Policy
Deposit published or accepted version in Europe PMC to be made freely available as soon as possible, and no later than 6 months after publication.
CC BY license required where an open access fee is paid.
Routes to meeting open access requirements
GOLD Publish in a fully open access journal, or gold open access in a hybrid journal, see “paying for gold open access” as the Library’s BHF fund will not always pay for this option in hybrid journals.
The publisher should send the final version of record of your paper to Europe PMC once it is published. It is the responsibility of the funded author to ensure that the paper meets the requirements, so we recommend checking that the deposit has been made, see Depositing in PubMed Central and Europe PMC.
OR
GOLD Publish in a subscription journal through a transformative agreement Imperial has signed up to, see Publisher agreements and discounts.
The publisher should send the final version of record of your paper to Europe PMC once it is published. It is the responsibility of the funded author to ensure that the paper meets the requirements, so we recommend checking that the deposit has been made, see Depositing in PubMed Central and Europe PMC.
OR
GREEN Publish in a subscription journal and take responsibility for making the author’s accepted manuscript freely available from Europe PMC as soon as possible, see Depositing in PubMed Central and Europe PMC, and no later than 6 months after publication. Imperial’s research publications open access policy (RPOAP) allows you to deposit with zero embargo for notified publishers, provided you first deposit in Spiral via Symplectic. See the RPOAP webpage for further details and a list of notified publishers.
Scope of Policy
Funding Publications funded in whole or in part by BHF.
Article types Peer-reviewed primary research papers, non-commissioned reviews.
Paying for GOLD open access
Covers in-scope articles in fully open access journals and hybrid journals where no funder-compliant GREEN (self-archiving) route is available. In the vast majority of cases, Imperial’s research publications open access policy allows you to comply via GREEN open access, so we would not generally pay for hybrid journals.
You can also publish GOLD open access where eligible for a transformative agreement, see publisher agreements and discounts. To have your paper included, follow the instructions for the relevant agreement. The corresponding author needs to have an Imperial College London affiliation and other conditions may apply.
No cost is associated with open access via the self-archiving or GREEN route.
We cannot pay page, colour or submission charges.
Required licence
CC BY license required on GOLD route only.
See Creative Commons licenses or The anatomy of a Creative Commons License (SWAY).
Non-compliant papers
A small number of journals remain non-compliant with BHF’s open access policy.
BHF’s rules state that if you wish to publish a paper in a journal that will not allow deposition in Europe PMC and open access within 6 months of publication, you must make a case, in advance to BHF. They will only grant this in exceptional circumstances. Imperial authors should not generally need to do this, since our research publications open access policy (RPOAP) enables you to deposit with no embargo and a CC BY license for all notified publishers. See the RPOAP webpage for further details and a list of notified publishers.