Open Access & Institutional Repository: NIHR

The Library does not manage an open access funding grant on behalf of NIHR but they can facilitate payments. Please complete the APC Application form selecting the "I am self-funding or using a grant for which I can supply a sub-project code" option in the Grant Details section. You will need to supply an active University of Southampton sub-project code. 

APC Application Form

NIHR Open Access publication policy for articles submitted on or after 1 June 2022. For articles submitted before 1 June 2022, please refer to the previous policy.

• The policy applies to all peer-reviewed research articles, including reviews not commissioned by publishers and conference papers, submitted for publication on or after 1 June 2022 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. Personal awards that do not fund research are out of scope of this policy.
  • For NIHR Infrastructure (including NIHR research units and schools): research studies where the majority of the research costs are funded by the NIHR.
• Must be published immediately and free to any internet user with a Creative Commons attribution licence (CC BY), or Open Government Licence (OGL) when subject to Crown Copyright, to ensure maximum impact so no barriers to reuse. ​

• 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. Please select the most appropriate licence and delete the others:

  "For the purpose of open access, the author has applied [a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence] [an ‘Open Government Licence’] (or where permitted by the National Institute for Health Research) [a Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence] to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising"

• Authors must archive in PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC to ensure articles are freely discoverable. ​
• Authors must include a data sharing statement detailing where the underlying research can be accessed. A data statement is also
  required to indicate where there is no underpinning data.
• Authors must acknowledge NIHR appropriately - please see the NIHR Acknowledgement Guide for details.
• NIHR will pay reasonable APC fees. This will be managed by the grant holder - please see the NIHR Open Access Publications Funding Guidance for full details.
  • NIHR Infrastructure Awards (this includes the BRC, CRF and ARC) must be budgeted and earmarked at application.
  • Eligible grant holders (NIHR Programmes, NIHR Personal Awards and NIHR Global Health Research Portfolio) from the 1st June 2022 will be allocated open access funding envelopes to support open access costs.
• Consortium/Collaborations: Articles, where funded researchers are listed as a collaborator or contributor (for example they provided data to a national dataset) or part of a consortium, are out of scope as in this case their funding has indirectly contributed to a research publication

We have written an introductory guide to help answer any questions, available from our Training for Researchers page.

If you have any questions, please contact eprints@soton.ac.uk.

SoCATs Open Access Publishing funding scheme

Applications for payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs) for open access publishing will be considered on a case by case basis for publications where an ACF (Academic Clinical Fellow) or Clinical Lecturer funded through the NIHR Integrated Academic Training (IAT) Programme is an author

Many research funders require outputs underpinned by their grant to be made open access at the point of publication and with a CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution) license. The Blood journals, published by the American Society of Hematology, including their open access title Blood Advances, do not comply because they only offer the more restrictive Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license.  

This may prevent some authors from being able to publish in Blood journals. The only potential route to compliance at present is to include a statement in the acknowledgements assigning a CC BY license to the accepted manuscript arising and manually depositing a copy in the Europe PubMed repository. Please note, we cannot pay publishing charges in Blood Advances until a publisher enabled route to compliance is available. 

If you have any questions please contact the Open Research and Publications Practice Team via eprints@soton.ac.uk