While it is usually possible to make your work openly available at no cost, some publishers require the payment of an open access article processing charge (APC). This payment means that your work will be open immediately upon publication with a Creative Commons licence, via the publisher's website.
Some journals are fully open access, meaning that you will always have to pay an APC to publish in them. Other publishers operate a 'hybrid' model in subscription journals which means you can choose to publish either in the traditional manner where the work will sit behind a paywall, or you can pay an APC to make your article freely accessible. APCs usually range between £800 and £2000, though they can be higher or lower. The average charge has been estimated by UKRI to be £1727 (exc. VAT).
The Library has purchased a number of open access agreements and memberships with publishers - listed below under Open access transformative deals, memberships and pre-payment agreements. Some of these allow University of Bath corresponding authors to publish open access in their journals with no charge, and others provide discounts on the cost of APCs. Publishers will normally notify you of this option, if available, at the submission or acceptance stage, and your request will be sent to our dashboard for approval. We sign up to new agreements each year and details are added to the list. Please contact the open access team if you require more information on these OA transformative deals.
This page provides information on the funding options available to cover these charges and will help you determine whether you are eligible for funding support. If you have any queries about your eligibility please contact the Open Access Team at openaccess@bath.ac.uk.
Before making a request, please look over the information provided on the rest of this page regarding funding eligibility - including specific funder information. Please also check the publisher-specific open access agreements we have signed up to (listed below). Taking advantage of these deals may mean we get significant reduction in the price of your APC.
Please make sure that you have funding in place before submitting to your chosen journal or committing to pay any open access charges. If you have any questions regarding funding options or eligibility, then please contact openaccess@bath.ac.uk.
To request financial support for the payment of your article processing charge (APC), we request that authors submit details via our APC request form. Having this formal record of your request helps when processing invoices and reporting to funding bodies.
After receiving your request we will check that the publication meets the requirements of your funder and also whether funding is available. We will then send you an email confirming whether we can support the payment from either our UKRI or COAF block grant or the Bath Open Access Fund. We endeavour to respond to your request as soon as possible.
If we are unable to support the APC through either of our funds, we will provide guidance on how you can still make your work openly available.
If we can support the payment, we will provide instructions on how to proceed with requesting and paying for the open access fee.
The details of your request will be recorded on our database so that we can tie up the details and approve payment when the invoice arrives. Please note that the offer of financial support relates specifically to this article being published in this journal. The offer of support is not transferrable. If you resubmit the same article to another journal, you will need to contact us and re-apply for support.
If we do not have a pre-payment account with your publisher, we prefer that payment be made via invoice and not credit card. Once the invoice has been received and approved, Finance aim to make payments on, or as close as possible, to the due date, which is traditionally 30 days after the invoice date. If you receive any payment reminders, please also forward these to us to deal with.
As Library funds are very limited, we would be grateful if you could keep us updated with regard to the publication status of your paper. Please let us know straight away if the funds are no longer needed so that we can reallocate them. If payment has not been requested by the journal, or we have not heard from you by 30 June of the current financial year, we will automatically assume the funds can be reallocated to a new applicant and the offer of funding will be withdrawn.
Page/colour/submission charges - please note that the APC request form does not cover these. We are not able to pay any additional non-open access publication charges from the COAF fund nor the Bath Open Access fund. You and your co-authors must find an alternative source of funds for this or ask the publisher for a waiver. We can contribute only limited funds from the UKRI block grant towards these costs (max £750 per article). Please check with the open access team before agreeing to pay these charges to the publisher.
UPDATE (6 January 2021): the UKRI open access block grant is almost fully spent for the current budget year due to a rapid increase in the number of APC funding requests. If you have lodged a request but no longer require the funding, please let us know so that we can release the amount back into the fund.
Other options for gold open access are our publisher prepay and Read & Publish deals - see below for details.
Alternatively, please use the green (self-archiving) route to open access by depositing your accepted manuscript in Pure.
If you have been funded by a Research Council then you may be able to access our UKRI Open Access block grant. Whilst we encourage authors to self-archive their author accepted manuscript in Pure where possible, we understand that sometimes it is necessary for an OA fee to be paid so the article is open immediately.
Please read the below information as it may affect whether we can support your APC.
Please make sure that you have funding in place before submitting to your chosen journal or committing to pay any open access charges.
To be eligible to use the fund:
Publishers taking a sustainable and affordable approach to the transition to OA by reducing the cost of publishing in hybrid journals via offsetting deals and membership schemes include: American Chemical Society, BMJ, Royal Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of Physics, Sage, Springer Nature (Springer Compact titles only), Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Oxford University Press.
Further requirements:
Please note: The fund will cover up to three APCs per author/grant per annual block grant allocation (01 April – 31 March).
Page charges and other mandatory costs can also be paid under UKRI policy at the discretion of the individual institution.
To make a formal request for support from this fund, please fill out our APC request form.
UPDATE (September 2020): The COAF block grant funding ended on 30/9/2020. The Wellcome Trust have agreed to provide some additional funding until 31/12/2020. To request payment for an open access article processing charge, please complete the APC form and include your Wellcome grant reference number(s).
From January 2021 onwards Wellcome will continue to provide support for eligible OA costs to ensure compliance with their new policy and will supplement individual research grants for this purpose. From 1/1/21 onwards, you should contact Wellcome – at openaccess@wellcome.org direct, and request funding. You will need to provide the name of the journal, title of the paper, cost of the APC and your grant reference number(s).
The open access team will continue to advise on Wellcome open access policy and green open access via Pure.
The other COAF charities will be funding open access payments via block grants to eligible institutions or via additional funds within research grants.
Versus Arthritis - funded authors should make open access funding requests directly to Versus Arthritis via their Grant Tracker account.
British Heart Foundation (BHF) have provided a small open access block grant to fund APCs for BHF-funded papers - please use our APC Request form to apply for funding.
Authors funded by any of the other charities should contact their funder using the email address listed below.
Links to COAF charities' open access policies:
the publisher has agreed to COAF's publisher requirements (a requirement since 1 April 2017)
Wellcome Trust also mandates that monographs and book chapters be made open access. It has a separate funding mechanism to manage payment of these costs for its funded researchers. Please email openaccess@wellcome.ac.uk for more information.
Other COAF charities: if you need help with funding an open access payment you should contact your relevant research funder(s) directly. The email addresses are:
APCs for European Research Council-funded works can be claimed as direct eligible costs from your grant if publication is expected during the period of the grant. For more information, read the ERC guidelines.
Grant-holders must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to their funding. Horizon 2020 research can be made open access using the green route: uploading a copy of the author’s accepted manuscript to a repository, such as Pure, by the date of publication at the latest. However, this can only be done if the journal offers a 6 month embargo. A 12 month embargo is acceptable for publications in the social sciences and humanities. Horizon 2020 provide an amendment to publishing agreement that authors and publishers can sign to ensure authors have the rights they need to comply. The gold (paid) route is also acceptable. Article processing charges can be reimbursed by Horizon 2020 if they occur during the duration of the grant. Costs incurred once a project is completed cannot be refunded from that project's budget. The article must still be uploaded to an appropriate repository. For more information, visit the Horizon 2020 website or speak to a member of the Open Access Team.
The Foundation is willing to pay reasonable publisher fees in order to make publications openly available immediately via a CC-BY 4.0 licence. Researchers should not pay these fees out of their budget or seek reimbursement from the Foundation. They should use Chronos, a new service developed by the foundation, to manage the payment of open access fees.
The Society will not provide any additional funding to support open access costs. If your grant finishes with an underspend they are happy to consider requests for it to be used for APCs.
UPDATE (6 January 2021): the Bath Open Access Fund is now fully spent for the current budget year due to a rapid increase in the number of APC funding requests. If you have lodged a request but no longer require the funding, please let us know so that we can release the amount back into the fund.
Other options for gold open access are our publisher prepay and Read & Publish deals - see below for details.
Alternatively please consider the green (self-archiving) route to open access by depositing your accepted manuscript in Pure.
If you aren't funded by a Research Council, Wellcome/COAF partner, or other funding body which may be able to pay for your open 
access fee, then you may have the option of using the Bath Open Access Fund.
The Library’s Open Access Team can advise on whether your journal is eligible (email details to openaccess@bath.ac.uk).
Please submit your request via our APC request form. Having this formal record of your request helps when processing invoices and reporting to funding bodies.
Please note: funding is allocated on a first-come first-served basis so we cannot guarantee that funds will always be available. Since many journals require you to agree to the payment when you submit your article, it is a good idea to ensure you have funding before you proceed with the submission process. Do not commit to paying an APC until you have received confirmation of funding from the Open Access team.
The funding year is 1 August to 31 July and all invoices must be received by the open access team by 30 June each year in order to be paid during the funding period. Please forward all invoices and reminders to openaccess@bath.ac.uk
If your request for funding is approved, we will earmark the amount of the APC for you until the invoice is paid. If your article is not accepted by the journal, or you no longer require funding for the specified article, please let the team know as soon as possible. Funding is approved for a specified article in a specified journal - it cannot be transferred to a different one.
NOTE: the Bath Open Access Fund is used for the payment of open access article processing charges (APCs) and cannot be used to pay additional publication charges such as page, colour or submission charges. These remain the responsibility of the author and/or their department.
If your article does not meet the criteria for funding support for paid open access, there are still a number of things that you can do:
The University of Bath has signed up to a number of publisher agreements which may mean the cost of the APC is reduced or waived. If you are considering publishing with one of the below publishers, please read about what agreement we have in place and whether you might be able to benefit from it. If in doubt, please contact openaccess@bath.ac.uk for further information.
This is available to all Bath-affiliated corresponding authors and provides gold open access publishing in Wiley journals with no payment required by the author, regardless of funder.
Bath-affiliated corresponding authors can publish original research and review articles in any of Wiley’s fully gold Open Access or hybrid (subscription) OnlineOpen journals (see below for details). You will need to select the institutional open access option at the submission stage for fully gold journals or at the acceptance stage for hybrid journals. You will also need to provide details of any funders acknowledged in your work. Your request will be sent to our dashboard for assessment by the Open Access team.A list of Wiley’s fully gold journals included in the deal can be found here . A list of Wiley’s hybrid (subscription) journals that offer OnlineOpen included in the deal can be found here . For journals not included in this list, please make a request via our APC form.
All queries about publishing open access in Wiley's journals should be addressed to: openaccess@bath.ac.uk