The American Society of Hematology – publishers of the journal Blood – have developed a Wellcome-compliant author-pays option.

In return for a fee ($2000), ASH will deposit the final version of Wellcome-funded articles directly into PMC, where they will be made freely available at the time of publication. Further, special licensing language has been drafted to allow end-users of Wellcome-funded articles unrestricted access to these articles. All articles are mirrored to UK PubMed Central (UKPMC).

In order for ASH to deliver these articles to PMC, Wellcome funded authors must acknowledge explicitly in the text (i.e., Acknowledgement section of the article) of their research article that:

(a) the research in the article they authored was funded by Wellcome Trust
and/or
(b) their institutional affiliation with Wellcome Trust

Authors can find out more information about funded research access options for Blood during the manuscript submission process.

Currently, the special licencing language only applies to researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Other funding organisations who wish their author-pays articles to be licensed in the say way should contact Blood.