Cancer Research UK open access policy

Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Open Access policy started on 1st January 2022.

Policy Scope

The policy covers original, primary research publications that are accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal that acknowledge CRUK funding. The policy does not apply to book chapters, monographs, editorials, reviews or conference proceedings.

Requirements

Your must do the following with your journal article:

• Deposit either the final published version (VOR) or the Authors accepted manuscript (AAM) in Europe PubMed Central at the time of publication.
• The open access version (either the VOR or AAM) should have a CC-BY 4.0 license.
• Acknowledge Cancer Research UK funding in the funding acknowledgement section of the paper, using the format: "This work was supported by Cancer Research UK [Cref./A ref. OR XXXX\123456]’) and, for trial results, the CRUK trial number."
• Many publishers will deposit into Europe PMC (or into PubMed Central, from where it is mirrored to Europe PMC) for you, please check with your publisher. If you are required to do it yourself it is a simple process, further information is available on the Europe PMC website.

How to make your journal article open access

There are three ways you can make your article open access:

1. Publish in a fully open access or hybrid journal which makes the Version of Record (VoR) freely available immediately on publication.
2. Publish in a subscription journal and make the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) available immediately on publication.
3. Publish in a journal that the University of Leicester has a transformative agreement with.

Will CRUK pay Open Access charges?

The University of Leicester receives a block grant from CRUK for researchers to cover fair and reasonable open access publishing costs. Where you can comply with route 2 above, you should do this. Please go to the application form.

You can find a list of the transitional agreements that the University of Leicester has signed up for. In the majority of cases they allow corresponding authors from the University of Leicester to publish open access at no cost to themselves. Contact openaccess@leicester.ac.uk if you have any questions about eligible journals.

What if the block grant is exhausted?

In this case, you have three options:

1. Pay for APCs using any available underspend on your active CRUK response-mode grant, or other funding sources
2. Choose to publish in a journal that permits self-archiving of the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or Version of Record (VoR) in Europe PMC
3. Choose to publish in a journal that charges low or no publishing fees.

Please note, however, that publication costs must not be charged to response-mode grants where block grant funds are still available – if in doubt contact openaccess@leicester.ac.uk.