Authors are asked to pay a Book Processing Charge (BPC) or a Chapter Processing Charge (CPC) to publish their book or chapter Gold open access under a creative commons licence. BPCs can range from £3,000 to £15,000; CPCs are usually upwards of £1,000.
From 1 August 2025 you will be able to apply for funding from the pilot LSE Open Access Books fund. Authors can make one application to the fund per year and must meet the following eligibility requirements:
- you must be a permanent member of staff, or have at least three years left on your contract for temporary staff
- you expect to be included in the School’s next REF submission and have one of the following job titles
- Assistant Professor / Lecturer
- Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer/ Reader
- Full Professor
- Assistant Professorial Research Fellow
- Associate Professorial Research Fellow
- Professorial Research Fellow
Apply for Open Access book funding (From 1 August)
If your monograph or chapter is the output of a UKRI grant, you can apply for funding from UKRI by filling out a form to let the Open Access team know.
Some other research funders allow you to build open access charges for books into your grant application as eligible, directly incurred costs. Check individual funder’s information to see if they will permit you to do this.
When budgeting for open access books/chapters in your grant application, consider the following:
- Which publishers are you considering for your proposal?
- Do they offer a no-cost, Green or “self-archiving” route for open access?
- What are their costs for Gold open access?