Introduction

Various research funders around the world, including the NIH in the USA and the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council in the UK, amongst others, have begun either to request or require that researchers they have funded deposit copies of the resulting articles on free-to-view online repositories (either institutional or otherwise), provided they have been accepted by a peer reviewed journal. The Society of Biology has produced an author's guide to Open Access that you may find useful.

The Society for Endocrinology supports the wide dissemination of the research it publishes. At the same time, most researchers in this discipline value the quality stamp and the ease of access that acceptance in the Society's journals provides. These activities must be supported financially in some way; traditionally this has been by means of subscriptions by libraries to the journals, which also entitle institutions to online access.

The Society is also open to the potential offered by alternative business models, especially the author-pays Open Access model. It is now extending its Open Access Option, across all three of its self-published journals, to all authors who prefer the free-to-reader model (see below). In addition, the Open Access route, supported by an author-side fee, remains compulsory for articles whose authors are required, whether by funding bodies or institutions, to make the article free to all, for example by depositing on an institutional or subject repository, within a deadline that is shorter than 12 months from final publication. The Society automatically deposit articles to PubMed Central on behalf of authors who are NIH funded, for release 12 months from publication, enabling authors to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.

The transition period to any new model is, however, fraught with risks. For the time being, any self archiving or other depositing of accepted or published material must be carried out in a way that does not threaten the journal's financial viability. It is also important that the online hosting of the final version of record remains under the Society's control, so that researchers can check any other versions available online against the definitive version accepted for publication by the Society.

In order to balance these requirements, the Society has therefore arrived at the following policy.

Statement of policy

Authors whose research funding body or institution requires them to make their article freely available online earlier than 12 months from official publication must pay an Open Access Fee. This is also optionally available for all other authors (see also Open Access Option). Papers that acknowledge NIH funding will be automatically deposited to PubMed Central, for release at 12 months after publication, allowing authors to comply with NIH policy. NIH funded authors are not required to pay an Open Access Fee, but may still opt to make their paper freely available to all before 12 months by selecting the journal's Open Access Option.

If you are the author of an article that has been accepted for publication in a journal published by the Society for Endocrinology and you have not paid the Open Access Fee, you may not self archive or otherwise deposit your article on freely available institutional or other online repositories (including PubMed Central), unless:

• (i) The version deposited is the manuscript, as finally accepted by the relevant journal but prior to copy editing and page formatting.
• (ii) The authors ensure that it will not become freely available to the public until 12 months after publication of the final version of record in the journal.
• (iii) The manuscript made available in this way includes the disclaimer below:

Disclaimer to be included in deposited manuscripts

Disclaimer. This is not the definitive version of record of this article. This manuscript has been accepted for publication in [insert name of journal], but the version presented here has not yet been copy edited, formatted or proofed. Consequently, the Society for Endocrinology accepts no responsibility for any errors or omissions it may contain. The definitive version is now freely available at [insert DOI link][insert year of publication] Society for Endocrinology.

The DOI link mentioned above will be provided by the Society upon acceptance. Acceptance of these stipulations is a condition of publication.

Open access fee

The Open Access Fee is currently £2000 + VAT. For articles whose corresponding author is based at an institution with a current subscription to the journal in question, the fee is reduced to £1000 + VAT. This fee is a compulsory condition of publication if your funding body or institution requires the article to be made freely available sooner than 12 months after publication (this is the case for research funded in whole or in part by the Wellcome Trust or the UK's Medical Research Council. In return for this fee, the Society for Endocrinology will

• Make the article freely available to all on the journal's web site immediately upon official publication;
• Deposit the final published version of record on PubMed Central for public release immediately upon publication, so that authors need do nothing more to comply fully with the policies of funding bodies such as the Wellcome Trust;
• Permit unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, subject to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY).

You are not then bound by conditions (i) and (ii) set out in section 1 above: you are free to post copies of the final published version on any online repositories or other web sites as soon as you like. In this case, please do not deposit your accepted manuscript (as opposed to the final published version) unless you also include the disclaimer at point (iii) above.