Open AccessFunding Open Access

Important announcement -  Please note that from 1 Nov 2025 until further announcement we will be unable to cover any mandatory Open Access publishing fees for UKRI-funded manuscripts accepted in fully Open Access journals not covered by R&P agreements. Funding requests that were confirmed prior to 1 Nov 2025 are unaffected by this change and the funding commitment will be honoured. The context for this measure is provided in this Oct 23 post “APC payments no more? Read & Publish deals with publishers and the Scifree journal database”. Please bear in mind the advice at the end of the post for any forthcoming submissions.

Funding Open Access 

Gold open access is where the final version of an article is open to everyone indefinitely on the publisher’s website. This can be achieved through the payment of an article processing charge (APC) or through other models, for example Subscribe to Open or institutional deals. 

APCs are optional when publishing in ‘hybrid’ (also known as ‘subscription’) journals and are mandatory when publishing in fully open access journals. In hybrid journals, only articles where an APC has been paid will be freely available without a subscription or one-off fee, unless the institution has arranged a "read and publish" deal with the publisher. In fully open access journals, all articles are made freely available to readers without the need for a subscription. Please contact openaccess@strath.ac.uk for further information, or to inquire about payment of an APC through one of the funding options outlined below. 

If requesting payment of an APC, you should contact the Open Access Team (openaccess@strath.ac.uk) prior to submission so we can provide the best advice. Any requests for funding will be denied if we have not been contacted in advance of an invoice being issued by the publisher. 

Authors must also create a Pure record as soon as possible upon acceptance with a copy of the author accepted manuscript (AAM) uploaded. This allows us to check the author’s affiliations, who is the corresponding author, and any funding acknowledgements that have been included. This information will aid us in determining eligibility. 

R&P deals are agreements with publishers that cover both the access to the research literature (subscription fees or "Read" costs) and the Open Access publishing costs (or part thereof). 

These agreements allow accepted research articles where Strathclyde holds the corresponding authorship to be published Gold Open Access at no cost to the authors (i.e. with no APC payment). Gold Open Access eligibility under these deals does not depend on the manuscripts carrying any acknowledgement to a specific funded project. 

The list of over 11,000 titles covered by these agreements is available on the institutional Scifree database. This list is kept updated by the OA team, but frequent changes in ownership of the titles by publishers and the need for the agreements to be renewed year-on-year may lead to the information occasionally not being fully accurate. Please feel free to double-check a specific title’s eligibility at openaccess@strath.ac.uk before manuscript submission. 

The library administers block grants provided by several funders for the purposes of funding Gold Open Access publishing costs. At present we administer block grants funding from the UKRI, Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation.

To be eligible to have your APC paid from one of these block grants, your manuscript must include a funding acknowledgement (including the full grant number) to a funded project from one of these funders and meet the open access license requirements of your funder. 

In most cases, only manuscripts accepted in fully Open Access journals with a mandatory APC will be eligible for Open Access funding from these block grants. Please contact openaccess@strath.ac.uk to check your OA funding eligibility before submission. Failure to do so may result in authors needing to pay the APC themselves as ineligible APCs cannot be paid from the block grants.  

The library also administers the small Institutional Open Access Fund provided by the university to support the Open Access publishing costs for manuscripts that do not fall under any of the two previous categories. These are usually ‘unfunded’ manuscripts submitted to fully Open Access titles.

The following criteria should be met to secure Open Access funding eligibility from the IOAF:

  1. No other source of funding for the Open Access publishing fee should be available
  2. The journal must be fully open access
  3. The funding will be preferentially allocated where possible to ECRs’ first publications
  4. To ensure an equitable distribution of this small fund across departments, no more than one publication per researcher/research group will be funded from an Aug-to-July IOAF budget

Full guidance on the IOAF is available: IOAF Eligibility Criteria September 25. Please contact openaccess@strath.ac.uk to check your eligibility before submission. Failure to do so is likely to result in authors needing to pay the APC themselves.

There are only two funders who provide open access funding for books and book chapters – the UKRI and the Wellcome Trust. Eligible books or chapters must be the result of a funded project from one of these organisations and must carry an acknowledgement to the specific project with the full grant number. The library will not be able to fund Open Access for any books or book chapters.

Authors planning to sign a contract with a publisher for the publication of a long-form publication are encouraged to contact openaccess@strath.ac.uk before doing so for information on the requirements to secure Open Access funding (if/where eligible).

The UKRI have designed a two-stage funding process to be conducted by institutions alone on behalf of their authors. The UKRI have established a limit of 7 years on how long after the project end-date long-form publications remain eligible for Open Access funding. They have also established a cap on the Open Access funds they will provide for long-form publications:

  • Books – maximum available funding £10,000 (incl VAT)
  • Book chapters – maximum available funding £1,000 (incl VAT)

If the cost of open access exceeds this cap, neither UKRI nor the library will be able to provide additional funding.

The Wellcome Trust do not apply any funding cap to their Open Access support for long-form publications.

Please contact openaccess@strath.ac.uk for further information.

Funding OA FAQs