Depositing your Wellcome-funded research

You can comply with the policy by posting a preprint of your article on a server indexed by Europe PMC. See individual servers for specific instructions on how to submit your pre-print.

If you are complying with the policy by self-archiving a copy of your Author Accepted Manuscript in Europe PMC, you can use Europe PMC plus to do this.

By applying a CC BY public copyright licence to your Author Accepted Manuscript (arising from submissions to peer-reviewed journals), authors or their organisations keep the necessary rights to self-archive the Author Accepted Manuscript in this way. 

Europe PMC plus

Manuscript files are submitted to Europe PMC – via Europe PMC plus – by the author or anyone given access to the author's files (for example, administrative personnel, graduate students, librarians).

To submit a manuscript to Europe PMC, the author or administrator should create a user account on the Europe PMC plus website.

View a user guide on the submission process on the Europe PMC plus website.

Approval

Approval of the PDF receipt and web version of the manuscript requires review and authorisation.

This is usually given by the Principal Investigator (PI) of the grant linked to the publication, but it can also be done by authors on the publication.

In cases where research has been undertaken by staff other than the PI (for example, research assistants), it might be more practical to grant approving rights to the actual author of the paper – not the named PI.

Once approved, the citation in PubMed – and the full text in PMC and Europe PMC – will cite the authors as listed in the manuscript.

What, when and how

The version of the paper that should be archived is the Author Accepted Manuscript that is:

• accepted for journal publication, and
• includes all modifications from the publishing peer-review process

It should be archived on publication when the Version of Record (the final publishers version) is made available online or in an issue.

When self-archiving, the publisher's PDF version should not be deposited.

Note: no further action is required if you are complying with the policy by making the Version of Record open access and the journal in which you are publishing your Wellcome-funded research:

• makes the Version of Record for the publication freely available under a Creative Commons, Attribution licence (CC BY) immediately on publication
• deposits the article in PMC/Europe PMC on the author's behalf

Authors of monographs or book chapters funded by Wellcome must use the deposit form to archive work for inclusion in Europe PMC and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Bookshelf.

Read more about how to use the deposit form.

Differentiating between book series and journals

It may be unclear whether your work is being published in a journal or as part of a book series.

Some journals indexed in MEDLINE are marketed as book series. However, we count these as journals because all publications indexed by MEDLINE have been submitted for indexing as journals by the publisher.

Articles published within such a series are considered to be journal articles and must comply with the policy by being deposited in Europe PMC and licensed under the Creative Commons, Attribution licence (CC BY).

If you’re still unsure, you can check the publication status or email openaccess@wellcome.org.

Using the deposit form

The copyright holder or their representative must complete the monograph and book chapter deposit form.

To complete the form you will need the following:

• relevant Wellcome grant number or grantholder name
• full text monograph or book chapter file(s), plus associated metadata files if available (this should be the final version of your monograph or book chapter)
• licence details of the publication
• embargo release date, if applicable.

If you have any questions or need help completing the form, please email openaccess@wellcome.org.

Depositing in OAPEN

Wellcome is collaborating with Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN).

OAPEN will automatically add open access Wellcome-funded books in PubMed Bookshelf and Europe PMC to its collection.

• Open access policy
• How to comply with our open access policy
• Europe PMC plus user guide on the submission process.