Open Access

Effective from 1 st October 2006, it is a condition of all Wellcome Trust awards (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@sf_central_grants_admin/documents/web_document/wtx026668.pdf) that any research papers (but not book chapters, editorials, reviews or conference proceedings) arising from work wholly or partly funded by a Wellcome Trust grant must be made available on the Europe PubMed Central (http://europepmc.org/) or the PubMed Central website (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/) no more than six months after publication. This applies to all grants awarded before and after 1st October 2006, but not to papers ‘in process’ or published before this date.

How to comply with this condition will depend on the individual journal or publisher:

1) Journal publishes on Europe PubMed Central

• Some journals will deposit a copy of your paper on PubMed Central on your behalf.

• A searchable database of journals which are compliant with the Wellcome Trust’s Open Access policy can be found on the SHERPA/RoMEO website (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php). This is not yet complete, but if you have any questions or are unsure of a journal’s status, please e-mail Chad Pillinger (chad.pillinger@admin.cam.ac.uk) or the Wellcome Trust Open Access team (openaccess@wellcome.ac.uk).

• Many of these journals will charge authors an ‘Open Access fee’ or similar. The Wellcome Trust has provided the University of Cambridge with a grant to cover these charges as long as the journal makes your article available on Europe PubMed Central immediately on publication. For information on claiming these back, please go to the charge claiming page (Open Access - Claims.doc).

2) Journal does not publish on Europe PubMed Central.

• If the publisher will not place your article on PubMed Central on your behalf, you will need to submit this yourself, within six months of publication.

• Instructions on how to do this can be found at Europe PubMed Central (http://ukpmc.ac.uk/). Manuscripts can be submitted on to Europe PubMed Central via the UK manuscript submission system (https://plus.europepmc.org/emss/login/uls.cgi). Authors who are principal investigators on a Wellcome Trust grant should already have a login ID – use the ‘find my account’ button to determine what this is.

3) Journal does not allow Open Access

• Some publishers do not allow broader dessemination of papers published by them.

• In this case, an author can negotiate a revision to the publisher’s copyright statement – a standard statement from the Wellcome Trust is provided below:

Notwithstanding any other provisions of this agreement, the journal acknowledges that the researcher will be entitled to deposit an electronic copy of the final, peer-reviewed manuscript for inclusion in PubMed Central (PMC), and for this manuscript to be mirrored to all PMC international sites, such as Europe PMC. Manuscripts deposited with PMC (and Europe PMC) may be made freely available to the public, via the internet, within six months of the official date of final publication in the journal.

• If the publisher will still not allow publication on Europe PubMed Central, then in order to comply with the Wellcome Trust’s terms and conditions, you will need to look for an alternative publisher.

If you need any further information on this process, or have any comments on the information on this website, please contact Chad Pillinger (chad.pillinger@admin.cam.ac.uk, tel. 66905/66944). Or visit the Wellcome Trust FAQ.