Open access funding and deals
Guidance on open access funding and deals, including information about options and eligibility
Overview
Some publishers charge a fee to make a research article, monograph or book chapter open access.
Article Processing Charges (APCs) can vary, but an average APC is just over £2000. Book Processing Charges (BPCs) are more expensive, often between £8000 and £14,000.
The Library administers block grants from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Wellcome Trust and British Heart Foundation, and if you acknowledge funding from these organisations you may be eligible to apply to us to cover open access charges.
Other funders may allow you to cost in open access charges as part of your grant application. If you do not have access to open access funding, you may be eligible to apply to the University of Sheffield Institutional Open Access Fund.
We also have a growing number of publisher agreements which allow University of Sheffield corresponding authors to make their articles open access at no direct cost to themselves.
Information about these options can be found in the sections below.
The grants that we administer are limited and only available in certain circumstances. Always contact OAEnquiries@sheffield.ac.uk before committing to any paid open access options offered by a publisher.
Invoices that have not been authorised in advance will remain the responsibility of the author for payment.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
Journal articles
UKRI provides University of Sheffield with an open access block grant which can be used to pay for APCs for peer reviewed research and review articles only if the article is published in a fully open access journal or platform.
In order to be eligible for funding, at least one of the authors must be a current student or employee of the University of Sheffield, and funded by UKRI.
The relevant funding, including grant code must be acknowledged on the paper, and the article must be published with a CC BY licence (unless you have applied for a CC BY-ND exception from UKRI).
If the journal is not fully open access, you may be able to make your article open access as part of a transitional agreement, or deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript into our repository where it will be made open access under the institutional Research Publications and Copyright Policy
UKRI will not pay for other charges associated with publication, such as page and colour charges.
Please note that articles in Jisc approved 'transformative journals' will no longer be eligible for funding after 31st December 2024.
Monographs, book chapters and edited collections
UKRI has a central fund to cover open access charges for monographs, book chapters and edited collections that are in-scope of their open access policy. UKRI-funded authors may claim up to £10,000 (including VAT) per monograph, and £1000 (including VAT) per chapter. Applications to the fund must be made through the open access team in the Library, and further information can be found by following the link below.
More information about complying with the UKRI open access policy
Wellcome Trust
Journal articles
Wellcome provides the University with an open access block grant which can be used to pay for Article Processing Charges for original peer reviewed research articles only if the article is published in a fully open access journal or platform.
Please note that articles in Plan S approved 'transformative journals' will no longer be eligible for funding after 31st December 2024.
In order to be eligible for funding, at least one of the authors must be a current student or employee of the University of Sheffield, and funded by Wellcome.
The relevant funding, including grant code must be acknowledged on the paper, and the article must be published with a CC BY licence (unless you have applied for a CC BY-ND exception from Wellcome).
If the journal is not fully open access or a Plan S-approved transformative journal, you may be able to make your article open access as part of a transitional agreement, or deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript into WRRO where it will be made open access under the institutional Research Publications and Copyright Policy. You can then make that version available through Europe PMC.
Wellcome will not pay for APCs associated with other article types such as reviews and editorials, or any other charges associated with publication, such as page and colour charges.
More information about complying with the Wellcome open access policy
Monographs, book chapters and edited collections
Funding is available from Wellcome to cover open access charges for books and chapters, but it is administered separately from the open access block grant.
If you wish to apply for open access funding for your monograph or book chapter, email openaccess@wellcome.org with the details listed on this page. It is likely that your department will need to pay the charges and reclaim the money from Wellcome. The Library is unable to do this, as we are only able to pay for journal articles with our Wellcome block grant.
British Heart Foundation
We are unlikely to be able to pay for open access charges using the 24/25 grant from British Heart Foundation due to its limited size.
You may be able to make your article open access as part of a transitional agreement, or else deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript into WRRO where it will be made open access under the institutional Research Publications and Copyright Policy. You can then make that version available through Europe PMC.
If you are publishing in a fully open access journal, you will be able to apply to the University of Sheffield Institutional Open Access Fund. Please indicate that you are BHF funded when applying.
University of Sheffield Institutional Open Access Fund
An institutional open access fund has been established as a pilot project to support University of Sheffield researchers who do not have access to funds to cover the cost of open access publishing.
Current staff members and PGRs are welcome to apply to the fund to cover reasonable open access charges for articles published in fully open access journals, or monographs and chapters published with fully open access presses.
More information about the fund, including eligibility criteria and application forms
Costing open access charges into your grant application
Some research funders allow you to cost open access charges into your grant applications (UKRI and Wellcome do not allow this). Please check individual funder websites for more information on this.
If you wish to find the cost of APCs for particular journals, you can usually find the information on publisher websites, or use a standard cost of £2200 + VAT.
Be aware that some publishers charge much more than average, with Springer Nature charging as much as EUR 9500 per article for their most expensive journals.
If you are costing in open access charges for a monograph, please check with individual publishers.
When costing open access charges into your grant application, it is worth checking whether the funds will only be available for the duration of the grant, or whether you will be able to claim them after the grant has ended.
Other gold open access options
The University of Sheffield have a growing number of ‘transitional agreements’ with publishers which allow Sheffield-affiliated corresponding authors to make their articles open access at no direct cost to themselves.
See our list of transitional agreements and other deals.
Many open access journals do not charge APCs, and you can search for these using the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
The University of Sheffield Library is committed to supporting different models of open access publishing, and financially contributes to non-APC initiatives such as the Open Library of the Humanities and Open Book Publishers.
International scholarships
We offer a generous package of financial support for international students, including undergraduate and postgraduate taught scholarships worth £10,000 towards the annual tuition fee.
Applications are open for existing offer holders for programmes starting in autumn 2025.