Cancer Research UK open access policy

Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Open Access policy started on 1st January 2022 (Updated 1st April 2026).

In all cases, CRUK encourages its researchers to select publishing routes that ensure the work is available immediately on publication in its final published form, wherever such options exist for their journal of choice that are compliant with the policy.

Before publication

All grant holders submitting manuscripts to journals should find out in advance whether the publisher supports open access and how they can comply with the policy.

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:

• To deposit either the final published version (VOR), or the Authors accepted manuscript (AAM), to be made freely available in Europe PubMed Central at the time of publication.
• For the open access version (be it the VOR or AAM) to have a CC-BY 4.0 license.
• To 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."
• If your research has used patient data, you must use the patient data citation: https://understandingpatientdata.org.uk/data-citation
• 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.

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 here.

There are 3 routes to complying with this policy:

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 a transformative agreement with.

Will CRUK pay Open Access charges?

From 1st October 2026, CRUK will no longer fund open access publishing charges through its open access block grant, institutional core funding or grant underspend.

Researchers should look at journals covered by one of our publishing agreements, or publish in hybrid journals where the AAM can be made open access (green open access). Researchers should not publish in open access journals requiring the payment of an APC, unless a source of payment has been arranged beforehand.