How to Acknowledge Your Research Grants
It is recommended that researchers use a standard format to acknowledge their funders e.g. "This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number xxxx]." or for multiple funders "This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Natural Environment Research Council [grant number zzzz]; and the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number aaaa]."
Several funders mandate research outputs to be made open access either on the publisher website or by depositing a copy of the accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository within a set timeframe. If your research has been funded by one of the organisations listed below then you must follow their open access policy.
- Search for information on funder policies at Sherpa Services.
Funder Open Access Policies
See below for funder open access policies. If your funder is not listed here please check the terms and conditions of your grant to make sure that you are aware of your obligations when publishing your research findings.
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation open access policy
The current open access policy can be found on the Foundation webpages.
From January 1, 2025, this policy will be expanded to apply to all published research funded, in whole or in part, by the foundation (“Funded Manuscripts”). The 2025 Open Access policy also applies to any data underlying the Funded Manuscripts.
When must your research output be made open access?
As soon as possible.
Deposit preprints in a preprint server unless there is good reason not to make the preprint openly available.
Accepted articles shall be deposited immediately upon publication in PubMed Central (PMC), or in another openly accessible repository. UoA researchers should also deposit in Pure.
Licence requirement
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) or an equivalent license.
How to make your research output open access
From 1st January 2025 the Foundation Will Not Pay Article Processing Charges (APC). Any publication fees will be the responsibility of the grantees and their co-authors
The University has agreements with many publishers that allow gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
Publish in a subscription journal that allows to deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript (or Version or Record, where the journal permits) in Europe PMC without embargo.
Apply the Rights Retention Statement to all submissions to ensure that you retain copyright to the accepted manuscript.
“This work was supported, in whole or in part, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [Grant number]. The conclusions and opinions expressed in this work are those of the author(s) alone and shall not be attributed to the Foundation. Under the grant conditions of the Foundation, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License has already been assigned to the Author Accepted Manuscript version that might arise from this submission. Please note works submitted as a preprint have not undergone a peer review process.”
Researchers can use SHERPA services to check whether their chosen journal is compliant.
Data Availability
Underlying data will be made accessible no later than publication unless there is good reason to restrict access.
Useful links
Open access policy until 31 Dec 2024
Open access policy from 1 January 2025
Information for paying APCs up until 31 Dec 2024
- British Heart Foundation
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British Heart Foundation (BHF) open access policy
Applies to original research articles and non-commissioned reviews funded wholly or in part by BHF. Grantholders must acknowledge BHF support by quoting “This work was supported by British Heart Foundation, followed by the award reference number” in the appropriate section of all publications arising from BHF funded research.
When must your research output be made open access?
Accepted manuscript (AM) or final published version (VoR) must be made freely available in Europe PubMed Central as soon as possible and no later than 6 months after publication.
If a researcher wishes to publish in a journal that will not allow deposition in Europe PMC and open access within 6 months of publication, a case must be made in advance to BHF (research@bhf.org.uk), and will only granted in exceptional circumstances.
Licence requirement
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)
How to make your research output open access
Many journals will deposit the final published version of the article on behalf of the authors directly into Europe PMC (list of participating journals) to be made freely available immediately on publication.
University of Aberdeen has a small BHF block grant award that can be used to pay APCs for gold open access with a CC BY license. Please follow this link for further information or contact openresearch@abdn.ac.uk to confirm eligibility and make sure that there are funds available before submitting your manuscript.
BHF open access fund cannot be used to pay APCs for commissioned or invited review articles, conference proceedings, editorials, letters or commentaries and any other charges associated with publication, such as page and colour charges.
The University has agreements with many publishers that allow gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
Apply the Rights Retention Statement to all submissions to ensure that you retain copyright to the accepted manuscript and can share the accepted manuscript without restriction.
Journals may deposit the accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in Europe PMC (BHF allows a 6 month embargo period) no fee is charged for this service.
Where a journal does not deposit the AM in Europe PMC there is an author manuscript submission system for authors to self-archive papers.
Useful links
- Cancer Research UK
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CRUK - Cancer Research UK open access policy
Applies to to original, primary research publications accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
The policy does not apply to book chapters, monographs, editorials, reviews or conference proceedings.
CRUK’s support must be acknowledged in the format ‘This work was supported by Cancer Research UK [followed by your Grant Reference number as detailed on your Grant Award Letter. This will be in the format ‘C1234/A5678’ or ‘XXXX\123456’ and, for trial results, the CRUK trial number]’.
When must your research output be made open access?
Accepted manuscript (AM) or final published version (VoR) must be made freely available in Europe PubMed Central on publication.
Licence requirement
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Authors may request an exception to use the CC BY-ND licence.
How to make your research output open access
Publish in a fully open access or hybrid journal which makes the Version of Record (VoR) freely available immediately on publication. Typically, the journal deposits the final publication in Europe PMC on the authors' behalf.
The University has agreements with many publishers that allow gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
There are no central funds available to pay APCs. Where an APC is required authors may choose to use any available underspend on their active CRUK response mode grant.
Publish in a subscription journal that allows to deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript (or Version or Record, where the journal permits) in Europe PMC without embargo.
Researchers can use SHERPA Services to check whether their chosen journal is compliant.
Data Availability
If your research has used patient data, you must use the patient data citation: https://understandingpatientdata.org.uk/data-citation (link is external)
In line with our Data Sharing and Management Policy, you must include a data availability statement explaining how the data and software underlying the findings reported in the paper can be assessed by researchers and other users, and use persistent DOIs to cite datasets.
Additional requirements
Researchers must provide the CRUK Press Team with a copy of all publications and conference abstracts arising from the Grant Activities at the time of submission for publication via the online manuscript submission form on CRUK’s website or press.office@cancer.org.uk. Any manuscripts and details will be held in the strictest confidence
Useful links
Cancer Research UK open access policy and FAQ
contact: policies@cancer.org.uk
- Chief Scientist Office
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Chief Scientist Office (CSO) open access policy
Applies to all peer-reviewed research articles, including reviews not commissioned by publishers, submitted for publication on or after 1 June 2022 than arise from CSO grants and CSO fellowships.
When must your research output be made open access?
The final, peer reviewed manuscript or the author accepted manuscript must be deposited in EuropePMC on publication.
Licence requirement
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
How to make your research output open access
Accepted manuscript (AM) or final published version (VoR) must be made freely available in Europe PubMed Central on publicaton.
Where an article processing charge (APC) is required CSO will reimburse the author. The publisher must make the VoR freely available on the publishing journal platform at the time of publication AND deposit the VoR in EuropePMC.
Funding will be limited to £8,000 per standard CSO committee grant or Fellowship and must be applied for within 18 months of financial reconciliation of the grant. If CSO is not the only funder acknowledged on the paper then the PI must confirm CSO are the majority funder or explain why the application for funds is being sent to CSO.
The University has agreements with many publishers that allow gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
Apply the Rights Retention Statement to all submissions to ensure that you retain copyright to the accepted manuscript.
Deposit the author accepted manuscript (after peer-review version) in PMC/EuropePMC on publication.
Useful links
- European Commission - Horizon Europe
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European Commission – Horizon Europe open access policy
Horizon Europe (HEU) is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation launched in 2021. One of its aims, is increasing the current standard of dissemination of knowledge with a new open science policy by sharing research outputs, tools and data as soon as possible.
Open access policy for peer-reviewed scientific publications
Open access policy for monographsScientific publications - when must your research output be made open access?
All peer-reviewed scientific publications must be made open access at the latest at the time of publication via either green or gold open access. A machine-readable electronic copy of the published version (VoR) or the final peer-reviewed author accepted manuscript (AM), must be deposited in a trusted repository for scientific publications.
All publications must be deposited in a trusted repository (even the gold open access one!)
In addition, information about research underlying data, any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the scientific publication must be made available in a repository on publication.
Licence requirement
CC-BY or a licence with equivalent rights for gold and green open access outputs. This means that AM deposited on a trusted repository must be immediately open access – i.e. embargo is not allowed.
How to make your research output open access
Gold open access
Only publication fees in full open access venues (e.g. fully open access journal as listed in DOAJ), for peer-reviewed scientific publications are eligible for reimbursement from the HEU grant.The University has agreements with many publishers that allow gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
Open Research Europe (ORE) platform: this an open access platform providing fast publication and open peer review for research stemming from Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe funding across all subject areas. This has no publishing fees. If ORE is selected as the publishing venue, all open access to scientific publication requirements will be fulfilled by the beneficiary.
Green open access
Author can publish in a hybrid or closed (subscription) venue, as long as immediate open access is provided to the deposited AM via the trusted repository at the same time as publication, under CC BY or a licence with equivalent rights.Apply the Rights Retention Statement to all submissions to ensure that you retain copyright to the accepted manuscript.
It is researchers’ responsibility to select a journal that complies with HEU self-archiving requirements. Please contact openaccess@abdn.ac.uk or use the PlanS Journal Checker Tool to confirm whether a journal is compliant before submitting your manuscript.
Trusted repositories are disciplinary and domain repositories commonly used and endorsed by the research communities and recognised internationally.
Recommended repositories that meet HEU criteria are:
- Europe PMC for life sciences including biomedicine and health
- arXiv for physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics
- the CLARIN-DK-UCPH Repository for digital language data
- the European Nucleotide Archive
- the European Southern Observatory databases of astronomical observations
- Zenodo, general purpose and used by Open Research Europe.
We strongly advise to also upload your accepted manuscript to the University of Aberdeen repository AURA. Once your research output is accepted, send an email to paperaccepted@abdn.ac.uk with a copy of your AAM and the acceptance email, and the open access team will upload your manuscript on the repository on your behalf.
Open access requirements for data
Researchers funded by HEU are required to establish a data management plan (DMP), and regularly update it.
Researchers must:- deposit the data in a trusted repository; if required in the call conditions, this repository must be federated in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) in compliance with EOSC requirements
- ensure open access as soon as possible and within the deadlines set out in the DMP to the deposited data via the repository, under the latest available version of the Creative Commons License (CC BY) or Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC 0) or a licence with equivalent rights.
- provide information via the repository about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to re-use or validate the data.
If open access is not provided (to some or all data), this must be justified in the DMP.
Monographs - When must your monograph be made open access?
The beneficiary must provide immediate open access upon publication through either gold (published version (VoR) is open access) or green (the author accepted manuscript (AAM) is deposited on a trusted repository and made available open access on publication date) route.
Licence requirement
CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND for VOR and AAM.
How to make your research output open access
Gold open access
If the venue meets the open access criteria, then the publication fees (including open access fees) can be reimbursed from the Horizon Europe grant. The publishing fees for open access monographs will cover the first digital open access edition of the book (which could include different formats such as html, pdf, epub, etc). Printing fees for the monographs and other books are not eligible.
Green open access
The publication fees would have to be covered by other funds and the beneficiary will still have to deposit an AAM or VOR under a CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND licence in a trusted repository at the same time as publication (no embargo period allowed).
The repository needs to not only provide open access to the deposited monograph, but also support the metadata of the deposited monograph in the repository, under a CC 0 public domain dedication. Such repositories should be recognised internationally.
The OAPEN Open Books library is likely to fulfil the requirements of a trusted repository, however, the OAPEN website has not currently been updated to take into account the open access changes under Horizon Europe.
Useful links:
- European Commission - Horizon 2020 - Marie Curie
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Horizon 2020 open access policy
Horizon 2020 implemented open access policy refers to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to the project's results (including not only journal articles but also conference proceedings and long-text publications such as monographs, book chapters, edited volumes, etc.)
When must your research output be made open access?
Research outputs must be made available open access as soon as possible and at the latest upon on-line publication, through either gold or green open access route.
All publications must be deposited in a repository (even the gold open access one)
Beneficiaries of the grant must also aim to deposit and grant open access to the research data ('underlying data') at the same time as the publication, ideally in a data repository, however this is not mandatory.
Licence requirement
CC-BY preferred for either gold or green research outputs, but not mandatory, other Creative Commons licenses are accepted.
How to make your research output open access
Article processing charges (APC) for gold open access publications in fully open access and hybrid journals are eligible for reimbursement during the duration of the project. The costs of 'gold' open access publications incurred once a project is completed cannot be refunded from that project's budget. Gold open access publication must be deposited in a repository of authors’ choice (see below).
The University also has several agreements with publishers that allow gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
Apply the Rights Retention Statement to all submissions to ensure that you retain copyright to the accepted manuscript.
The Accepted Manuscript must be deposited in the institutional or other repository with an embargo limit of 6 months for STEM subjects and 12 months for publications in the social sciences and humanities.
To provide support concerning compliance with Horizon 2020 embargo periods the Commission offers a model amendment to publishing agreements, which are often signed between authors and publishers.
Embargo exception: green open access with a longer embargo period is accepted for publications issued after the end of the funded project, if open access within the maximum acceptable embargo period cannot be provided without incurring in additional costs for gold open access.
It is researchers’ responsibility to select a journal that complies with Horizon 2020 self-archiving requirements. Please contact openaccess@abdn.ac.uk to confirm whether a journal is compliant before submitting your manuscript.
Open Research Europe: this an open access platform providing fast publication and open peer review for research stemming from Horizon 2020 funding across all subject areas. There is no charge to publish, and the platform allows you to meet the Horizon 2020 open access requirements.
Copyright
European Commission encourages authors to retain their copyright and grant adequate licences to publishers.
Repository
Institutional, subject- based and centralised repositories are all acceptable choices.
Recommended repositories are:
- Europe PubMed Central for Life Sciences
- arXiv for Physical sciences/engineering
- OAPEN Library for monographs, book chapters and other long-text publications
- Zenodo
Useful links:
Marie Curie Open Access Policy
The policy applies to peer-reviewed, original research reports and systematic reviews that have been supported wholly or partly by Marie Curie. The policy does not apply to book chapters, editorials, opinion pieces or conference proceedings.
When must your research output be made open access?
Marie Curie funded research should be made available through Europe PubMed Central within six months of the date of publication.
Licence requirement
CC-BY preferred for either gold or green research outputs, but not mandatory, other Creative Commons licenses are accepted.
How to make your research output open access
Gold open access
Funds for gold open access publication cost should be budgeted at the time of grant submission; however, unspent Marie Curie grant funds may be used to cover Open Access costs for publications from grants that are still active.
Open Access publication fees can still be requested after the grant end date and Marie Curie will consider payment of this fee depending on the acknowledgement of Marie Curie funding and Marie Curie being a key funder.
More information about how to claim funds can be found here.
The University also has several agreements with publishers that allow affiliated corresponding authors to publish gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
Green open access
The Accepted Manuscript must be deposited in Europe PMC with an embargo limit of 6 months.
Association of Medical Research Charities’ (AMRC) Open Research Platform hosted by F1000: This an open access platform providing fast publication and open peer review for research for research funded by the participating AMRC member charities (i.e. Marie Curie). The platform is compliant with Marie Curie open access requirements: articles that have passed peer review will be indexed in PubMed and other scientific databases and will be published open access under a CC-BY licence (more information here).
Article Processing Charges apply; Marie curie will consider payment of this fee as described in the gold open access section above.
Useful links
- National Institute for Health Research
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Applies to peer-reviewed articles, including non-commissioned reviews and conference papers, describing NIHR funded research findings submitted on or after 1st of June 2022 and arising from:
- NIHR Programmes, NIHR Personal Awards and NIHR Global Health Research Portfolio: research studies where the research costs are funded in whole or in part by the NIHR.
- For NIHR Infrastructure (including NIHR research units and schools): research studies where the majority of the research costs are funded by the NIHR.
Research articles must include:
- A data sharing statement describing how the underpinning research data can be accessed. Where there are reasons to protect access to the data, these should be included in the statement (read more about NIHR position on the sharing of research data).
- Appropriate acknowledgment of NIHR, unique award identifier and disclaimer in the funding or acknowledgments section of the manuscript and included in the funding information requested by the publication on submission (read more on how to acknowledge the NIHR in research outputs).
Monographs, non-peer-reviewed material and personal awards that do not fund research are out of scope of this policy.
When must your research output be made open access?
The Version of Record or the Author Accepted Manuscript must be made freely available through PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC by the official final publication date, without any embargo period.
Embargo exception: Peer-reviewed research articles which are out of scope, but which acknowledge NIHR support/funding must be deposited and made freely accessible through Europe PMC no later than 12 months post the official final publication date
Licence requirement
CC BY or Open Government Licence (OGL) when subject to Crown Copyright for gold and green research outputs. To apply the licence to the Author Accepted Manuscript (for green open access outputs), submissions to subscription journals must include the following text in the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission:
"For the purpose of open access, the author has applied [a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence] [an ‘Open Government Licence’] to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising"
Exception: CC BY ND may be permitted on a case-by-case basis.
Open access funds:
The cost of APCs and other appropriate publication charges will be supported by NIHR. An open access funding envelope will be provided to NIHR award holders to support open access costs.
The University has agreements with many publishers that allow gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
Repository requirements
All articles must be long-term archived and freely discoverable through PMC and Europe PMC.
This should not prevent researchers from also depositing a copy in their institutional or another subject-based repository.
For the Global Health Research portfolio, NIHR encourages authors to deposit in Europe PMC, although an appropriate and sustainable local institutional, national or regional repository may be used instead, where available. The chosen repository must follow the standards described in the technical standards for journals, publishing platforms and repositories.
Useful links:
- REF
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The results of the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 are available on the REF webpages.
The Future Research Assessment Programme is underway with the aim to evaluate and review the current REF process.
Until further notice we must continue to ensure our research outputs comply with the REF2021 open access policy.
The policy requires that, in order to be eligible for submission in the next REF, all journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN number that have been accepted for publication on or after 1 April 2016 must be publicly accessible through an institutional or subject repository within 3 months of acceptance for publication.
The policy does not currently apply to monographs or other long form publications, to non-textual outputs, research data, conference proceedings published with an International Standard Book Number (ISBN), or publications that must remain confidential for security or commercial reasons.
It is expected that REF2029 will have an open access requirement for longform publications. Further details will be shared as they become available.
What should researchers do?
- Before submission: check whether the journal you plan to submit your article to is REF compliant: go to Sherpa/Romeo or e-mail: openaccess@abdn.ac.uk
- Use the Rights Retention Statement to ensure immediate open access of the final author version or 'post-print'
- On acceptance: e-mail confirmation e-mail or letter, together with the final accepted version of the output to: paperaccepted@abdn.ac.uk
- On publication: complete bibliographic detail in Pure or notify paperaccepted@abdn.ac.uk
Any questions? E-mail openresearch@abdn.ac.uk
- UKRI
- Versus Arthritis UK
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Versus Arthritis UK open access policy
Versus Arthritis open access policy applies to original research papers submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The policy does not extend to editorials, letters, commissioned reviews, non-commissioned reviews, scholarly monographs, conference proceedings or book chapters.
The Versus Arthritis grant number must be accurately acknowledged on the paper – e.g. This work was supported by Versus Arthritis [grant number xxxxx]”–.
When must your research output be made open access?
Any articles accepted for publication that are wholly or partially funded by Versus Arthritis must be deposited in Europe PMC as soon as possible and no later than six months after publication.
Licence requirement
CC-BY where APCs for gold open access have been paid.
Embargo: maximum 6 months
How to make your research output open access
Gold open access
Versus Arthritis UK is keen to support gold open access publications, however the budget is limited. Funded authors can make open access funding requests directly to Versus Arthritis via their Grant Tracker account at https://gt.versusarthritis.org/login.
The University also has several agreements with publishers that allow gold open access at no additional cost or at a discount.
Green open access
Apply the Rights Retention Statement to all submissions to ensure that you retain copyright to the accepted manuscript and can share the accepted manuscript without restriction.
Funded authors must self-archive their publication in Europe PMC within six months of publication. Please note, a small number of journals do not allow this, and the policy doesn’t allow embargo exceptions.
Authors are encouraged to use the SHERPA/FACT database to assess whether a journal is compliant with Versus Arthritis UK open access policy prior to submission.
Useful links
- Wellcome Trust
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Wellcome Trust open access policy
Applies to original research articles. Reviews, editorials and other manuscript types are not in scope of the policy.
It is beneficiaries’ responsibility to publish any peer‐reviewed research papers wholly or partly funded by Wellcome in journals that are compliant with Wellcome’s Open Access policy. All papers must include details of the funding that supported the research and a statement explaining how other researchers can access any data, original software or materials underpinning the research (Wellcome’s data, software and materials management and sharing policy).
Researchers and organisations who do not comply with Wellcome open access policy might not be allowed to submit new grant applications. In extreme cases, current funds might be suspended.
When must your research output be made open access?
All original research articles must be made freely available via PubMed Central and Europe PubMed Central by the official final publication date.
Where there is a significant public health benefit to preprints being shared widely and rapidly, such as a disease outbreak, Wellcome requires the posting of preprints under CC BY licence.
Licence requirement
CC-BY for all outputs. CC-BY-ND licence is allowed if explicitly agreed with Wellcome Trust. The form on this page Wellcome Trust Applying for a No-Derivatives Licence can be used to request such exception.
How to make your research output open access
There are three routes to open access for Wellcome funded research. Routes 1 and 2 are preferred but where these are not possible route 3 will provide an alternative route to compliance with the open access policy.
Route 1
Publish in a fully OA journal or platform. Using this route, the publisher takes responsibility for making the Version of Record for the article freely available from Europe PMC at the time of publication.
Wellcome provides a small block grant for publishing in fully open access journals or (until Dec 2024) transformative journals.
Route 2
Publish in a hybrid (subscription) journal through a transformative arrangement that is available to you via your organisation.
Under this route, the publisher takes responsibility for making the Version of Record for the articles freely available in Europe PMC at the time of publication, under a CC BY licence.
The Journal Checker Tool will let you know if a transformative arrangement for your preferred journal is available to you through your organisation.
Route 3
Publish in a hybrid (subscription) journal and take responsibility for making the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) freely available from Europe PMC at the time of publication under a CC-BY licence. Use the author manuscript submission system Europe PMC plus to deposit your AAM.
To grant a CC-BY licence for the author accepted manuscript, submissions of original research to peer-reviewed hybrid journals must include the following statement
‘This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.'
Include the statement in:
- any cover letter that accompanies the submission
- the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript.
If you are unable to make the Version of Record or the Author Accepted Manuscript open access, then you may post a preprint under a CC BY licence. Wellcome will accept this as compliant with the policy in these situations.
Please contact openresearch@abdn.ac.uk or use the Journal Checker Tool to confirm whether a journal is compliant before submitting your manuscript.
Useful links
- Wellcome open access policy
- Guide to comply with Wellcome open access policy
- Wellcome open access funding
Wellcome Trust – Monographs and book chapters
All original scholarly monographs and book chapters authored or co-authored by Wellcome grantholders as part of their grant-funded research, must be made freely available through NCBI Bookshelf PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC as soon as possible and no later than 6 months of the official final publication date.
Licence requirements - Monographs and book chapters
CC- BY, CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-NC-ND are acceptable options where a fee has been paid to make the work open access.