In early November 2018 the Wellcome Trust announced a new Open Access policy. It will apply to articles submitted for publication from 1st January 2020.
Key points and changes
1. Date for implementation: 1 January 2020 – in the meantime authors should continue to comply with the current policy.
2. Wellcome Trust has joined cOAlition-S, and this is the first major funder’s policy that aligns with Plan-S.
3. The policy applies to articles that include original, peer-reviewed research, but not monographs and books.
4. All Wellcome-funded articles must be made freely available through PMC and Europe PMC at the time of publication.
5. All articles, even those where no Article Processing Charge (APC) has been paid, must be published under a CC-BY licence.
6. To be compliant authors can publish:-
a) In any fully OA journal indexed in Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) + depositing in PMC/EuropePMC + publishing with CC-BY.
b) In any subscription journal with a green route which allows deposit of Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in PMC & EuropePMC without embargo and with CC-BY.
c) With any publisher with a ‘transformative agreement’ during the 2-year period Jan 2020 to Dec 2021.
7. Wellcome will no longer pay OA publication costs in ‘hybrid’ journals (subscription journal with paid OA option).
8. Where there is a significant public health benefit to preprints being shared widely and rapidly, these preprints must be published before peer review, on an approved platform that supports immediate publication of the complete manuscript, and under a CC-BY licence.
9. Wellcome-funded organisations must sign or publicly commit to the principles of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) or an equivalent. (University of Bristol has signed DORA).
10. Further information from Wellcome is awaited regarding a list of compliant preprint platforms, a list of approved Jisc Collections transformative OA agreements, and information on how to check if specific journals are compliant with the policy.
The new policy and FAQ can be found on the Wellcome’s Open Access policy page.
For more information please contact lib-research-support@bristol.ac.uk