You must publish any research papers arising from your research award in such a way that they fully meet your funder's requirements. The policy will be available on your funder's website and should be highlighted in the start-up documents supplied with your research award, but a summary of the standard policies for some major funders is supplied in the tabs below.

To help you comply with their open access policy, your research funder may provide funding for open access fees either:

a) directly to you in the awarded grant (e.g., Horizon2020 and NIHR)
or
b) they may provide the College with a central source of funding to which you can apply. The funds available at Imperial are:

•  UK Research and Innovation (UKRI/RCUK) fund
•  Wellcome Trust fund
•  Cancer Research UK fund
•  British Heart Foundation fund

The Imperial Open Access Fund (Imperial Fund) is available to authors who do not have eligible open access funding in their research award or whose work is not externally funded. The fund will only pay for original research articles in journals listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Other publication types can be considered upon request – please contact us in advance of submission.

The Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) no longer exists from 1 October 2020 and the partners are replacing a single grant with individual funding arrangements (pdf). Authors with funding from Versus Arthritis, Blood Cancer UK, or Parkinson’s UK should contact their funder for further information.

UKRI have announced their new open access policy which will apply to journal articles and conference proceedings that are submitted for publication from 1st April 2022. Please see the UKRI open access policy for more information. We will keep updating information to help UKRI-funded researchers understand the new policy and what they will need to do.

To find out if your chosen journal is compliant with the UKRI and Wellcome open access policies, use the Journal Checker Tool. If your funder is not listed use SHERPA JULIET which provides a central source of funder open access policy information.

For further assistance, please contact the Library’s open access team.