From this week the BMJ will start asking authors of eligible research articles to pay a publication fee. All submitted research will continue to be judged entirely on its importance, originality, quality, and relevance, and not on authors’ ability to pay. Editors and reviewers will not know whether a fee is payable: the fee will be requested only after a study is accepted, and administrative staff will handle payments and associated correspondence. Moreover, all research in the BMJ will remain openly accessible, regardless of whether a fee has been paid for its publication.

The publication fee will be £2500 for each accepted research article. This fee will apply only when the funder of the research that is reported in the article has already pledged to pay for open access publication and when authors can claim the BMJ fee, in full, from their funder for that specific piece of research. Consideration of the paper is not related to whether authors can or cannot pay the fee. We will ask for the fee only once we have accepted a paper and we will send an invoice only once authors tell us (via openaccess.bmj@bmjgroup.com) they can claim the fee. Seeking and processing fees will not delay editing or publication.

We neither wish nor intend to deter anyone from submitting research to the BMJ. We appreciate that research—even in …