Open access costs

Eligibility for OA costs

Support for open access costs is available to corresponding authors who are current staff or students at the point of acceptance. Make sure to check the information below for more details.

Changes in Wellcome Trust open access block grant funding

黑料吃瓜网 no longer receives a block grant for OA costs as we are below the £10,000 threshold for central funding set by Wellcome.
From April 2024, Wellcome will still support eligible costs to comply with their policy by supplementing individual research grants (see below).

Open Access monographs

Unless authors acknowledge certain funders in their manuscript that have an open access requirement such as Wellcome Trust or the requirement that started in January 2024, their monograph doesn't need to be made open access.

Authors who do acknowledge UKRI or Wellcome are encouraged to contact openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk for further advice if they haven't already done so.

The University's policy is to support open access for monographs and chapters but only where there is a relevant funder requirement.

Researchers without dedicated funding who seek partial support to publish their monograph open access are encouraged to review our institutional open access fund criteria below.

No fee options - deposit in Pure

In many cases, you can comply with REF and funders’ open access (OA) requirements without paying a fee, by uploading your Author Accepted Manuscript in Pure. The criteria for paying open access fees (known as 'Article Processing Charges' or APCs) depends on a range of factors including funder policies, publisher agreements in place and availability of funds. The University preference for the ‘green’ route as our preferred method of achieving open access means we do not support payment of individual APCs in hybrid journals (i.e. journals which charge for both subscriptions to content and additional fees per article for OA publishing) unless covered by transformative agreements.

Paying APCs - first steps

The University has a number of agreements and partnerships in place with publishers that can cover open access publishing fees as well as providing discounts on APCs in some instances. APC support is available to corresponding authors who are current staff or student. Check the University's list of OA agreements and partnerships or contact openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk for information.

The University has central funding (UKRI OA Block Grant) available to support the open access policy for UK Research Councils. Some funders provide open access costs in individual grants. To claim Article Processing Charges (APCs) in fully OA journals from central funds, to find out if your chosen journal is covered by an agreement, or to ask advice about paying APCs from grants, check the information below. If relevant criteria apply, send the following details to openaccess@st andrews.ac.uk before committing to any OA fees.

Corresponding author name, School and email address [current staff or student]
Journal and publisher
Article title
Identifier if known (Manuscript ID or DOI)
Funder name supporting the research [Provide the funder acknowledgement including external Grant ID]

The University of 黑料吃瓜网 currently receives a Block Grant from UKRI to cover the costs of compliance with their open access policy. Certain restrictions apply on the use of the UKRI block grant to help support a real transition to, and affordability of, immediate open access. To minimise our exposure to extra costs outside of fully OA journals and transitional agreements, APCs will not be paid for articles via the 'gold' route in hybrid (subscriptions-based) journals.

The UKRI Block Grant can therefore be used under these criteria to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs):
- APCs for articles published in fully OA journals (as listed in the )
- the cost of APCs in hybrid journals covered by a transitional agreement – see Open Access Agreements and Partnerships)
- some exceptions where the green route is particularly difficult and the article risks non-compliance – contact openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk with your Grant ID(s) and details of your article
The Block Grant cannot be used to pay publication costs unrelated to open access, such as page or colour charges.

The applies to peer-reviewed research papers in journals and conference proceedings. As noted above, for hybrid journals, Research Council-funded authors can usually comply via the 'green' route to open access.

To make a claim for APCs, or for further advice on Gold or Green options for your publication, contact openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk with your Grant ID(s) and details of your article.

For further details on how to comply with UKRI open access policy, check our webpages or consult the .
Researchers must follow the process below to apply for Wellcome Trust support for costs associated with fully open access publishing.

Application process for direct support

For direct support, you must apply to Wellcome. The Open Access Team will continue to assist you in determining coverage in our Read and Publish agreements or where costs may be partially covered by another funder – it may not be necessary to apply if your chosen journal is already included in an agreement.

Email the following details to openaccess@wellcome.org:
- Current employing organisation
- Title of the paper
- Wellcome grant reference number
- Journal title
- Proposed publication date
- Cost of the open access fee
“We will supplement your research grant and your organisation will be able to claim reimbursement for these additional costs in the usual way.

We will also provide open access funding when a research grant has ended.”

Policy on open access funding post-grant

Alternatively, Wellcome will reimburse the University for OA costs incurred after a grant has ended.
If this scenario applies to you please send the details requested above to openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk as soon as possible and preferably prior to submission.

Criteria for covering publication costs

As of 1 January 2025, Wellcome will now only fund publication costs in fully open access journals. This means they will not provide reimbursement for OA costs in hybrid (subscription-based) journals.

Licence selection

Where funds are used to pay an APC, Wellcome requires the use of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) Licence. See the Wellcome Trust's for more information.

Monographs and book chapters

The Trust open access policy includes scholarly monographs and book chapters. Monographs and chapters can be deposited using the Wellcome Trust's . Funding for monographs and chapters will be provided directly by the Trust. See more in the Wellcome Trust .
All open access costs from Horizon2020 projects must be paid from the relevant grant. The strict Horizon 2020 and ERC Open Access Policy requirements mean that APCs must usually be paid. An average APC is £2,000 but can be as much as £4,000.

For publications arising from new Horizon Europe grants, costs are only eligible for fully OA journals. Contact openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk for advice on costing.

Frontier Research grants

For beneficiaries of the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee, publication costs are eligible within the awarded grant. When publishing in fully open access journals that are not covered by a transformative agreement, you should use your grant to cover these costs. Please note that applications for the UKRI block grant cannot be made in these cases.

For other research funders, you should check the terms and conditions of your grant, and you may need to include the costs of open access in your budget.
The University may have funds available to support the University’s open access policy, available for current staff and students publishing in fully open access venues only where the author has no other source of funds.

To claim using this fund, contact openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk with details of your publication, provide confirmation of the criteria below, and establish we have allocated costs before committing to any fees.

Most funders will allow a claim for open access costs during the period of the grant. Where no funds are available, the University will consider supporting open access costs that meet the following criteria:
- the submitting or corresponding author is a current member of University of 黑料吃瓜网 staff or a current student, provided the 黑料吃瓜网 affiliation is clearly acknowledged
- the journal or publishing venue is completely open access (i.e. 'hybrid' journals are not included) and is indexed in DOAB or DOAJ
- the journal meets the usual standards of quality and peer review for scholarly communication
- the work is an original research article or review
- the author is required to pay a fee in order to publish
- the author confirms there is no other source of funding
- where possible, the resulting publication should be made available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY) licence
- contributions to OA models such as Subscribe to Open (S2O) or membership schemes may be available
- all claims must be sent in advance of any agreement to pay fees
- claims per author are limited to no more than 2 per month
Provide the following details to openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk
- corresponding author's name, School and email address [current staff or student]
- journal and publisher
- article title
- identifier (if known) eg Manuscript ID or DOI
- funder name and funder's grant ID that will be acknowledged in the work (if applicable)
Additional monograph criteria

Applications for OA books may be considered as long as the publication venue is fully open (and not hybrid) or the publisher has a clear OA transition model.

Contributions from LOAF will be no more than £4k and up to the lowest of:
- 50% of the total cost
- the amount contributed by the academic, School, or other authors' institution
Contributions can only be considered where there are not grant or other funds that could support the publication.

Valid until our limited budget allocation from the LOAF runs out.

This is in addition to the output meeting the usual definition of a research output and being affiliated to 黑料吃瓜网 as described above.

黑料吃瓜网