Looking at Wellcome-funded papers published in the quarter of 2010, Kiley calculates that the average cost of papers published under the author-pays model — either through a hybrid or full open access option – was $2,367.

Based on this average fee, Kiley estimates that if every Wellcome-funded paper was routed through a “gold” OA route — and assuming that the Trust picked up 100% of these costs — then the total cost per year would be around $10.8m, which equates to around 1.25% of the Trust’s annual research spend.