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 medical journals, and in their price. Whether large-scale access via repositories in other, less-fast-moving, fields would have similarly limited effects on publishers is less clear; and the possible impact of embargo periods of less than twelve months remains a concern for both commercial and learned society publishers.

Open access journals

5.11. With regard to publishing in open access and hybrid journals, one of the key challenges is the lack of systematic arrangements for the payment of the APCs that are charged to authors by open access journals. The Wellcome Trust has been the pioneer in the UK. It provides funding to meet APCs in two ways. For some thirty universities in the UK it provides a block grant to meet APCs for papers arising from Trust-funded research; authors typically then submit to the university research office claims for funds to meet APCs. Researchers in other universities have to submit a claim to the Trust itself, which then supplements the research grant. A key point is that funding can be provided beyond the time when a grant has come to an end. Arrangements are also in place to allocate costs among different funders who are members of the UKPMC consortium (including MRC and BBSRC as well as the major medical research charities) where papers are the result of funding from more than one of them.

5.12. Research Councils currently make provision to enable researchers to meet APCs in two ways. First, the costs can be included in grant applications. This method is not always helpful because it is difficult at a stage long before the research project has started to identify what publications it will generate; and because the rules require that the moneys provided should be spent during the lifetime of the grant, whereas results may be published months or even years beyond that point. The second method allows universities to include provision for meeting APCs across the institution when they calculate the full economic costs of the research projects for which they seek grants. But it is not clear how many institutions have found it possible to adopt such arrangements.