Will the Open Access Team pay my open access fee?

The Open Access Team are only able to cover invoices for open access fees if the paper acknowledges one of our block grant funders. The paper must also meet the funder's eligibility criteria. All of the funders have different rules, so our advice is always to upload your accepted manuscript via Symplectic Elements before you agree to pay a fee. 

Open accessing publishing does not always need the payment of a fee, and green open access is a legitimate route, acknowledged by funders to achieving open access. 

Instead of paying an open access fee, there are some other alternatives:

• Deposit your accepted manuscript in an open access repository, using the publisher's self archiving policy. This is acceptable, so long as your funder does not require immediate open access. 
• Use rights retention in your submission and make your accepted manuscript openly available with a CC BY licence immediately upon publication in an open access repository. This will help you if your funder has an immediate open access requirement, but won't cover the cost of publishing in your journal of choice (or you are publishing in a subscription only journal). 
• Make use of an existing Read & Publish deal and publish gold open access at no additional cost.