Requesting open access funding

There are different routes to accessing funding to cover open access costs, depending on the funder and publisher of your research, or whether the University has a transformative agreement in place.

You can find details of these below or you can send us an enquiry (UoN login required) about gold open access.

What funding is available?

We regret that no central source of University funding exists to pay open access costs, however we manage block grants on behalf of certain funders.

UKRI

The University administers an open access block grant on behalf of UKRI. The block grant can be used to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs), i.e. the charges associated with making research articles open access. Publications need to comply with the UKRI open access policy and it should be noted that certain costs may or may not be covered. For example:

The UKRI policy places restrictions on which hybrid journals are eligible to have open access costs paid from the UKRI block grant;
page and colour charges cannot be covered for publications;
open access costs of publications funded by Innovate UK and Research England are covered under the UKRI policy.

We recommend that authors of UKRI-funded research read our dedicated page for fuller information on the requirements of the open access policy.

Open access funding for long-form publications (monographs, book chapters and edited collections) involves a separate, two-stage application process. For more details, please see our Open access for UKRI long-form publications page.

Wellcome Trust

The University of Nottingham is in receipt of an open access block grant from Wellcome, with an end date of 31 December 2024.

You can find more details on our Open access policies webpage.

British Heart Foundation

The British Heart Foundation provides the university with a small open access block grant to cover APC payments.

You can find more details on our Open access policies webpage.

APC charges for research not covered by your funder or a transformative agreement will require authorisation from your Head of School or authorised signatory for the project code provided. Some publishers will waive APCs on a case-by-case basis and some funders may allow fees to be charged to the grant. Please discuss with your publisher or funder directly.

The University also has agreements with certain publishers that provide full or partial APC discounts: please see our APC discounts for authors and Transformative agreements pages for further details.

How do I access the funding?

To apply for open access funding, please complete our Gold Open Access Funding Form (UoN login required).

We recommend sending us an initial enquiry beforehand as you may not need to make a formal funding application. The Open Access team will be able to advise you on next steps depending on your funding situation and/or the venue of publication.

Send us an enquiry about gold open access (UoN login required)

Please note that for UKRI-funded papers, we expect the applicant to be the lead or corresponding author, while for papers supported by other funders may have different requirements for who applies.

If you have any technical problems using the webform or a comment regarding your application, please email us at openaccess@nottingham.ac.uk.

Billing details for open access invoices

Please provide the following billing information to your publisher:

Billing address: Open Access Administrator, Research and Innovation, E Floor, Yang Fujia, Jubilee Campus, The University of Nottingham, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB
Billing telephone number: 0115 9515151
Billing email: openaccess@nottingham.ac.uk

Please note we cannot accept invoices which do not have a University of Nottingham billing address.

The University is not tax exempt for open access publication costs. The VAT number is GB 690 391 225.

If the publisher sends the invoice directly to you, please forward it to openaccess@nottingham.ac.uk. It is the responsibility of the author to raise the invoice and ensure it is correct before forwarding to us in a PDF format.

You should quote your internal approval code when contacting us if your funding application has already been approved. We can only process invoices once they are associated with an internal approval code (e.g. GOA123).

Publishers should not generate invoices for articles covered under a transformative agreement. If you think you have received an invoice in error, please contact us.

Acknowledging your funder

It is vital that you acknowledge your funders in your paper. This is a requirement of UKRI and other funders in order to support data and text mining to ensure compliance with policy and track funded papers.

Guidance on the required wording is available on the UKRI 'Acknowledging your funding' webpage.

For research funded by a single funding agency, please see the example below:

‘This work was supported by [Name of Research Council] [grant number xxxx]’.

For research funded by multiple grants, grant numbers should be separated by comma and space. Where the research was supported by more than one agency, the different agencies should be separated by a semicolon, with 'and' before the final funder. For example:

‘This work was supported by Research Council A [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; Research Council B [grant number zzzz]; and Research Council C [grant number XXXX]’.

If your research has supported the development of patents or exploitable intellectual property your research organisation must make sure that your funder is fully acknowledged. You may also need to acknowledge specific grants. Always check the terms and conditions of your grant.