Summary of policies
Funder |
Requirement |
Embargo |
Funds provided? |
| ERC | Research outputs and data 'made available' | 6 month STEM 12 months HASS | Must be budgeted into grants |
| EU FP7 | Final article or AAM deposited into an institutional repository | 6 month STEM 12 months HASS | No funds required |
| Horizon 2020 | Articles only are mandated to be deposited in a repository | 6 month STEM 12 months HASS | Must be budgeted into grants |
What you need to do:
- Budget for OA costs in grant applications.
- Submit all articles to www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk on acceptance or when a journal asks you to commit to an OA option – whichever comes first.
- Follow any compliance advice we give you.
ERC
The European Research Council policy was announced in 2012. They require articles and monographs – and associated research data – to be made available within six months of publication for sciences. This is extended to 12 months for arts, humanities and social sciences. The policy states that they encourage institutions to meet the costs of this, but they have not provided any money to do so and there are no Cambridge University funds available. Costs will therefore have to be met from your research grant, and should be budgeted into future grant applications.
ERC projects are eligible for the FP7 post-grant OA Pilot (see below). The current average APC at for Cambridge articles is around £1800 + VAT, and we have more information about specific charges on this page.
EU FP7
An Open Access pilot programme was in effect for FP7. It applies to research in the following areas:
- Energy
- Environment (including Climate Change)
- Health
- Information and Communication Technologies (Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics)
- Research Infrastructures (e-infrastructures)
- Science in society
- Socio-economic sciences and the humanities
It requires that either the final published article or accepted manuscript be deposited in the University's Institutional Repository (or a subject repository if that’s not possible) with an embargo of no more than six months for the sciences or 12 months for the humanities and social sciences. Costs can be charged to your grant.
A post-grant pilot programme is in effect but will close on the 30th of April 2017. Manuscripts accepted after the 30th of April 2017 will not be eligible for funding. This allows projects to claim APCs of up to €2000 (journal articles) or €6000 (books) for up to three peer-reviewed publications up to 2 years after the end of their grants. VAT charges cannot be claimed and journal articles must be published in entirely open access publications – not hybrid journals.
It’s recommended that you apply for payments through the online system when an article is accepted – don’t wait until an invoice is issued. This speeds up the payment process, allows them to confirm eligibility and ensures that the invoice can be issued with the correct information (it must be made out to the Athena Research Centre, not the individual researcher or institution, and should include the EU VAT number). You may wish to download this 'summary of the different aspects to consider for submitting a successful funding request to the EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot'.
If you are making work open access in this way, you still need to upload your manuscript to www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk, as both the EU and HEFCE require us to make it available in our repository.
Horizon 2020
All Horizon 2020 peer-reviewed articles are covered by Open Access requirements. Monographs, books, conference proceedings and reports are not mandated, but Open Access is encouraged.
The policy requires that either the published article or accepted manuscript be deposited in a repository no later than publication. Maximum embargoes are six months for sciences; 12 months for arts, humanities and social sciences. Data sharing is encouraged but there is no obligation, except for projects covered by the Open Data Research Pilot).
Repository records must include the following metadata:
- the terms [‘European Union (EU)’ and ‘Horizon 2020’][‘Euratom’ and Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018’];
- the name of the action, acronym and grant number;
When submitting articles to www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk it would be helpful if you included this information in the comments field so we can add it to the record.
Open Access costs are eligible expenses that can be claimed from your research grant and should be budgeted for in grant applications. The current average APC at for Cambridge articles is around £1800 + VAT and we have more information about specific charges on this page. Depending on the outcome of the FP7 post-grant open access pilot, a similar programme will be considered for Horizon 2020.