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Cambridge MedChem Consulting

Gates Foundation insists on open access publishing

The Gates foundation's policy on open access publishing became enforced from Jan 1st 2017 and so all research from Gates funded projects can only by published in Open Access journals.

The details of the policy are available online

In particular

  • Publications Are Discoverable and Accessible Online. Publications will be deposited in a specified repository(s) with proper tagging of metadata.

  • Publication Will Be On “Open Access” Terms. All publications shall be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC BY 4.0) or an equivalent license. This will permit all users of the publication to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and transform and build upon the material, including for any purpose (including commercial) without further permission or fees being required.

The NIH insists that publications must be made freely available 12 months after publication, Wellcome Trust, also mandates OA publishing, but its policy permits a six-month embargo on making published papers open. CRUK currently encourage, and where an article processing charge is paid, require, license research papers using the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY). The research councils in the UK have also committed to Open Access publishing as do DNDI.

With charitable funding playing an increasingly important role in drug discovery complying with these Open Access requirements is likely to have a significant impact on the publication landscape.