Wellcome Open Access Funding

Wellcome Open Access Funding is sponsored by Wellcome Trust. This funding supports Wellcome-funded researchers to cover open access publishing costs for research articles, book chapters, and scholarly monographs.

## Changes to Open Access Supplement Requests (Active Grants) From 1 March 2026, Wellcome will process supplement requests for eligible Open Access publishing costs using the online form. Queries will still be handled through the OpenAccess@Wellcome. orgemail and email requests will be considered until 1 April 2026.

There are no changes to the process for closed grants. We will fund reasonable article processing charges (APCs) for research articles published in fully OA journals or platforms that are: * are indexed by Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) * have an agreement (Participation Agreements and Options or PMC)with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to deposit the [Version of Record [PDF]](https://www. niso.

org/sites/default/files/2017-08/RP-8-2008. pdf) in PMC and allow that content to be shared with Europe PMC. We do not cover the costs of open access publishing in subscription journals.

Grant applicants cannot ask for these costs in their grant application, and grant holders will not be allowed to use their grant funds to pay for these costs. We also provide funds to support reasonable open access fees for monographs and book chapters. How you get this funding depends on the type of publication and whether the organisation in which you’re based receives open access block grant funding.

## Organisations in receipt of open access block grant funding ## What the block grant covers The funding can be used to cover: * Article Processing Charges (APCs) for original research articles published in fully open access journals or platforms i ndexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

* Fees, memberships or contributions to publishing models or platforms that support Wellcome-funded and non Wellcome-funded researchers both at the organisation and beyond to access fully open access publication, including preprint servers and services for long-form outputs.

* Supporting open scholarly communication infrastructure that enable Wellcome-funded and non Wellcome-funded researchers both at the organisation and beyond to make their short or long-form research outputs open access. ## What the block grant doesn't cover The block grant doesn't cover: * Article Processing Charges (APCs) for original research articles published in subscription journals.

* APCs for research articles published in journals which have Jisc-approved transformative status. * Contributions towards Transformative Agreements. * Other charges associated with publication, for example, page and colour charges.

* Open access fees for book chapters and monographs. * Staff costs associated with meeting the aims of Wellcome’s open access policy. In 2021/22 Wellcome awarded £7.

2 million in open access block grants to 38 institutions. Of the individual articles reported to Wellcome, 92% complied with our Open Access policy at the time the analysis was conducted by OA. Report in August 2023.

Spending reviews for 2014 to 2022 are available on Figshare. ## Organisations not in receipt of open access block grant funding If you’re at an organisation that doesn’t receive open access funding, please email the following details to openaccess@wellcome. org: * your current employing organisation * Wellcome grant reference number * proposed date of publication * cost of the open access fee.

## How to request open access funding for monographs and book chapters Email the following details to openaccess@wellcome. org: * your current employing organisation * title of the monograph or book chapter and volume * Wellcome grant reference number * proposed date of publication * cost of the open access fee.

We will supplement your research grant and your organisation will be able to claim reimbursement for these additional costs in the usual way. We will also provide open access funding when a research grant has ended. You can’t use this funding to cover any non-open access publication costs, including page and/or colour charges.

## Getting funding for part Wellcome-funded papers The open access publication costs should be split proportionately in line with the funders’ relative contributions, where the research reported is: * funded by more than one funding agency that mandates open access * the funding agency provides funding for open access. Organisations should charge the proportional costs to the appropriate funder.

If research funders don’t mandate open access, or if Wellcome is the lead funder on a piece of research, we’re willing to meet the full open access fee. * Commitment to responsible research assessment: Wellcome and funded organisations * Complying with our open access policy * Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) * Depositing your Wellcome-funded research * Open access guidance for Wellcome Centres and Africa and Asia Programmes