The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Open Access Policy
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is committed to information sharing and transparency. We believe that published research resulting from our funding should be promptly and broadly disseminated. We have adopted an Open Access policy that enables the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded, in whole or in part, by the foundation, including any underlying data sets.
2025 Policy Refresh
Since 2015, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has led a bold Open Access policy that prioritizes the access, transparency, and equity of funded research. With a decade of experience and lessons learned, the foundation is refreshing its Open Access policies to address ongoing challenges and advance systemic change in scholarly publishing. The policy refresh will take effect on January 1st, 2025. Read the Open Access 2025 Policy.
Journal Checker Tool
Use the Journal Checker tool to find a compliant journal or to check the compliance of the journal you’re using.
PubMed Central Deposits
Grantees can now directly deposit their accepted manuscript to PubMed Central where it will seamlessly link to its PubMed
record. More information about the process can be found on the NIHMS Tutorials page.
Share Your Paper Tool
If your journal is not compliant then use the Share Your Paper Tool to help make your paper and data open access and compliant.
Quick Start Guides
The foundation has prepared a Grantee Publishing Guide and a Repository Guide to help guide you through the publishing processes.
Data Requirements
The Open Access Policy requires that underlying source data results are accessible and open immediately.