The Wellcome Trust has announced that it will be strengthening the enforcement of its open access policy with immediate effect. Failure to comply with the policy could result in final grant payments being withheld and non-compliant publications being discounted when applying for further funding.

Researchers who want help to make sure their publications are compliant can get support from the WRAP team.

About the open access policy

The Wellcome Trust’s open access policy aims to ensure that the published outputs of its funded research are made freely available, so that this knowledge can be built on and used in a manner that maximises health and public benefit.

For all research articles published after 1 October 2009, the Trust will now be enforcing the following:

• When Trust-funded researchers prepare final grant reports, it will require the principal investigator's institution to provide assurance that all papers associated with the grant comply with the Trust's policy. If they are unable to do this, the final payment on the grant will be withheld.
• Non-compliant publications will be discounted as part of a researcher's track record in any renewal of an existing grant or new grant application.
• Trust-funded researchers will be required to ensure that all publications associated with their Wellcome-funded research are compliant with the Trust's policy before any funding renewals or new grant awards will be activated.

Read the full press release on the Wellcome Trust website.

Support available

Researchers wanting help to make sure their publications are compliant can contact the WRAP team at publications at warwick dot ac dot uk.

The University has been granted a fund to cover the cost of Open Access fees for authors whose work has been funded by the Wellcome Trust. Contact Sam Johnson at Samantha dot A dot Johnson at warwick dot ac dot uk or on ext.22427 to get access to the Wellcome Trust Open Access Fund for open access publication fees.