The Principal Investigator of all new grants awarded in whole or in part by the Wellcome Trust after 1st October 2005 and all grant holders from 1st October 2006 have a responsibility to ensure that an electronic copy of any research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, are deposited in the UK PubMed Central database. The policy does not apply to book chapters, editorials, reviews or conference proceedings.
The Wellcome Trust requires that this should be done as soon as possible after the journal has been published and in any event within six months of the journal publisher's official date of final publication.
What do you need to do?
What you need to do now depends upon the policy of the journal you have published in. You can find out your journal policy by searching in the online SHERPA/RoMEO database, or by asking Library staff (see help section below for details).
Search the SHERPA/RoMEO database
The journal policy will allow you to carry out one of the following actions:
Deposit the author final manuscript of your article in the UK PubMed Central database: if the publisher of the journal your article appears in does not have any agreement in place with PubMed Central, or the publisher of your article does not require you to opt for a specific open access publishing option in order to comply with the Wellcome policy, then you can place the ‘authors’ final version (e.g. your MS Word document) in the UK PubMed Central database.
Read full instructions in the UK Manuscript Submission System user guide
Publication in a journal with a free agreement with PubMed Central: The publishers of some journals have an arrangement to automatically deposit all articles in PubMed Central (e.g. The Journal of Virology). If this is the case you do not need to do anything. However, you may wish a record to be created in ERA which will be linked to the freely available copy of the full text in UK PubMed Central.
Publication in a journal with a charged agreement with PubMed Central: Some publishers have developed policies whereby they expect authors to choose their open access publication option in order to comply with the Wellcome policy. In most case there will be a fee for this, but this will be covered by the Wellcome Trust. For example, the publisher Elsevier have recently announced that authors can meet the requirement by paying a subsidy fee to the journal (this fee will be reimbursed by the Trust). Upon final publication Elsevier will send to PubMed Central the Wellcome Trust Subsidised Manuscript (a version of the accepted manuscript that reflects all author-agreed changes that arise from the peer-review, copy-editing and proofing processes) and will authorize its public posting on PMC, and PMC mirror sites, immediately.
Read the Elsevier Agreement with the Wellcome Trust
What can we do to help?
1. Library staff can advise on what specific journal policies are. If you are unsure then send an e-mail to oapublish@ed.ac.uk and we can help you.
2. Library staff can also deposit your paper in UK PubMed Central for you. In order for us to do this you will need to send the following to era.deposit@ed.ac.uk:
- A suitable electronic copy of your paper in either Word or PDF format.
- Any associated image files. If these have not been incorporated into the body of the articles they should be sent as a separate file. Both files will be submitted to the UK Manuscript Submission System (UKMSS) offered by UK Pubmed Central. UKMSS will combine the files into a single document.
- Bibliographic details of the article (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, page numbers)
- Your Wellcome Trust grant number
You should use 'Wellcome Trust deposit' as the Subject of your e-mail. Repository staff will then deposit the paper on your behalf. A record for the paper will also be created in the Edinburgh Research Archive with a link to the UK PubMed Central record.
3. Publishing in BioMed Central and other journals: If you are required to pay for a publisher's open access option in order to comply with the Wellcome's policy, the University of Edinburgh has been awarded funding by the Wellcome Trust to support the publishing of research articles in ‘open access journals’. This fund is administered by Edinburgh University Library and an amount has been pre-paid to BioMed Central to enable you to publish. Details at: www.biomedcentral.com The regulations for publishing in BioMed Central are the same, .i.e., that the research grant awarded in whole or in part must be from the Wellcome Trust before the article/s can be published in BioMed Central using the pre-paid Wellcome Trust OA funds. Further details about the Wellcome Trust funding for Open Access Publishing held by Edinburgh University and instructions on how to access the fund, can be provided by contacting the Library (details below).
Where can I get further information and advice?
The Wellcome Trust has made an author’s FAQ available which provides detailed advice. There is also a comprehensive guide written by the Library.
Library staff will also be happy to advise on any aspect of the Wellcome Trust funding or open access in general - please contact Theo Andrew at oapublish@ed.ac.uk or call 651 3850
This document is also available in Adobe Acrobat pdf format for printing: wellcomeoainfo.pdf (about pdf)
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