Versus Arthritis

Policy Summary

Articles that acknowledge Versus Arthritis funding and are published in a peer-reviewed journal must be deposited in Europe PMC to become open access within six months of publication. The open access policy applies to original research papers and non-commissioned reviews. It does not apply to editorials, letters, commissioned reviews, scholarly monographs, conference proceedings or book chapters.

Authors can comply with Versus Arthritis policy via either the gold or green routes to open access, but the funder preference is for immediate gold open access where a compliant option is available.

Gold Open Access

Versus Arthritis expect their 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 and are compliant with their policy.

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 determine which publishers are compliant using the SHERPA/FACT service.

The Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) is no longer available to fund open access costs for Versus Arthritis researchers. Instead, authors requiring financial support to publish articles should apply directly to Versus Arthritis via Grant Tracker if their host institution or another funder cannot meet the costs of APCs.

Versus Arthritis has a limited budget to support open access costs. Applicants must therefore confirm in their application that they have approached their institution and any other applicable parties for open access funding support prior to making an application to Versus Arthritis. Whilst there is no time limit on requests for open access support beyond the end date of an award, applications will be assessed for relevance to the award.

The university has also entered into transformative agreements with some publishers that may provide compliant open access at no additional cost to authors or the institution.

Alternatively, authors can comply with Versus Arthritis policy by self-archiving their paper in Europe PMC within six months of publication as below, if the publisher permits.

Green open access

If a journal does not offer gold open access, or it does not meet the policy requirements above, 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 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.

If permitted, authors should deposit their accepted manuscript in Europe PubMed Central via Europe PMC plus. All Versus Arthritis grant holders will have been issued with a Europe PMC+ account to enable this.

Researchers should apply any embargo period that may be required by the publisher before the accepted manuscript can be publicly accessible. Versus Arthritis require that this embargo period should not exceed six months from the final date of publication.

Some publishers will automatically deposit accepted manuscripts in PubMed Central where authors declare Versus Arthritis funding. However, authors will need to confirm if their journal offers this service and that it will meet their funder requirements.

References

Versus Arthritis open access policy

Versus Arthritis Grant Tracker