Blood Cancer UK open access policy and funding

Papers funded in whole or in part by Blood Cancer UK must meet Blood Cancer UK's open access requirements. Find out how to comply, and what funding is available.

The Blood Cancer UK open access policy applies to peer-reviewed original research papers funded by Blood Cancer UK. These outputs must be made open access in Europe PMC within six months of publication.

Complying with the policy

Gold open access

1. Journals in UCL's transformative agreements are compliant. To use the agreements, the article's corresponding author must be at UCL. Proceed with submission, following the links to publisher instructions in the list of journals in UCL's agreements, and choose CC BY when accepted for publication.
2. Fully open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals are compliant. Some fully open access journals are included in UCL's agreements (see above). If your journal is not included in an agreement, it may be eligible for funding via UCL's Open Access Team if it also acknowledges UCL-held Wellcome Trust, UK Research Council (UKRI), CRUK and/or BHF funds. 

For other articles in fully open access journals, see the Blood Cancer UK open access policy and funding arrangements. While certain papers may be eligible for UCL's central open access funding (see the Unfunded publications section of our Open access funding page), authors should approach Blood Cancer UK in the first instance. The journal must deposit the final published version of the article in Europe PMC.
Some fully open access journals offer a choice of open access licence. Blood Cancer UK requires the CC BY licence. 

Green open access

If your journal does not comply through Gold/fully open access, use rights retention. Under UCL’s updated Publications Policy, authors publishing in subscription journals outside UCL’s transformative agreements can still meet Blood Cancer UK's requirements:

• Accepted manuscripts can be made open access immediately in UCL Discovery and Europe PMC, without an embargo, under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY).
• Upload the accepted manuscript to UCL’s Research Publications Service (RPS) and Europe PMC on or before publication. Set the embargo period in Europe PMC to zero, when you upload.
• Research degree students publishing without a UCL staff co-author are not currently covered by rights retention. They must include the required statement at submission, as set out in the Rights Retention Support Pages.

Your article can meet Blood Cancer UK's open access requirements provided that the journal's embargo on Green open access is no longer than six months. Contact UCL's Open Access Team for further advice.