Standard Conditions of Grant
All of the grants we award are subject to our Standard Conditions of Grant. Read and understand these conditions fully before you apply for a BHF grant.
The research we fund should be made freely available to the broader scientific community and to the public to maximise its reach and benefit.
All Grantholders must therefore comply with our Policy on Open Access, and should ensure that an electronic copy of each primary research paper or non-commissioned review funded wholly or in part by us is made freely available in Europe PubMed Central as soon as possible and no later than 6 months after publication.
Open Access Publication Policy details
1. Publishing your research
It is a Condition of Grant that Grant Holders acknowledge BHF support by quoting “British Heart Foundation” followed by the award reference number in the appropriate section of all publications arising from BHF funded research.
Europe PMC is an Open Science Platform, providing access to worldwide life science publications, preprints and NHS guidelines; and is funded by a consortium of leading international biomedical research funders, including the British Heart Foundation.
It is a partner of PubMed Central - the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Europe PMC also provides links to relevant records in databases such as Uniprot, European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and Protein Data Bank Europe (PDBE).
2. Open access publication is a condition of your grant
As a Condition of Grant we require that a copy of the final published version or accepted manuscript of each peer-reviewed primary research paper or non-commissioned review article, supported in whole or in part by our funding, shall be deposited in Europe PMC, to be made freely available as soon as possible and no later than 6 months after publication.
We will provide the names and contact details of the Grantholders to third parties in connection with the administration of the Europe PMC database and website, and they may contact Grantholders directly for such purposes.
3. Ensure your publisher supports open access
All of our Grantholders submitting manuscripts to journals should find out in advance whether the publisher supports open access and how they can comply with paragraph 2 above. Further information on journal open access compliance can be found using the Sherpa database.
4. Open access options
Many journals will deposit the final published version of the article on behalf of the authors directly into Europe PMC (or into PubMed Central, from where it is mirrored to Europe PMC) to be made freely available immediately on publication (often referred to as gold open access). Journals charge an Article Processing Charge (APC) for this option and provisions have been made to cover these costs (please read paragraph 8).
Alternatively, the journal may deposit the accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in Europe PMC to be made freely available after a 6 month embargo period (often referred to as green open access). Usually no APC fee is charged for this service.
In some cases, the journal will not deposit the article but will allow the authors to deposit a copy of the accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in Europe PMC to be made freely available after an embargo period. Europe PMC has an author manuscript submission system for authors to self-archive papers.
5. Which open access option should I choose?
We support immediate, unrestricted (‘Gold’) open access to primary research articles and non-commissioned reviews and have provided block grant funding to research institutions to support open access fees (please read paragraph 8).
If the journal does not offer an immediate open access option, your article should still be made freely available in Europe PMC no later than six months after publication. If the journal offers a service to deposit your article in Europe PMC, you should choose this option. If not, you'll need to self-archive.
6. Which license should I choose?
In the case of immediate open access, authors and publishers should license research papers using the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY 4.0). For more information regarding licenses please visit the Creative Commons website.
7. Which types of publication are eligible for support?
We will, in principle, support APC fees for the publication of peer-reviewed, primary research articles and non-commissioned reviews funded wholly or in part by us, including any irrecoverable VAT on fees. We will not support APCs associated with commissioned or invited review articles, conference proceedings, editorials, letters or commentaries and any other charges associated with publication, such as page and colour charges.
8. Claiming open access fees
To be eligible for open access support all full research articles and non-commissioned reviews arising from BHF-funded research should acknowledge us and state the relevant grant number.
BHF have provided block grant funding to all research institutions funded in the last 5 years to support open access. This fund can also be used to support Transformative Agreements (Transformative Agreement contributions must meet these specified requirements) and APCs that are accepted within the period of the block grant. The amount charged to the block grant to support Transformative Agreements must be in proportion to the research institution’s previous APC spend for BHF acknowledged publications with that publisher using the publisher’s methodology to calculate the ‘publish’ element of the agreement. An organisation’s suggested contribution must be verified by JISC collections and the organisation. Similarly, any pre-payment contribution must be in proportion to the research institution’s previous APC spend for BHF acknowledged publications with that publisher. Note that BHF block grant funds held in a pre-payment account but not yet used to publish a BHF funded research paper should be made known to the BHF. To access funding from this scheme please contact your institution’s open access department directly.
Where a research paper has arisen from research funded by more than one funder that supports Open Access, the associated APC fees should be proportionally allocated to each appropriate funder by the Research Institution. Where the other funders do not have available support for APC fees or the BHF is the major funder of the research, the block grant may be used to support the full APC.
Unfortunately, BHF cannot provide additional funds where the block grant funding has been fully utilised. In such circumstances we recommend researchers select journals that allow the author to self-deposit in Europe PMC within 6 months of publication.
If the block grant has been claimed in full from BHF, any unspent funds can be carried forward to the next block grant funding period. Grant amounts issued in subsequent years will take into account underspend in previous years, as well as funds held in pre-payment accounts but unused.
Any invoices received by us for APCs from 1 October 2020 (regardless of when the article was published) will be returned as these will need to be paid from the block grant.
9. Reporting
Use of the block grant should be reported using the JISC APC data collection template before 1 May each year. In line with other funders, our reporting period is April to March.
A report should also be provided at the end of the grant period, with an estimation of BHF funded articles published via a green open access route due to lack of funds available.
10. Non compliance
A small number of journals remain non-compliant with our open access policy. If a researcher wishes to publish a paper in a journal that will not allow deposition in Europe PMC and open access within 6 months of publication, a case must be made in advance to us, which we will grant only in exceptional circumstances.
If you have any queries
Updates will follow as needed on our website. Specific queries can be emailed to [email protected].
July 2021