BHF Policy
Policy Summary
The final version of all peer-reviewed primary research papers or non-commissioned review articles acknowleding British Heart Foundation (BHF) funding should be made freely available in Europe PubMed Central within 6 months of publication. Researchers can comply via either the green or gold routes, with costs for gold open access in compliant journals eligible for payent from the block grant awarded to the university (subject to available funds).
Gold Open Access
Where a journal offers compliant gold open access researchers should choose this publishing route to ensure the work is available immediately on publication in its final published form. To be compliant, the publisher must apply the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY) to the paper and deposit the final version in Europe PubMed Central under the same licence to be open access from publication. Researchers can check journal complinace with SHERPA/FACT.
Where a charge is associated with compliant gold open access this can be paid from the BHF block grant awarded to the university, subject to available funds. These funds are limited and BHF cannot provide additional funds where the block grant funding has been fully utilised.
Please ensure we have approved funding for open access before committing to any payments to the publisher.
The university also has transformative agreements with many publishers that provide compliant open access at no additional cost to authors or the institution.
Green Open Access
If a journal does not offer compliant gold open access authors may be able to comply via the green route by making the accepted manuscript open access in Europe PubMed Central within six months of the final date of publication.
Authors are first advised to check that the journal's policy for self-archiving using Sherpa/Romeo and to contact us to discuss any issues.
To comply via this route authors should deposit their accepted manuscript in Europe PubMed Central via Europe PMC plus. All BHF grant holders have been issued with a Europe PMC+ account to enable this.
Some publishers will automatically deposit accepted manuscripts in PubMed Central where authors declare BHF funding. However, authors will need to confirm if their journal offers this service and that it will meet their funder requirements.
References