A growing number of funding agencies require that articles reporting research they have funded must be openly accessible. This can be achieved by requesting an open access licence and paying the corresponding open access charge, whereupon the article will be immediately available to anyone via the journal website. In addition, anyone requesting a reprint via the publisher will be sent a copy of the article by post, in perpetuity.

Requests for an open access licence can be made at any time. If made when returning proofs, the licence will begin concurrently with publication of the issue in which the article appears. Later requests should be made to jpbc@colbas.org with the subject line "open access licence" followed by the article code (that appears in the upper right-hand corner of the first page of the PDF or printed version).