Six medical research charities recently launched the Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) to cover open access, article-processing charges. Robert Kiley is Head of Digital Services at the Wellcome Library and is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Trust's open access policy.
The Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) is a partnership between Arthritis Research UK, Breast Cancer Campaign, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research and the Wellcome Trust to enable free and unrestricted access to the published outputs of the research we support.
COAF will provide block grants to 36 UK research institutions (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Policy/Spotlight-issues/Open-access/Charity-open-access-fund/WTP057250.htm), which can be used to cover article processing charges (APCs) for peer reviewed original research articles, where the research reported is funded by one, or more, of the participating charities. COAF will become operational on October 1, 2014, and will be administered by the Wellcome Trust on behalf of the partners for an initial two-year pilot phase.
Publishers which offer an open access, APC-model should be aware of this fund and the conditions which are attached to this funding – which are essentially identical to those for the existing open access funding provided by the Wellcome Trust.
Specifically, when this fund is used to cover the costs of an APC the publisher must: Deposit, on behalf of the author, the final version of the article – which includes all the changes that arise from the peer-review, copy-editing and proofing processes – in PubMed Central (PMC), where it must be made freely available at the time of publication. A link to the article on the publisher site is not sufficient; and licence that content under a Creative Commons Attribution-only (CC-BY) licence.
Together the partners are providing around £12 million to fund the two-year pilot of the COAF.
In making this additional funding available it is expected that publishers will deliver value for money in terms of the APC they levy. For publishers operating hybrid models, increased revenue from APCs should be reflected in reductions in the subscription fees they set (for non OA content).
