Open Access publications

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 will support Open Access (OA) publishing by paying to up £2,000 to pay for article processing costs (APCs). When we fund an APC, the paper must become OA immediately upon online publication and made available through EuropePMC or PubMed Central by the publisher.

• A Blood Cancer UK Grantholder or a researcher employed on the grant must be an author on the manuscript. Former Grantholders can also apply within two years of the end date of their Blood Cancer UK grant.
• The article must acknowledge Blood Cancer UK as a funder.
• The Blood Cancer UK grant reference number(s) must be accurately cited on the manuscript.
• The proposed journal must support ‘Gold’ OA publishing with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY licence).
• For publications arising from co-funded awards, our expectation is that funder(s) contribute equitably to support OA costs.

Email your request to the Research team when a manuscript has been accepted for publication and let us know:

• The name of the Grantholder or researcher employed;
• The name of the Host Institution;
• Blood Cancer UK Grant reference of project(s);
• The name of the Journal;
• The amount requested for APC (up to max of £2,000);
• If the project is Co-Funded.

We:

• Require electronic copies of any original research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer reviewed journal, and that acknowledge our funding in whole or in part, to be made available through Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) as soon as possible and, in any event, within six months of the journal publisher's official date of final publication.
• Expect researchers we fund to select publishing routes that ensure the work is available immediately on publication in its final published form, wherever such options exist for their journal of choice and are compliant with our policy.
• Encourage – and where an open access article processing charge is paid to the publisher, require – authors and publishers to licence research papers using the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY) so they may be freely copied and reused (for example, for text- and data-mining purposes or for creating a translation), providing that appropriate credit is given to the original authors.
• Encourage researchers we fund to maximise the opportunities to make all their results accessible and available for free. This includes taking advantage of online open publishing platforms and repositories, and ensuring dissemination of negative or confirmatory results.
• We maintain that it's the intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of the journal in which an author's work is published, that should be considered when making funding decisions.

Europe PMC is an open science platform that enables access to a worldwide collection of life science publications and preprints from trusted sources. The Europe PMC plus manuscript submission system enables authors to self-archive manuscripts resulting from research funded by Blood Cancer UK.

Researchers can find out which publishers support open access and are compliant with our current policy by referring to the SHERPA/FACT database.