaches for research assessment, that sets out three high-level requirements and other activities they could consider to support these.
We may ask organisations to show that they’re complying with this as part of our organisation audits.
Researchers and organisations who do not comply with this policy will be subject to appropriate sanctions. These may include Wellcome:
Contact us if you have a question about open access.