Funding for Gold Open Access publishing
UKRI block grant
Publication of UKRI funded research may be covered by the UKRI block grant allocated to each university to spend on OA publishing. In the process of submitting a paper for OA publishing you may apply to the Bradford block grant to cover the related Article Processing Charge. It is important that you fill in the form FIRST before anything else, to ensure there are funds remaining in our block grant, and that your paper is actually eligible for funding. A provisional purchase order will subsequently be raised, and the Bradford author can then send this PO number to the publisher BEFORE requesting Open Access for the paper. Any invoices received from publishers need to be sent DIRECTLY to the Finance Department (the application form and related instructions provide the contact email).
NB! funds from the block grant are only available if the research was UKRI funded and this is acknowledged in the research publication; and if there are funds remaining in the grant.
Transitional publisher agreements
The University also has arrangements in place with selected publishers to allow for discounted or waived APCs for corresponding authors who are current academic staff. Postgraduate Research students must have a University of Bradford member of staff as a co-author, who will act as the corresponding author, to benefit from the listed agreements.
Authors need to contact openaccess@bradford.ac.uk to enquire about the availability of any applicable discounts.
NB! The listed publisher agreements offer Gold OA publishing without any added APC costs to the corresponding author throughout the year on a first-come-first-served basis. The agreements are based on the JISC consortium fund allocation for each agreement and the funds per publisher may run out before end of the calendar year. If and when funds for APCs run out for any given publisher, submitting authors will be asked to fund their APCs by other means.
Most agreements listed only cover APCs in journals that publish both OA and traditional subscription access articles (hybrid journals). Very few publishers include their fully OA titles in these agreements. In some cases discounted APCs are available but the authors need to arrange for APC payments themselves, as these are not covered by the agreement.
Journal search tool
Current agreements
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) - Use the Journal Search Tool above to identify eligible journal titles. Covers research articles and conference proceedings.
ACS (American Chemical Society) - Hybrid and Gold OA journals included within ACS Web Editions. Covers research articles.
Brill - Research articles published in any Brill title.
Cambridge University Press (majority of titles included in Gold OA charge waiver). Applies to research and review articles; and Rapid Communications (RRR). Brief report and case report article types, which are often linked to research articles, are also included.
Elsevier - Research and review articles; Case reports; Data in Brief; Microarticles; Original software publications; Protocols; Replication studies; Short communications; Short surveys; Video articles; and Practice guidelines covered by the agreement in the listed Core Hybrid journals.
Cell Press titles and the Lancet - Some exceptions apply.
The agreement does not cover fully Gold OA journals. 15% APC discount available for authors wanting to publish in these titles. The authors have to cover the OA charges.
A small number of economics, finance and accounting journals charge submission fees. In addition, a limited number of society-owned journals charge mandatory editorial page fees in addition to APCs. These fees are charged separately, directly to the author.
Oxford University Press (list of titles) research and review articles, brief reports and case reports. Step by step instructions provided by OUP.
PLoS - Titles covered are: PLOS Medicine, PLOS ONE, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS Digital Health.
Royal Society of Chemistry - hybrid titles included in the agreement. Gold OA titles are NOT included (see 'Gold Open Access' badge on excluded journal covers) nor is Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP).
SAGE hybrid titles are included but Fully Open Access journals are NOT included. NB! Articles published as part of commercially sponsored supplements, errata (which remain free to all to view), book reviews, editorials, published abstracts, call for papers, news items or similar are excluded from this service. Check for titles not participating or with special pricing.
SpringerNature - includes Springer and Palgrave Macmillan journals. Also includes Nature Research journal titles as follows:
A 15% discount is available for authors publishing in SpringerNature Gold OA journals (fully Open Access journals) and the remaining Nature journals that fall outside the Nature Research titles. NB! The OA fee is not covered by this agreement and is the responsibility of the author(s).
Taylor & Francis agreement covers research articles only. For F1000Research and Routledge Open Research the following are covered: including but not limited to Research Articles, Method Articles, Antibody Validation Articles, Reviews, Systematic Reviews, Clinical Practice Articles, Case Reports, Opinion Articles. Check the list of OpenSelect and Gold OA journals for eligible titles under this agreement.
Wiley (includes Hindawi titles) - Gold OA titles and hybrid titles included. Research and Review articles only.
Please note that some additional publication charges - separate from APCs - apply for certain journals, and these need to be covered by the author(s).
Although Gold OA journals are included in the current agreement, there is a cap on the number of papers that can be published in these titles per annum, without incurring an APC. If the cap is reached, authors receive a 15% discount from their APCs for articles published outside the agreement. This fee has to be covered by the author(s).
Author Rights Retention Policy and publishing your research
New policy coming in April 2024
Rights Retention is primarily associated with academic journal article publishing. Instead of authors signing copyright of their manuscript over to the journal publisher, they keep (retain) their rights and make the work available under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. This would enable Bradford authors (staff and doctoral researchers) to deposit their accepted manuscript into the Bradford Scholars repository immediately on publication without any publisher embargo. It would also allow the sharing and re-use of work without having to seek publisher permission. This presents a no-cost option for immediate access to Bradford’s research.
Read more about this new policy and what it means to you and publishing your research on our dedicated Rights Retention pages.