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Research articles funded in whole or in part by Cancer Research UK must meet CRUK's open access requirements. Find out how to comply, and what funding is available.
Scope and requirements
The Cancer Research UK (CRUK) open access policy applies to primary research articles in peer-reviewed journals which acknowledge funding from Cancer Research UK; and articles on which at least one author is in receipt of a Cancer Research UK grant, provided the paper is directly related to cancer research. The policy does not apply to book chapters, monographs, editorials, reviews or conference proceedings. Articles in scope of the policy must be openly available in Europe PMC immediately upon publication.
Research papers funded by CRUK and Wellcome/UKRI should follow CRUK's policy.
Key differences from Plan S funders (e.g. Wellcome, UKRI)
Although this is an immediate open access policy, it differs from other Plan S policies (e.g. Wellcome, UKRI) in that:
- CRUK will continue to provide funding for open access costs in most subscription journals with a Gold open access option (known as hybrid journals).
- There is also no licence requirement for papers that comply through Green open access (depositing the manuscript in Europe PubMed Central).
For more information see Cancer Research UK's Statement on Plan S.
Complying with the policy
Gold open access
- 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.
- 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), but if your journal is not, request funding by completing this form.
Some fully open access journals offer a choice of open access licence. CRUK requires the CC BY licence.
Green open access
UCL's updated Publications Policy allows authors publishing in subscription journals not in UCL's transformative agreements to make their articles open access in UCL Discovery and Europe PMC without an embargo, under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY). Follow the steps on our UCL Publications Policy: actions for authors page, adding a rights retention statement to your paper when you submit, and uploading your accepted manuscript to UCL's Research Publications Service (RPS) on or before publication. You also need to upload the accepted mansucript to Europe PMC, with a 0 embargo. See the UCL Publications Policy support pages for more information.
A small minority of journals do not have a compliant Gold open access option, and require an exemption from the UCL Publications Policy (Blood, for example). In this case, CRUK advises authors to reconsider where to publish.
If you have any queries about rights retention or your journal's policy, or if your journal refuses to allow you to apply the CC BY licence to your accepted manuscript, contact UCL's Open Access Team for advice.
Conditions of publication/payment
You must acknowledge CRUK in your paper, in the format "This work was supported by Cancer Research UK [C ref./A ref.]" and, for trial results, the CRUK trial number.
CRUK's other publication requirements are set out in their FAQs.