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Is my UKRI/Wellcome paper eligible for funding?

This page sets out Gold OA options for UKRI and Wellcome funded work, how to request funding, and conditions of payment.

Guidance for UKRI funded papers submitted before 1 April 2022

This advice applies to research papers funded by Wellcome; and research, review and conference papers with UKRI funding submitted from 1 April 2022.

Availability of funds for UKRI and Wellcome funded papers

UCL receives block grants from UKRI and Wellcome to pay open access fees for research articles (Wellcome and UKRI), proceedings (UKRI), and reviews (UKRI). Researchers are not normally permitted to use their research grants to pay these charges.

These funds are for paying Gold open access fees in:

  • fully open access journals
  • subscription (hybrid) journals in UCL’s transformative agreements
  • subscription (hybrid) journals identified by funders as ‘transformative journals’, where funding is available

They cannot be used for:

  • OA fees in non-transformative subscription (hybrid) journals
  • Non-open access publication fees such as page and colour charges
  • Open access fees for publications out of scope of the UKRI/Wellcome OA policies

UCL's central UKRI grant is available for eligible papers funded by the UK Research Councils (AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC), Innovate UK, and Research England (funding leading directly to particular research outputs only). Details on funding availability by publication type are given below. If a publication type is not listed, it is not eligible for OA funding.

Funds for peer reviewed research articles/original articles

The table below lists Gold OA options and payment details for peer reviewed articles reporting original, peer-reviewed research, acknowledging UKRI and/or Wellcome funding.

Gold open access option How to request funding
Fully OA journals or platforms listed on the DOAJ.Complete this form before submitting to the journal. If your paper is eligible for funding, we’ll provide details of payment procedures. Note that MRC units should have their own funds to pay fees in fully OA journals. 
Subscription/hybrid journals included in UCL’s transformative agreements. These are listed by subject (Excel file) and by publisher (see section headed ‘Transformative agreements by publisher’). The article must have a UCL corresponding author to be able to use the agreements.Follow the ‘How to use the agreement’ instructions provided in the relevant publisher entry of our transformative agreements page.
Subscription/hybrid journals designated by Wellcome/Plan S as ‘transformative’.

UCL may be able to pay for Wellcome-funded papers submitted to a Wellcome/Plan S compliant Transformative Journal not in UCL's transformative agreements - e.g. Nature-branded journals. Complete this form before submitting to the journal.

UCL is not able to pay for papers in UKRI/Jisc compliant Transformative Journals not in UCL's transformative agreements. These journals allow UKRI-funded authors to make the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) open access under CC BY in a compliant repository on publication (Green open access). This includes Nature-branded journals. Complete this form for advice.

Other article types

Wellcome funds cannot be used to pay Gold open access fees for proceedings and reviews. Proceedings and reviews that acknowledge UKRI funding are eligible for Gold open access through the routes listed in the table above.

Wellcome allows open access funds to be used for research/study protocols, systemic reviews, scoping reviews, and meta-analyses authored by Wellcome-funded researchers and published in fully OA journals or platforms. Complete the open access request form before submitting for these article types.

Book chapters/monographs

If you are Wellcome funded and your publisher has a compliant Gold open access option for monographs, Wellcome will be able to provide you with open access funding directly. Note that Wellcome considers all publications indexed by MEDLINE to be journals, which can be funded as per research articles (see section above). For more information see Wellcome's guide to compliance for monographs and book chapters.
 
The new UKRI open access policy applies to funded monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from January 2024. UKRI will make dedicated funding available for long-form publications in Autumn 2023. Before then, UKRI authors can include open access costs for long-form outputs in grant applications.

What if my publication is ineligible for funding?

You can still meet your funder’s requirements if your journal allows you to make the final version or Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) open access under CC BY in a repository at the time of publication (Green open access). If the journal prohibits this, you may want to consider submitting elsewhere. Alternatively, you will need to retain the right to make your final accepted manuscript open access on publication under CC BY. See our complying page for details.