Limited fund for paying the costs of open-access for articles or chapters published in external journals or books
As part of the funding from the Reform budget for the implementation of WHO’s open-access policy, DGO approved US$40,000 for a small fund administered by WHO Press to cover a limited number of article processing charges for the publication of articles or chapters in external journals or books, until the end of the biennium. The funds should be used for articles/chapters which are considered important for the Organization's work/visibility, which should be made open access immediately and for which the technical unit has no available funds.
Justification
In order to apply for funds, the technical unit should send a justification to WHO Press with the following criteria:
- Why is this article/chapter important for the Organization's work?
- Why is it important that the article/chapter is immediately accessible on the date of publication?
- Why are there are no available funds within the technical unit to publish this work?
Conditions that will apply
- The article/chapter should have a WHO staff member as a lead or corresponding author or should concern the work of a WHO expert group.
- The article/chapter should have been accepted for publication.
- The article is not eligible for a waiver of the fee by the publisher.
- WHO has an existing agreement in place with the publisher and the publisher is fully compliant with the requirements of the open-access policy (see below).
Please note that partnerships are not eligible to apply for funds.
Procedure
1. Send the justification to
2. If the request is accepted, the technical unit will send WHP the invoice from the publisher.
3. WHP will request payment from the open-access funds from DGO.
4. WHP will track payments for reporting purposes to DGO.
Note on WHO’s open-access policy
WHO’s policy on open access came into effect on 1 July 2014 http://www.who.int/about/policy/en/.
The policy applies to all articles or chapters published in non-WHO publications that are authored or co-authored by WHO staff or produced by individuals or institutions funded in whole or in part by WHO.
The requirements of the policy are that the articles must be published in one of the following ways:
1. in an open-access journal;
2. in a subscription journal that offers an open-access option (a hybrid open-access journal);
3. in a subscription journal that allows authors to deposit the accepted author manuscript in Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) within 12 months of the date of publication.
If authors select options 1 or 2, then an article processing charge (APC) may be payable to the publisher. If authors select option 3, then the article will be subject to an embargo period of up to 12 months, and the lead author/principle investigator is required to deposit the author manuscript in Europe PubMed Central.