Research funders' Open Access policies

Cancer Research UK Open Access Policy

Please note: The Library will not receive a CRUK block grant to support open access publication for the period 1st October 2022 – 30th September 2023. Please check the guidance on how to comply with the CRUK open access policy on their pages. The Library can advise on alternate ways to make your work open access, please get in touch at openaccess@sussex.ac.uk.

CRUK’s open access policy applies to peer-reviewed, original research publications that have been supported, in whole or in part, by CRUK.

Policy highlights:

• An electronic copy of the final, published form of your paper must be available on Europe PMC immediately on publication.
• If an Article Processing Charge (APC) is being paid for your paper, it must be published with a CC BY 4.0 licence. Other, more restrictive licences are not compliant with CRUK’s grant conditions. In cases where an APC is not paid (e.g. when utilising the Green Open Access publishing route), you are strongly encouraged to publish with a CC BY licence.
• Cancer Research UK will only fund APCs where the publisher is compliant with their policy. To check that the publisher of your chosen journal is compliant, search the SHERPA/FACT database. Select the name of the relevant journal and Cancer Research UK as your funder – as long as the results show at least one ‘tick’ (✓), the journal is compliant by that route.
• Your paper should include an acknowledgment of your CRUK funding in the format ‘This work was supported by Cancer Research UK [C ref./A ref.]’ and, for trial results, the CRUK trial number.

For more information, see CRUK’s FAQs.

British Heart Foundation Open Access Policy

BHF’s open access policy applies to peer-reviewed, primary research articles and non-commissioned reviews funded wholly or in part by BHF.

Policy highlights:

• An electronic copy of the final, published form of your paper must be available on Europe PMC as soon as possible and no later than 6 months after publication.
• If an Article Processing Charge (APC) is being paid for your paper, it must be published with a CC BY 4.0 licence. Other, more restrictive licences are not compliant with BHF’s grant conditions.
• Authors must acknowledge BHF support by quoting “British Heart Foundation” followed by the award reference number in the appropriate section of your publication.
• BHFs open access block grant cannot be used to pay any charges associated with publication other than the APC (e.g., page and colour charges).

The Library does not currently admninister a block grant for BHF so please get in touch to discuss alternatives.

For more information, see BHF’s FAQs.

What are the Open Access expectations for Horizon 2020?

Horizon 2020 regards making work Open Access as a two-step process.

1. Deposit an electronic copy of either the published version or the final accepted version (after peer-review) into a repository (such as Sussex Research Online).
2. 2. Ensure that the output is Open Access within a maximum of 6 months (12 months for publications in Social Sciences and Humanities).

What types of output does the Horizon 2020 Open Access mandate cover?

Horizon 2020 mandates Open Access for all peer-reviewed outputs relating to the grant, while recognising that the dominant type of peer-reviewed publication is the journal article. In addition, Horizon 2020 encourages beneficiaries to provide Open Access to other types of output (some of which might not be peer-reviewed) such as monographs, books, conference proceedings and grey literature. Data sharing is encouraged but not mandatory, except for those projects covered by the Open Data Research Pilot.

How can I make my work Open Access?

Horizon 2020 does not specify a route for making your work Open Access. There are two main routes to compliance:

1. Green Open Access (or self-archiving). Authors can deposit the final, peer-reviewed version of their publication in a repository of their choice, ensuring that the embargo period permitted by the journal is no longer than 6 months (or 12 months for Social Sciences and Humanities).
2. 2. Gold Open Access. Researchers can publish in a journal that gives the option for the work to be immediately Open Access. This could be a purely OA journal or a hybrid one that makes articles OA on an individual basis. There is usually a cost for Gold OA (an article processing charge, or APC).

How can I check whether a journal has a compliant embargo period?

If you want to take the Green (self-archiving) route to Open Access, you will need to check whether your chosen journal offers a compliant embargo period (6 months maximum, or 12 months for Social Sciences and Humanities). You can make an initial check at SHERPA/RoMEO, but you may also wish to check on the journal homepage or directly with the publisher, as embargo periods can vary depending on the situation. The Library Research Support team can assist with this.

How do I pay for Gold Open Access?

The article processing charges (APCs) incurred by grant beneficiaries are eligible for reimbursement during the duration of the project. You will need to indicate in your proposal your expected costs for publishing Gold OA. The average cost of an APC is £1800, but this can vary greatly between journals and disciplines. For up-to-date information visit the journal homepage and check for Open Access costs.

Horizon 2020 trialled a mechanism for dealing with OA publication charges incurred after the end of the grant agreement, known as the OpenAIRE FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot. This pilot project supported open access publications arising from completed FP7 projects. The trial ended February 28th 2018 and no new submissions are possible.

Which repository should I choose?

You can choose to deposit in an institutional, subject-based, or centralised repository. Sussex Research Online(SRO) is an appropriate choice and deposit in SRO will ensure that the publication appears on your research profile.

What do I need to deposit?

You are required to deposit a machine-readable, electronic copy of the published version or final accepted version (post peer-review) into your chosen repository. This must be done as soon as possible, and by the date of publication at the very latest. If you are making your work Open Access through the Green route then the repository should place the appropriate embargo on your publication. SRO staff will always do this on your behalf.

You should also aim to deposit, at the same time, the research data needed to validate the results presented in the publication, preferably into a research data repository. Data do not need to be Open Access (beneficiaries are invited to grant open access to the data but are not obliged to do so, unless they are part of the Open Research Data Pilot). Some repositories (such as Zenodo) allow researchers to deposit both publications and data, providing tools to link them. Sussex researchers may deposit in the University of Sussex Research Data Repository.

What information needs to be included with the deposited publication?

In order to ensure the acknowledgment of EU funding and maximise the discoverability of publications, you need to include bibliographic metadata as part of the publication record. The record must include:

• the terms ["European Union (EU)" and "Horizon 2020"]["Euratom" and "Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018"]
• the name of the action, acronym and grant number
• the publication date, length of embargo period if applicable and a persistent identifier (eg a DOI)

What are the Open Access requirements for research data?

Horizon 2020 specifies that the research data needed to validate the results presented in the deposited publication should also be deposited at the same time, ideally into a data repository. There is no obligation to make this data Open Access (although it is welcomed) unless it is part of the Open Research Data Pilot.