1. The Wellcome Trust developed an open access policy to maximize access to research outputs, including publications and data, which was not consistent with traditional publishing models. 2. The Wellcome Trust's open access policy requires that all original research papers funded by the Trust must be made freely accessible from repositories within six months of publication. Researchers comply either through open access journals or self-archiving. 3. To increase compliance, the Trust will now withhold final grant payments and discount non-compliant publications from funding renewals or new grants for papers published from 2009 onwards.

1. Open access: a funders‟ perspective
Open Access Week - University of Exeter
25 October 2012
Margaret Hurley
Policies and Governance Officer
Grants Management, Wellcome Trust
m.hurley@wellcome.ac.uk

2. Overview
• Topics to cover:
1. Why we support open access, the Trust’s open access policy.
How to comply and measures to increase compliance
2. The OA environment
3. Europe PMC

3. Why did the Trust develop an OA policy?
• maximising access to outputs of
research (including publications
and data) is central to our mission
• in early 2000s, it became
increasingly clear that traditional
models of scientific publishing
were not consistent with this goal
• economic analysis (including our
own commissioned research)
suggested alternative models
were feasible

5. Wellcome Trust: open access policy
All original 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.
Policy was introduced in
October 2006.

6. How do researchers comply?
• Publish in either
• an open access journal
• or a ‘hybrid‟ journal that makes articles freely available
in return for a fee
• „gold open access‟ model (author pays)
• OR
• Author deposits final manuscript themselves (“self-
archive”)
• using UKPMC+
• makes paper freely available from UKPMC
after 6 months
• „green open access‟ model

7. Meeting the costs
• Open Access publishing is
a legitimate research
cost
• Block grant has been
provided to Exeter. Contact
- Douglas Thomson,
Research accounts
administrator -
(D.R.Thomson@exeter.ac.
uk)
• Current WT spend is
around £4m per year

9. New policy: measures to increase compliance
New sanctions:
1. In End of Grant Report all papers listed must be OA. If not
the final payment on the grant (typically 10%) will be withheld
2. Non-compliant Trust-funded publications will be discounted
as part of a researcher’s track record in any renewal of an
existing grant or new grant application
3. Trust-funded researchers will need to ensure that all
publications associated with their Wellcome-funded
research are OA before any funding renewals or new grant
awards will be activated
These measures apply to papers published from October 2009
onwards.

10. Open access – now specifies CC-BY
• OA policy now specifies that
research, for which an OA fee
is paid, must be licenced
using CC-BY
• Trust believes that full
research and economic
benefit of published content
will only be realised when
there are no restrictions on
access to, and reuse of, this
information
• Will introduce this requirement
from early 2013

11. Open access – key developments
• Finch report - clear policy direction in favour of an author-pays
open access model for UK funded research.
• RCUK updated policy – announced in June. Introduces move
towards a 6 month embargo and requirement for CC-BY licence
(where and open access fee is paid). Together with providing
dedicated OA funding.
• OA in Europe – European Commission will make OA to
scientific publications and data a general principle of Horizon
2020.
• HEFCE support for open access - by ensuring research
outputs submitted to REF (after 2014) are open access
wherever possible.

12. Developments in OA publishing
• PLOS ONE – biggest journal on the planet
• Published 14,000 articles in 2011
• PubMed suggests that 15352 articles already published in 2012
• Rise of the clones
• The American Society for Microbiology’s mBio
• The Genetics Society of America’s G3
• BMJ Open
• Company of Biologists Biology Open
• Nature’s Scientific Reports
• Cell Press’s Cell Reports
• The Royal Society’s Open Biology
• SAGE Open
• Radical OA options
• PeerJ….and eLife

13. eLife
• eLife - the new funder-
led initiative supported
by Wellcome Trust,
Max Planck Society and
Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
• First articles are now
live

14. Europe PMC
• 19 research funders
supporting the running
(and development) of
UKPMC/Europe PMC
• Includes ERC, FWF,
MRC, Wellcome
• Other life science funders
interested in joining
• Provides free access to
full text research
publications and value-
added functionality and
tools to enable their use.

15. Conclusion
• OA is good for science, but
also has tangible economic
benefits
• There are costs with OA –
including transition costs –
but these are outweighed by
the benefits
• Open access is here to stay

16. Further information
www.wellcome.ac.uk/openaccess
Open Access openaccess@wellcome.ac.uk
Margaret Hurley m.hurley@wellcome.ac.uk