Publishing Open Access

You may be able to publish Open Access (OA) at no further cost in one of our Transitional or 'Subscribe to Open' Agreements. These cover many of the major commercial and society publishers and most are funder agnostic.

• Use our search tool to check if a particular journal is covered.
• Use our list of Agreements to check if a publisher is covered.

What if a journal is not in a Publisher Agreement?

Depending on any funding acknowledged in your article and the OA model of the journal, funding may still be available to support payment of OA charges. Full details of how to check are detailed below. 

Fully Open Access Journals

If you are a University of Birmingham staff member* or emeritus professor, and the journal is a reputable fully open access journal, funding may be available to cover the OA charges (*Please refer to the Research Publications Policy for full definition).

• Check if the journal is listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
• If it appears on DOAJ but not in our Search Tool, complete a Staff Open Access fee payment request form.
• Please ensure full details of all funders acknowledged in the article are provided.

Hybrid Journals

Library-managed funding is not normally available for articles in hybrid (subscription-based) journals, except where the journal is in a Transitional Agreement, or is funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK).

If your funding does not come from UKRI, Wellcome Trust, CRUK or British Heart Foundation, check our funder pages to see if you can apply for OA costs directly from your funder.

What if funds are not available to publish OA in my journal of choice?

It may be possible to make your article open access via the self-archiving route. If your funders OA policy is not compatible with the journal’s OA policy, you will not be able to publish in that title.