Unlocked Issue 8 | May 2026

May 6, 2026

Welcome to Unlocked

The Gates Foundation Open Access Newsletter

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May 2026 | In this Issue

• Learn how to preprint your Gates-funded research with VeriXiv
• Need help navigating the Gates Foundation Open Access Policy?
• Did You Know? Gates and PLOS Are Still Partnering in 2026 to Support APC-Free Open Access Publishing
• Spotlight: KyDab, an Open-Access Database of Antibody Discovery Datasets
• Thoughts & Talks

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Learn how to preprint your Gates-funded research with VeriXiv

Interested in the future of trusted preprint publishing? Read the recent VeriXiv blog post, “VeriXiv’s role in shaping preprint publishing: key insights and trends,” then join one of our upcoming webinars to learn how to preprint your Gates-funded research on VeriXiv.

Designed for Gates-funded researchers, these sessions will introduce VeriXiv, explain its enhanced verification checks, and share an update on how the new preprint policy has worked over its first year.

Upcoming webinars

• Thursday, May 14th, 7:00 pm BST
• Friday June 26th, 5:00 BST

Launched by F1000 in collaboration with the Gates Foundation in 2024, VeriXiv is a verified preprint server that supports rapid sharing of research while helping strengthen research integrity through enhanced prepublication checks. It also enables researchers to meet the open access requirements of their grant agreements, with the option of open post-publication peer review.

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Need help navigating the Gates Foundation Open Access Policy?

The foundation’s open access website includes a How to Comply section with clear, practical guidance to help grantees understand policy requirements and explore compliance options.

Two new guides are now available to make the process even easier:

• Understanding the Open Access Policy
  How to Comply and Post a Preprint
  
• Open Access Compliance Options
  Frequently Asked Questions to Help You Understand Your Options for Policy Compliance

Together, the How to Comply section and these new guides provide a user-friendly resource for finding answers, understanding your options, and complying with the foundation’s open access policy.

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Did You Know? Gates and PLOS Are Still Partnering in 2026 to Support APC-Free Open Access Publishing

The Gates Foundation’s partnership with PLOS remains in effect in 2026, giving eligible Gates-funded authors the ability to publish in any PLOS journal without paying article processing charges (APCs). This support is part of a three-year partnership running from 2025 through 2027 to help accelerate PLOS’s transition away from traditional APC-based publishing. Together, Gates and PLOS are working toward a more equitable open access publishing system that reduces financial barriers for researchers and expands global access to knowledge.

How Gates-Funded Authors Can Participate:
To benefit from author-facing 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, and
• 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 Gates grant number is provided.

For more information on how to participate, visit the Gates Foundation Open Access Help Center.

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Spotlight: KyDab, an Open-Access Database of Antibody Discovery Datasets

Now online, the KyDab (Kymouse Antibody Database) serves as an open-access resource featuring antibody discovery datasets generated via the Kymouse humanized mouse platform. As part of the Gates Foundation’s commitment to ensuring knowledge and information gained from investments is promptly and broadly disseminated, the KyDab portal collects, standardizes, and makes publicly available data from a diverse set of antibody discovery campaigns funded by the Foundation, with a particular focus on infectious disease targets. This initiative aims to encourage more organizations to share data in AI-reusable formats.

The current release includes 11 immunization studies of 51 immunogens, comprising over 120,000 paired heavy light chain antibody sequences and binding measurements for more than 1,600 experimentally characterized clones. By making these full-funnel discovery data openly available, KyDab supports the development and evaluation of artificial intelligence models for antibody discovery. The database will be continuously updated as new datasets become available.

For More Information:
BioRxiv preprint describing KyDab: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.25.713450v1
Initial publication of the Kymouse:  Lee E-C, Liang Q, Ali H, Bayliss L, Beasley A, Bloomfield-Gerdes T, Bonoli L, Brown R, Campbell J, Carpenter A, et al. Complete humanization of the mouse immunoglobulin loci enables efficient therapeutic antibody discovery. Nat Biotechnol 2014; 32:356–63, DOI: 10.1093/infdis/jiae472 PMCID: PMC11841647

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