As the UK’s largest non-governmental funder of biomedical research and the second largest medical charity in the world, the Wellcome Trust is a major source of research funding. It spends some GBP 500 million a year supporting research and activities aimed at improving human and animal health. “Supporting the brightest scientists with the best ideas,” is how Robert Kiley, Head of e-Strategy at the Wellcome Library puts it. Two years ago, the Trust introduced an open access policy requiring all Wellcome-funded researchers to make their final papers available through PubMed Central (PMC) and UKPubMed Central (UKPMC) as soon as possible, and in any event within six months of publication. “The policy had been in gestation for several years,” Kiley explains. “In 2003 we commissioned various studies to look at how research results were disseminated. We concluded that limited access to peer-reviewed research wasn’t serving the best interests of science.”

Reaching agreement
The new policy had huge implications for both authors and publishers. “We realized that our researchers would potentially be at a disadvantage when it came to publishing in major journals if those journals did not offer a Wellcome-compliant publishing model.” Kiley continues. The Trust already had agreements with Blackwell Springer and the Oxford University Press that complied with the policy, but Kiley and his colleagues knew they had to reach an understanding with Elsevier, the biggest single STM publisher of Wellcome authors. “With Elsevier – and indeed, this applies to any publisher – the objective was to reach an agreement such that our researchers could continue to seek publication with Elsevier and still meet our open access requirements.”

The basic principles were agreed early on. As the Wellcome Trust was happy to meet the open access, article processing charges levied by Elsevier, Elsevier was, in turn, happy for the final version of the papers (which includes all copy and language edits) to be made freely available in PMC and UKPMC at the time of publication. “That was achieved relatively easily,” confirms Kiley. “The issue we spent a lot of time discussing was the rights the public at large would have in terms of re-using these articles.” Wellcome is eager to foster reuse of research findings by other researchers as long as that reuse is properly attributed. It wanted computers to be able to read the articles, mine the content and make connections between data that a human might miss. “We were quite happy for Elsevier to retain exclusive commercial rights,” says Kiley. “We needed a copyright license in place that would enable text and data mining to take place without the user - or more likely, the computer - having to seek permission. It took some time, but now we have an agreement in place.”

Benefits on both sides
Wellcome sees the agreement as a win-win situation. “It’s a symbiotic relationship,” adds Kiley. “Our authors want to publish in high-impact journals and Elsevier editors want highly credible authors to submit articles. It was inevitable that we would reach agreement with the big STM publishers.” As a result of work Wellcome has done over the last 18 months, over 90% of journals publishing its authors’ papers now have a Wellcome-compliant policy. Those publishers that lack a compliant policy are aware of the agreement with Elsevier and this puts pressure on them, since some of their journals compete with Elsevier’s. “They’re all competing for the same papers,” Kiley reasons, “If Elsevier has an advantage, non-compliant publishers can’t hold out much longer.”As a result of the agreement, Elsevier has modified its manuscript submission system. When a paper is accepted for publication, the author is notified and asked to identify their funding source. If they indicate the Wellcome Trust, they are informed about the open access policy and given the ‘author pays’ option. Elsevier then carries out the peer review and language editing as normal and deposits the final article in PMC (which is then mirrored in UKPMC.) The costs for this are charged back to the author and the author’s institution, in turn, claims the funding from the Wellcome Trust. In this way, the publisher provides a service in which Wellcome sees real value. “At the Wellcome Trust we believe that publication costs are legitimate research costs, which we are prepared to meet” says Kiley.

Fair shares
Of course, most research is financed by more than one funder, meaning that Wellcome is currently paying publishing costs that potentially should be shared with others. “We can’t achieve everything overnight,” Kiley admits. “Obviously, we would like to see publishing cost allocated proportionately.” To that end, Wellcome is working with seven other funding bodies, including the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK. All of them view publishing costs as legitimate research expenses, so with the funding in place, all that is needed is the mechanisms for authors to allocate costs fairly. “Research offices are used to apportioning other research costs, so it shouldn’t be especially problematic,” says Kiley.

All of these measures put a lot of the onus on authors. What can they do if their author agreement is incompatible with their funder’s archiving requirements? “They have two options,” says Kiley. “They can go back to their publishers and ask them to comply with their funding body’s requirements, or they can modify the copyright license to accommodate the funder’s policy.” If neither of these solutions work, Wellcome requires its authors to look for another publisher, since its agreement with the author precedes the publishing agreement. “We expect our researchers to meet their grant conditions,” Kiley explains. “That’s why we’re working with publishers. If we can reach agreement with them, authors don’t have to worry about compliance. They can get on with their research.”

With other funding bodies like the US National Institutes of Health and the European Research Council adopting similar open access policies, Kiley believes it is only a matter of time before all peer-reviewed, biomedical research is freely available in publicly accessible repositories. “Open access is here to stay.” he says. Publishers will have to find ways to add value beyond publishing peer-reviewed papers. Possibilities include author deposition services and paid subscriptions for analysis of open access articles. “The challenge to publishers is to find models to help manage these services in an economically sustainable way.”

To cite this article, please use: Francis Cox, "Behind the Scenes... Funding Bodies", Elsevier Editors' Update, Issue 22, May 2008

Useful links
  Wellcome Trust

  Elsevier agreement with the Wellcome Trust

  Elsevier’s Funding Body Agreements

  UKPubMed Central

 Please send responses to: EditorsUpdate@Elsevier.com