Open Access and the Wellcome Trust:
providing funds for open-access
publishing
Kathryn Lallu
Grants Policy, Liaison and Support Manager
Grants Administration
The Wellcome Trust
Overview
• Introduction to the Wellcome Trust
• Summary of the Trust’s OA policy and how grantees
comply
• What the Trust requires when it pays an OA fee
• The funding mechanisms & how to claim
• More about how the OA block grants can be used (FAQs)
• Our reporting requirements
• Conclusion
• UKPMC
The Wellcome Trust
• Largest charity in UK; second
largest medical charity in the
world
• Funds innovative biomedical
research in the UK and
internationally
• Currently spends around £500
million pa – supporting the brightest
researchers with the best ideas
• Supports public debate about
biomedical research and its impact
on health and well-being
• More information at:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
OA at the Wellcome Trust: policy
All research papers – funded in
whole or in part by the Wellcome
Trust – must be made freely
accessible from the PubMed
Central and UKPMC repositories
as soon as possible, and in any
event within six months of the
journal publisher’s official date of
final publication
How do WT grantees comply?
Compliance can be achieved by following one of two routes:
• Route 1
Publish in OA/hybrid journal (preferred route)
• Route 2
Publish anywhere-but self-archive a version of the author manuscript
(must include all changes that arise from the peer-review process)
and make that available from PMC/UKPMC within 6 months
• If a publisher offers neither route then
Author can make a revision to the journal’s copyright statement-boilerplate
language provided-and see if the publisher will accept this
Look for an alternative publisher
What does the Trust require when it pays
an OA fee?
• Mandatory requirements
 Deposit, on behalf of the author, the final version of the article –
in PMC, where it must be made freely available at the time of publication
 Permit these articles to be freely accessed and re-used, subject to agreed
limits (for example, the commercial rights to the article would most likely
continue to reside with the publisher)
 Allow such articles to be mirrored to PMC International repositories, such as
UKPMC
 Deposit the article in XML, along with high-resolution images used in the article.
 Sign PMC Selective Deposit Agreement
• Desirable requirements
 Deposit the publisher PDF version of the article in PMC.
 Make the article freely available on the publisher website at the time
of publication
Determining Wellcome-compliant
publishers
• Unfortunately…no simple, definitive way to determine
Many publishers still have no definitive policy on what they will
allow
Some publishers (e.g. PNAS,ACS etc) use the term ‘Open Access’
differently
• The Trust is working with RoMEO/Sherpa to provide a database
of publisher policies: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php. Search by journal
titles or publishers. Look for green tick next to ‘ Wellcome Trust’.
• If after consulting RoMEO you are unsure, email us and we will look
into this for you.
Two funding mechanisms
1.A grant for Open Access has been awarded
to the 30 top Trust-funded universities
• Two awards 05/06 and 06/07
• Publishers invoice the University who claim the
funds back from the Wellcome Trust
2.Where the block grant is not available we will
supplement the researcher’s grant.
• We also have a mechanism to allow the host institution to claim back the
OA funds where the grant has terminated. Contact us for more
information.
How to Claim the Funds from the Open
Access Block Grant (top 30)
• Claim forms available on our Website
• Signed by appropriate authorised individual
• Check your internal processes/liaise with the
Research Grants Office!
• To be submitted quarterly in arrears
The Open Access Block Grant:
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we use the funds in the following circumstances:
• The researcher’s grant has terminated. YES
• The researcher has recently moved here, and her grant, now terminated, was held
elsewhere. YES
• The researcher’s paper was published a while ago,
but now he wants to make it Open Access (and the publisher will allow it). YES, but…
• A researcher’s paper has resulted from grants from more than one funder.
YES, but costs should be shared proportionally…
We are running out of funds:
• Our Open Access Grant is running out and it’s only June, what should I do?
The Open Access Block Grant: Reporting
Requirements
Key date: 30 November 2007!
• Title of each article
• The journal and publisher
• Open Access fee paid
• Wellcome Trust Grant Holder
• Wellcome Trust Grant Reference
• PMC reference
How to claim the funds (2)
Researchers at other institutions should
contact the Trust with the following details:
• Current employing institution
• Title of paper
• Wellcome Trust grant reference number
• Title of open access publication
• Proposed date of publication
• Amount requested
We will supplement the grant and claims should be
submitted in the normal way.
Conclusion
• Two ways to comply with Grant Conditions
• Funding available only where the publisher deposits
• Two ways to claim the funds
• For more information:
Wellcome Trust website
Kathryn Lallu at [email protected]
Or [email protected]
UKPMC
• Objective is to create a stable, permanent and free-toaccess online digital archive of the full-text, peer
reviewed research publications (and datasets) that
arise from research funded by the UKPMC Funders
Group
• 8 UK biomedical research funding organisations have
joined the UKPMC Funders Group
• Estimated that around 90% of the biomedical research
that is funded in the UK comes from the UKPMC
Funders.
Why establish UK version of PMC?
• Provides the infrastructure to enable Wellcome grantees
(and others within the UKPMC Funders Group) to
comply with their grant conditions.
• A UK version of PMC will benefit the Trust, its partners
and the UK research community:
• UK-focussed services-evaluation of funding; development of new metrics
that could feed into a future RAE
• Local ingestion of UK documents e.g. NICE guidelines
• Enhanced functionality-integration with grants systems, text mining
• Long-term preservation of the record of medicine becomes a shared
responsibility
• Helps to ensure that the OA principles espoused by the Wellcome Trust become
a reality in the UK
UKPMC-systems and services
• Systems
A UK-hosted mirror of PMC
A manuscript submission and tracking system for
UKPMC grantees
• Services
Robust, secure and scaleable infrastructure
Manuscript conversion facilities
Helpdesk
Communications and marketing
R&D
• Contract to run and develop UKPMC awarded to a
Consortium led by the British Library.
• See http://ukpmc.ac.uk
• Any questions?