Cancer Research UK encourages open and unrestricted access to published research articles. Its open access policy was updated in April 2026 and applies to the following:
- Peer-reviewed original, primary research journal publications, whether fully or partially funded by Cancer Research UK
The policy does not apply to the following:
- Book chapters, monographs, editorials, reviews or conference proceedings
How do I comply?
If your research article is accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, you are expected to adhere to the following points:
- An electronic copy of your article must be made freely available in Europe Pubmed Central (Europe PMC). This should be immediately at publication, or no later than six months after publication if an embargo is applied.
- Either the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or the final published version must be made available under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
- CRUK funding must be acknowledged in the funding acknowlegdement section of the published article.
- If applicable, you are required to include a statement on how underlying research materials, such as data, samples or models, can be accessed.
Publishing open access in a journal covered by a publisher agreement
Authors are recommended to publish in a journal fully covered by one of our existing publisher agreements.
Use our search tool to check if a particular journal is covered.
Please note: any additional or optional charges that publishers may levy, such as page or colour charges, are not covered by the university, as these costs relate solely to the printed journal and not Open Access.
Publishing in a subscription journal and self-archiving in PURE
If you are publishing in a subscription journal, or in a hybrid journal not covered by a transformative agreement, you must self-archive the Accepted Author Manuscript (AAM) in PURE immediately upon acceptance and ensure the deposit is linked to the CRUK grant via the ‘Projects’ link.
Through Rights Retention, university staff retain sufficient rights in the final accepted version of their research outputs to make them openly available via PURE.
Use Open Policy Finder to check the publisher's embargo policy, as you are still required to make the AAM freely available in Europe PMC immediately at publication, or no later than six months after publication.
Publishing in a fully open access journal not covered by an agreement (including Frontiers and Springer Nature/BMC)
Cancer Research UK will no longer provide financial support for open access publishing costs from 01 October 2026.
Under exceptional circumstances (login required), an APC payment may be made for an article submitted to a fully open access journal by an author without APC funding. Please review our general guidance on publishing journal articles open access for further information.
More information