Unlocked Issue 5 | April 2025
Welcome to UNLOCKED
The Gates Foundation Open Access Newsletter
April 2025 | In This Issue
- Navigating the Gates Foundation’s Open Access Policy
- Did You Know Gates and PLOS Are Partnering to Make Open Access More Equitable?
- Spotlight
- Thoughts & Talks
Navigating the Gates Foundation’s Open Access Policy
Need help finding your route to Open Access Policy compliance?
Check out the Gates Foundation’s How to Comply page for a clear, step-by-step guide to meeting the 2025 Open Access Policy. From preprints to data statements, everything you need to know is in one place.
Did You Know Gates and PLOS Are Partnering to Make Open Access More Equitable?
Gates-funded researchers can now publish in PLOS journals without paying article processing charges (APCs). The Gates Foundation is proud to support PLOS with a $3.3 million grant to accelerate its transition away from traditional article processing charges (APCs). Through this three-year partnership (2025–2027), we aim to remove financial barriers for researchers we fund, allowing them to publish in any PLOS journal without incurring APCs. This collaboration reflects our shared commitment to fostering a more equitable and open publishing ecosystem that supports global access to knowledge.
How Gates-Funded Authors Can Participate
To benefit from the APC-free publishing under this program, authors must:
- Have research funded in part or in whole by the Gates Foundation
- Include a valid Gates Foundation grant number
- Submit articles accepted between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2027
Importantly: The corresponding or submitting author does not need to be the grant recipient—any co-author may hold the funding, as long as the funding is properly declared.
For more information, visit the Gates Foundation Open Access Help Center
Spotlight: Editage
Gates Foundation Global Health Grantees: Get Free Support to Publish Your Research
As part of an ongoing effort to support Global Health research, the Gates Foundation has partnered with Editage to offer complimentary assistance to grantees preparing their research for publication.
Eligible grantees* can access support for:
- Manuscript writing and editing, journal selection, and end-to-end publication support
- Statistical Analysis and Review
- On-demand training resources and webinars
These services are fully funded by the Gates Foundation and delivered by Editage, with a focus on ethical, high-quality publication practices. Our goal is to reduce the burden on researchers and help ensure important findings are effectively shared with the global community.
Visit the website to learn more and submit your request: www.editage.com/funders/gates-foundation
*Eligibility: Current grantees of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health division who are based in low-resource settings.
Thoughts & Talks
Webinar:
Webinar – The Gates Foundation 2025 Open Access Policy Refresh: Introducing VeriXiv, May 22nd 2025 8:00am – 9:00am PDT | REGISTER
In this webinar, we will explain the changes to the Gates Foundation’s Open Access Policy that came into effect from January 2025, including the requirement for all Gates-funded research to be published as a preprint. We will explain what preprints are, why they are valuable, and the ways that preprints can support you to disseminate your research findings quickly and transparently, while promoting unrestricted access and reuse of research funded by the Foundation.
To support grantees to comply with the revised policy, F1000 partnered with the Foundation to launch VeriXiv in August 2024: a new verified preprint platform that improves research integrity while enabling the rapid availability of research. We will explain how the verified preprint model improves on existing preprint services by introducing robust integrity checks to ensure the trustworthiness of outputs that are disseminated in advance of formal peer review. This will include an introduction to the VeriXiv submissions workflow, the pre-publication checks, and the post-VeriXiv routes for peer review and publication of your version of record article [REGISTER]
Article:
Rethinking Equity in Open Access: The Gates Foundation’s Policy Refresh:
The Gates Foundation has refreshed its Open Access policy, ending support for article processing fees, requiring preprints, and advancing equity in research publishing. Ashley Farley, Gates Foundation-Senior Officer -Knowledge & Research Services, explores what this shift means for the future of scholarly communication. [Read more]