Please note: following a review of rising costs, Cancer Research UK (CRUK) will no longer provide funding for open access charges for manuscripts submitted on or after 1 October 2026. The guidance below explains what this means for Imperial researchers receiving CRUK funding and outlines the options available for complying with CRUK's open access policy.
Policy
Deposit published or accepted version in Europe PMC to be made freely available as soon as possible, and no later than 6 months (the previous 2022 policy required immediate open access with zero embargo).
CC BY 4.0 licence required.
Routes to meeting open access requirements
Route 1 GOLD Publish in a fully open access journal. The publisher should send the final version of record of your paper to Europe PMC once it is published. However, it is the responsibility of the funded author to ensure that the paper meets the requirements, so we recommend checking that the deposit has been made, see Depositing in PubMed Central and Europe PMC.
OR
Route 2 GREEN Publish in a subscription journal and take responsibility for making the author’s accepted manuscript freely available from Europe PMC, as soon as possible, and no later than 6 months after publication (the previous CRUK policy required immediate open access, with zero embargo). See Depositing in PubMed Central and Europe PMC. Imperial’s research publications open access policy (RPOAP) allows you to deposit with zero embargo for notified publishers, provided you first deposit in Spiral via Symplectic. See the RPOAP webpage for further details and a list of notified publishers.
OR
Route 3 GOLD Publish in a subscription journal through a transformative agreement Imperial has signed up to, see publisher agreements and discounts. The corresponding author needs to have an Imperial College London affiliation, and other conditions may apply.
The publisher should send the final version of record of your paper to Europe PMC once it is published. However, it is the responsibility of the funded author to ensure that the paper meets the requirements, so we recommend checking that the deposit has been made, see Depositing in PubMed Central and Europe PMC.
Scope of policy
Funding Original primary research publications accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals, where the publication has been supported wholly or partly by Cancer Research UK.
Article types Original, primary research publications, including meta analyses, such as Cochrane Reviews.
The policy does not apply to book chapters, monographs, editorials, reviews, or conference proceedings.
Paying for GOLD open access
Cancer Research UK funding is no longer available to pay for open access fees for papers submitted to a journal after 1 October 2026. Any manuscript submitted before then can still have the open access fee covered from our CRUK block grant where eligible, and where funds remain, even if the payment is made after 1 October.
Researchers submitting to fully open access journals (for example, journals listed in DOAJ) after 1 October 2026 may be eligible to apply for APC funding through the Imperial Open Access Fund through the usual APC application route via Symplectic Elements. For more information, please contact the Open Access team.
For hybrid open access journals, CRUK will not provide APC funding for manuscripts submitted on or after 1 October 2026, and the Imperial Open Access Fund does not support hybrid journals. Authors should instead consider the options below.
- Publish GOLD where eligible for a transformative agreement, see Publisher agreements and discounts. To have your paper included, follow the instructions for the relevant agreement. The corresponding author needs to have an Imperial College London affiliation, and other conditions may apply.
- Follow Route 2 (see above) and deposit the author's accepted manuscript in Spiral via Symplectic and in Europe PMC instead of paying the hybrid APC.
- Find another source of funding for the APC.
- Choose to publish in a journal that charges low or no publishing fees.
- No cost is associated with open access via route 2 (GREEN). In the vast majority of cases, Imperial’s research publications open access policy allows you to comply via GREEN open access.
- We cannot pay page, colour or submission charges on any route.
Required license
The open access version of your research paper (green and gold) must be published with a CC BY 4.0 licence. An exception to allow publication under a CC BY ND licence must be made direct to CRUK. CC BY 4.0 licence applies to the research article itself as a creative work and does not extend to the underlying data.
Imperial’s Research Publications Open Access Policy (RPOAP) allows you to deposit the accepted manuscript with a CC BY license for notified publishers. The open access team will set this license for your deposit in Spiral via Symplectic. You can then add a CC BY license to your deposited manuscript in Europe PMC.
CC BY 4.0 required on all routes 1 GOLD, 2 GREEN and route 3 GOLD.
Other requirements
CRUK-funded researchers are strongly encouraged to:
- Deposit preprints of their work en route to publication in a peer-reviewed journal
- Publish them under a CC BY licence on a platform that is indexed in Europe PMC