If you are funded by a UKRI research council, the Wellcome Trust or NIHR, you will be required to publish research articles, conference contributions, or long form publications like monographs or book chapters, on an open access basis.

Journal articles must be published by one of two routes:

1. Gold Open Access under a CC BY licence, unless the funder will allow another licence to be used
2. Green Open Access, releasing the accepted manuscript or version of record under a CC BY licence and with a zero month embargo from the date of publication. The University supports green open access compliance with funder requirements through deposit in WIRE, which is free to use, but note that some publishers may have policies for green open access that are not compliant with funder policy.

Monographs and book chapters may also need to be published under a Creative Commons licence, depending on your funder.

Gold open access publishing often incurs a charge from the publisher.

Available funding

There are three major funding routes for funded researchers to pay for gold open access:

• The University of Wolverhampton provides a limited fund for open access publishing of funded research outputs, where the authors need to comply with funder policy under the terms of a grant from UKRI, Wellcome Trust or NIHR. The fund is open to staff and student researchers. See below for details of how to apply to the fund.
• The University of Wolverhampton Library takes part in a number of read and publish deals which cover fees for publishing in a range of titles from different publishers. The deals are open to all authors affiliated with the university. The different deals have differing requirements for eligibility.
• Funders may offer funding for covering publication costs.

Due to the limited nature of the funding, authors are recommended to explore other routes prior to application to the Open Access fund.

What can the fund be used for?

While available, the fund will pay for funded research outputs published in fully Open Access journals in good standing, where all articles are gold open access and an article processing charge (APC) is applicable.

The fund will also pay for long form publications that are funded research outputs, such as monographs or book chapters, from publishers in good standing.

What will not be funded?

• The fund will not pay for publication in hybrid journals, where articles can be published behind a paywall as well as open access. Authors should check the University’s read and publish deals for sources of funding for hybrid APCs.
• The fund cannot be used for any other publication charges levied by a publisher, such as colour printing or extra page charges.
• Open access fees for publications that are not the product of a funded research project.
• Open access fees for publications that are not journal articles or long form publications.
• If the open access costs of publishing exceed remaining funds, an application may be turned down.

It is recommended that authors confirm that the publishing venue they intend to use qualifies for use of the fund before submitting an application. If the author is unsure, the Scholarly Communications Team can help with this process.

How do I apply for funding?

To apply for funding, download and fill out this form Open access fund form (Word doc 34k). The details of the form will be checked to ensure compliance with the terms set out above.

• To be eligible for funding, the corresponding author on the paper must be currently affiliated to the University of Wolverhampton.
• Present the form and a copy of your paper to the head of your Research Centre, who will organise peer review of your paper. Your paper must be of 3 or 4 star quality to qualify for funding.
• All applications are subject to the approval of the Research Policy Unit/Library Management teams. 

Once the process is complete, the Scholarly Communications Team will inform you of the results of your application and next steps.

N.B. It is important you begin the application process as soon as possible to ensure that funding is available. If publishing in a fully open access journal, this may mean that you need to apply when submitting your article to the publisher.

Meeting funder requirements

Authors will be expected to choose open access options, such as specific Creative Commons licences, that meet the requirements of their funder, or to gain permission from their funder to be excepted from the requirements. Failure to do so may meant that funds cannot be supplied, even if the application is successful.

Please check your funder’s policies before submitting.

Further guidance

If you would like any further guidance on applying to the APC fund, please contact the Scholarly Communications Team.