Applying for Funding

Open access publishing allows research to be freely available to all. Imperial College London supports this through a number of funding routes that help cover open access charges (commonly known as article processing charges, or APCs). This page outlines how to apply for support and what to check before submitting a funding request.

Note: The information on this page applies to journal articles.

Funding for books acknowledging UKRI is also available in certain circumstances. For more information, see: UKRI – Monographs, Book Chapters, and Edited Collections

Before applying for funding, check whether the open access fee can be fully covered or discounted via one of our Publisher agreements and discounts.

Who can apply

You can apply for APC funding if:

• You are affiliated with Imperial College London
• Your article type is eligible (e.g. original research articles—and certain types of reviews)
• You are publishing in a journal that complies with your funder’s open access policy

See Research funders' open access policies for further guidance

How to apply

To check your eligibility for APC funding before submitting a paper, please contact the Open Access team, providing as much detail as possible about the paper and any relevant research funding.

To submit an application:

1. Deposit your accepted manuscript in Symplectic
2. Select “yes” when prompted about applying for APC funding

Note: If there is already an entry in Symplectic for your accepted paper, you will need to either add a new manual record, or edit the existing one, to submit a new APC funding application. You can do this within the “data sources” section of the Symplectic record.

You’ll usually receive a response within three working days.

Funding routes

Research funders

Imperial holds separate block grants from:

• UKRI (for researchers funded by AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC, Innovate UK, Research England)
• Wellcome Trust
• Cancer Research UK (CRUK)
• British Heart Foundation (BHF)

Conditions apply—see Research funders' open access policies for details.

Imperial Open Access Fund

For authors without eligible external funding. This fund supports:

• Original research articles in journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Other publication types may be considered—please contact the Open Access team before submission.

More details: Imperial OA Fund page

Important

Wait for approval before requesting an invoice or attempting a payment.

The open access funds cover open access charges only (note: some publishers use the term APC to refer to charges not related to open access)

Need help?

For guidance or help with your application, please contact the Open Access team 

+44 (0)20 7594 2608