Due to increased demand for ‘gold’ open access and a significant reduction in the University’s RCUK open access block grant allocation, the Open Access Team has introduced a restriction on the use of the fund for the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs).
The Open Access Team has ring-fenced the remaining allocation for the following types of costs:
- APCs for fully Open Access journals (i.e., journals which do not sell subscriptions and in which all articles are Open Access, e.g., BioMed Central, PLOS One, Nature Communications)
- APCs for journals that do not offer a Green Open Access option that complies with RCUK’s Open Access policy
In most cases it is possible for RCUK funded authors to comply with its Open Access policy by making papers Green Open Access (i.e., uploading your Accepted Manuscript to Pure which will be made freely available after a specified embargo period).
The restriction in use of the block grant will commence from the 1st June 2017 onwards.
If you have any questions regarding this restriction please email openaccess@qub.ac.uk
For further information on ‘gold’ open access funding please visit the Open Access webpages.
Interesting that the first of these restrictions rewards well-behaved (all-open) journals; but the second rewards badly-behaved (Green-hostile) journals.