1. What is an Open Access (OA) publication?
2. What is the Cancer Research UK policy in support of OA publishing?
3. When does the policy come into effect?
4. Which types of publications are covered by this policy?
5. What is UKPMC?
6. How do I comply with the policy?
7. How do I find out which publishers and journals are compliant with this Cancer Research UK policy?
8. What should I do if the journal does not have an OA option, nor does it allow me to self-archive my manuscript with UKPMC?
9. How will OA costs be met?
10. If I am self-archiving, which version of the article should I archive and when should I archive it?
11. Who will be able to self-archive a manuscript?
12. Does Cancer Research UK allow for exceptions?
13. Who can I contact for more information?

1. What is an Open Access (OA) publication?

1. An OA publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
   1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual (for the lifetime of the applicable copyright) right of access to the work, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make printed copies for their personal use.
   2. A complete version of the work and all supplementary materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format, are deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organisation that seeks to enable OA, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.

   This definition of OA publication used here is based on the definition arrived at by delegates who attended a meeting on OA publishing convened by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in July 2003.

2. There are two routes to achieving unrestricted access to the published research literature. One is to publish the original research paper in an OA publication (as defined in paragraph a); the second approach is to publish in any journal that allows deposition of a copy of the final manuscript into a freely accessible digital repository.
3. In February 2007, Cancer Research UK decided that all its direct-funded researchers and grant-holders must use UK PubMed Central (UKPMC), as Cancer Research UK's required digital repository. Direct-funded researchers and grant-holders should note that deposition of their research paper into UKPMC does not prevent them from also depositing a copy in their own institutional or another subject-based repository should they choose to do so, or be required to do so by their employing institution.

2. What is the current Cancer Research UK policy in support of OA publishing?

Cancer Research UK has a policy statement on this issue, including the specific obligations of institutions, direct-funded researchers, grant-holders and all others supported by grants. Specifically, Cancer Research UK:

• Expects authors of research papers to maximise the opportunities to make their results freely available and, where possible, to retain their copyright.
• Requires electronic copies of any research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and are supported in whole or in part by Cancer Research UK, to be deposited into UKPMC once established. All deposited papers must be made freely accessible from the UKPMC as soon as possible, and in any event within six months of the journal publisher's official date of final publication.

3. When does the policy come into effect?

The policy is mandatory for all current grantholders and Cancer Research UK Institutes for papers submitted for publication after 1 June 2007. The policy was approved by the Cancer Research UK Scientific Executive Board (SEB) in March 2007.

4. Which types of publications are covered by this policy?

• The policy applies to peer-reviewed, original (primary) research publications that have been supported, in whole or in part, by Cancer Research UK. The policy does not apply to book chapters, editorials, reviews or conference proceedings.
• Cancer Research UK's contribution must be acknowledged in all publications. The following standard format is suggested for inclusion in the acknowledgement section of any publication:

  "This work was supported by Cancer Research UK (CR-UK) grant number C.../A..."

  If you do not know your grant number, please email ukpmc@cancer.org.uk to obtain this.

5. What is UKPMC?

• Cancer Research UK is part of an initiative led by the Wellcome Trust (and in association with a number of other UK biomedical funders) to establish a UK version of PubMed Central (PMC). PMC is an archive of life science journal literature operated by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Access to PMC is free and unrestricted via the Internet.
• The contract to run UKPMC has been awarded to a partnership between the British Library, the University of Manchester and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). Cancer Research UK is a major funder of UKPMC.
• The aim of this initiative is to create a stable, permanent and free-to-access digital archive of the full text, peer-reviewed research publications (and datasets) that arise from research funded by Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and other members of the UKPMC Funders Group.
• UKPMC will comprise three key systems.
  1. A mirror of the data held in PMC, subject to permission from those publishers that participate in PMC.
  2. An author manuscript submission and tracking system, with supporting document conversion services.
  3. A system to provide authenticated login services to the submission system.

6. How do I comply with this policy?

• As an author there are two ways in which you can comply with the requirement that your Cancer Research UK-funded research is made freely accessible via UKPMC.
• Firstly, you can submit your manuscript to a journal that offers an OA option. Journals that provide this facility will take responsibility for depositing the final, published version of your paper in PMC, and making it freely available on the day of publication. Papers deposited in this way will be mirrored to UKPMC. Publishers that provide this option include all the OA publishers, such as BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science.
• An increasing number of traditional publishers that have introduced a hybrid OA model in which individual articles can be made OA. Under this model the author pays a fee to the publisher to make the article immediately accessible for free online (terms and conditions may vary according to publisher). Examples of publishers which have introduced a hybrid OA model include OUP, Blackwell, Springer, CUP, BMJPG, PNAS, the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Company of Biologists.
• If you submit your manuscript to a publisher that does not offer an OA option, you can still comply with the policy by depositing a copy of the final, peer reviewed manuscript in UKPMC. In cases where the author manuscript is deposited, these papers must be made freely available as soon as possible, and not later than six months after the final publication date. Examples of publishers that support this model include the American Medical Association, Company of Biologists, and Nature Publishing Group.
• In both approaches, authors are expected to include in the manuscript the unique identifier(s) for the funding. This is to enable funders to link the published outputs of research to the funding provided.

  The following standard format is suggested for inclusion in the acknowledgement of any publication:

  "This work was supported by Cancer Research UK (CR-UK) grant number C.../A..."

  If you do not know your grant number, please email ukpmc@cancer.org.uk to obtain this.

• A simple flow diagram, showing the two approaches, is provided in the Toolkit for Submitting Papers.

7. How do I find out which publishers and journals are compliant with this Cancer Research UK policy?

• You can either search the SHERPA database, developed by the University of Nottingham, which provides information as to whether or not a journal has a publication policy that is compliant with the Cancer Research UK's Grant Terms and Conditions.

  Alternatively email ukpmc@cancer.org.uk for information on your journal of choice.

• If the journal to which you wish to submit your manuscript is not listed in the database, Cancer Research UK encourages you to speak directly to the journal's editorial staff to determine their policy.

8. What should I do if the journal does not have an OA option, nor does it allow me to self-archive my manuscript with UKPMC?

• Authors must ensure, in advance of making any agreement with or commitment to a publisher at any stage, that the agreement or commitment does not conflict with the author's obligations under Cancer Research UK's policy (as set out in the Grant Terms and Conditions). Specifically, authors should inform the journal that they have an existing obligation to make their papers available from UKPMC, and investigate whether the publisher's policy is in conflict with this obligation.
• The Cancer Research UK's Grant Terms and Conditions are mandatory and binding on institutions, grantholders, and all others supported by a grant. An author's obligations to Cancer Research UK (whether as a grant-holder or member of staff) will therefore, in almost all cases, pre-date any agreement with a journal.
• Authors are unlikely to be able to comply with the Cancer Research UK policy if, without reaching a specific agreement with the journal about deposition of a copy of the final paper in UKPMC, they (or their institution) transfer the copyright (or undertake to do so in the future) to a journal.
• If such a conflict exists, authors or their institutions have a variety of options, summarised below. Guidance on (a) and (b) is available from the JISC/SURF 'Partnering On Copyright' Programme at Loughborough University:
  1. Grant a license of their copyright to a journal instead of assigning. Such a license would have to deal with the rights granted to the journal in such a way as to allow the journal to publish but still allow the author to make the article available via PMC.

     In this way, the author's institution should be able to retain ownership of their copyright and still allow publication in a journal. This could be achieved, for example, through using one of the Creative Commons licenses.

  2. Agree to a journal's normal arrangements only on the condition that it be specifically agreed that it can be made available from UKPMC. Copyright agreements can take many forms, but the following is an example of the sort of wording that could be included in an agreement with a journal that would still allow an author to comply with Cancer Research UK's Grant Terms and Conditions:

     "Notwithstanding any of the other provisions of this agreement, the journal acknowledges that the researcher will be entitled to deposit an electronic copy of the final, peer-reviewed manuscript into UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) once established, and for this manuscript to be mirrored to all PMC International sites. Manuscripts deposited with UKPMC may be made freely available to the public, via the internet, within six months of the official date of final publication in the journal".

  3. Reconsider where to publish. This is anticipated to be an exceptional circumstance. It is also worth noting that some other UK Research Councils and a number of national and non-government funding agencies around the world have adopted very similar positions, which make it likely that that the arrangements suggested here will become part of normal research practice within a few years.

9. How will OA costs be met?

• Normal publishing costs are the responsibility of the host institution. Only in exceptional circumstances will Cancer Research UK contribute to the costs of colour printing or page charges and only where these have been identified on the grant application itself.

  Cancer Research UK will not be changing this payment policy to accommodate open access publishing at this stage. However, the situation will be closely monitored and actual costs to researchers will be reviewed in summer 2008.

• Cancer Research UK Institutes and Units are already fully funded, and are expected to meet such costs out of their existing budgets.

10. If I am self-archiving, which version of the article should I archive and when should I archive it?

• An electronic version of the final manuscript resulting from research supported, in whole or in part, by Cancer Research UK funding must be submitted upon acceptance for publication.
• The version of the paper that should be archived is the final version that is accepted for journal publication, and includes all modifications from the publishing peer-review process. Which form of the manuscript is deposited, author version or PDF, will depend upon the publisher. It is the responsibility of the author to check the appropriate terms and conditions.
• All Cancer Research UK direct-funded researchers and grant-holders will be contacted directly, by email, and given a user name, password and further instructions on how to use UKPMC.

11. Who will be able to self-archive a manuscript?

It is expected that manuscript files may be submitted to UKPMC by the author or anyone given access to the author's files (administrative personnel, graduate students, librarians, etc.).

12. Does Cancer Research UK allow for exceptions?

If a researcher wishes to publish a paper in a journal that is unwilling to agree either to author/institution-ownership of copyright, or to deposition in UKPMC within six months, Cancer Research UK may, in exceptional cases, grant permission for authors to submit the paper for publication in such a journal. Such permission is likely to be granted only if a strong case can be made that the journal is the most appropriate journal for the research article.

13. Who can I contact for more information?

Any queries about this policy and its implementation should be emailed to ukpmc@cancer.org.uk.