Wellcome Trust has issued the following statement of support for COPE.
In 2005, the Wellcome Trust became the first research funder in the world to introduce a policy that requires the published outputs of the research it funds to be made freely available. As part of this policy, we provide our funded researchers with additional funding to cover the costs of open access publishing.
In line with the requirements set out in the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, our funding can be used to cover the publication costs in full open access journals — such as those published by the Public Library of Science and BioMed Central — as well as those levied by "hybrid" journals, which make individual articles available on an open access basis.
As such, the Trust welcomes the work being done through the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity initiative to help develop a sustainable and stable source of funding for publishers who choose to provide an open access option.
We are grateful to Wellcome for their longstanding and deep support of open access, including COPE.