The main output of the research funded by the Wellcome Trust–DBT India Alliance (the ‘Alliance’) is new ideas and knowledge, which the Alliance expects its grantholders to publish in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals.
The Alliance believes that maximising the distribution of these papers - by providing free, online access - is the most effective way of ensuring that the research it funds can be accessed, read and built upon. In turn, this will foster a richer research culture.
The Alliance therefore supports unrestricted access to the published output of research as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible.
Specifically, the Alliance:
- expects authors of research papers to maximise the opportunities to make their results available for free
- requires electronic copies of any research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and are supported in whole or in part by Alliance funding, to be made available through PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) as soon as possible and in any event within six months of the journal publisher's official date of final publication
- may include in the grant funding to contribute to open access charges, where appropriate, in order to meet the Alliance’s requirements
- encourages - and where it pays an open access fee, requires - authors and publishers to license research papers such that they may be freely copied and re-used (for example for text and data-mining purposes), provided that such uses are fully attributed
- affirms the principle that it is the intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of the journal in which an author’s work is published, that should be considered in making funding decisions.
For further details please read our Award Conditions.
Note: In terms of broad principles the India Alliance’s Open Access Policy is similar to that of The Wellcome Trust.
