Cancer Research UK | Library

From 1 April 2026 Cancer Research UK won’t fund open access publishing

Update: Changes to Cancer Research UK policy

CRUK have previously supported open access publishing costs through institutional block grants. No further financial support will be provided to institutions and researchers. The rationale for this decision is explained in this Cancer Research UK blog post. The University of Edinburgh will provide financial support for eligible articles currently in press, but it is not possible to pay costs for any new articles submitted from 30 April 2026.

The CRUK open access policy applies to peer-reviewed primary research papers funded in whole or in part by CRUK. These types of output must:

be available in Europe PubMed Central no later than six months after publication,
have a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence,
must acknowledge funding from us in the funding acknowledgement section

Checklist for authors

Before you submit an article to a journal look on the publisher web pages to see if the publisher charges any costs and confirm who will be able cover these. If you are publishing in an Open Access journal they may incur an Article Processing Charge. Some journals may also incur extra Page, Colour or Overlength charges for your paper. Again, please check before submission that you have access to funds to pay these fees. CRUK and the University will not cover any publications fees.
The Library has signed transformative ('Read and Publish') agreements to enable corresponding authors from the University to publish eligible research articles open access for no extra cost.You can find a searchable list of all journals included in our memberships and agreements here: Read and Publish Journals
When you get an article accepted for publication please send a copy to your local administrator following the usual process. The publication will need to be deposited in Pure and Europe PubMed Central as well. It will be helpful to include details of the research funder and grant award number if it is not already listed in the acknowledgements section of the paper.

Your Open Access options

Green Open Access

If you have published in a traditional subscription journal, with a paid open access option, the University will not pay the publication charges. Instead you can deposit the paper in Europe PubMed Central for free which will comply with the CRUK open access policy. You will need the following information to hand:

1. Author's Accepted Manuscript - not the publisher's PDF

2. Grant Award information - e.g. C73678/A31386

3. Any Supplementary material that has also been submitted to the journal

If a manuscript is submitted correctly, and is reviewed promptly, the process can take as little as two weeks. Some more information can be found on the Europe PMC website:

Europe PMC manuscript submission user guide

The deposit process is really simple, but if you have any problems please contact openaccess@ed.ac.uk with the information above and we can do this on your behalf.

Read & Publish agreements

If you have published in a journal where the University has a ‘Read & Publish’ deal and you are the corresponding author the article should automatically be made open access by the publisher for no extra charge. A list of publishers is available here:

Current 'Read & Publish' agreements

Each publisher has a different process, but the normal procedure on the publishers web site is to confirm your affiliation as The University of Edinburgh and indicate your funding and the submission will be authorised by the Library.

CRUK have decided to cease all funding for all publishing costs, including block grants, use of institute core grants and grant underspend. Before submitting please check if your chosen journal has any costs.

This article was published on 2024-08-21