Information leaflet and supplementary guidelines on Open Access publication costs (Merkblattund ergänzender Leitfaden Open-Access-Publikationskosten) | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) German Research Foundation

English translation (via deepl.com)

The program "Open Access Publication Costs" provides a fixed grant for the publication of scientific results in Open Access. The main reason for this is that Open Access has a functional role to play in improving scientific communication and pricing should be based on this function. The overall objective of the funding programme is therefore to enable a structural adjustment of the funding flows for Open Access transformation and thereby to improve the transparency of the costs of Open Access publication of scientific results.

On the one hand, the funding of Open Access publication costs is intended to provide funds to the scientific institutions where they are necessary due to the change in the financing mode towards publication-based accounting. On the other hand, the funds are also intended to help create or adapt the structure of the funded institutions so that the number and costs of publications can be determined in as automated and standardized a manner as possible. The funding program supports the institutions in the introduction and further development of such structures by contributing to the fees for the open-access publications of scientists. The grants must be administered centrally in the institution, usually in the library. Ultimately, the Open Access transformation requires structural adjustments in the overall system of financing and subsidizing the costs of scientific publishing.  The third objective of this funding programme is therefore to create a transition to Open Access funding based on the principle of financial responsibility for the publications resulting from the funded research. In the long term, the German Research Foundation will only cover the costs of those publications that are produced on the basis of DFG research funding. To facilitate this transition, the program is divided into two phases. The second phase in particular serves to set the course for the assumption of responsibility for the financing of open access publications from DFG funding.

Scientific institutions can apply for funds for the Open Access publications of their members. In the first application phase (2021 to 2023), the funding requirement for all open access articles of an institution is to be calculated for which the corresponding author or first author associated with the applying institution is liable to pay and which are published in quality-assured open access publication organs or in journals to which open access transformation agreements apply. In this first funding phase, a fixed grant of 700 EUR per article will be awarded for the publication of research articles. In a second application phase (2024-2027), the funding requirement will be calculated on the basis of the open access publications resulting from DFG research funding for which the corresponding author or first author affiliated with the applying institution is liable to pay and which are published in quality-assured open access publication organs or in journal publications to which open access transformation agreements apply. Knowledge of the number and cost estimates for articles funded by the DFG can usually be obtained via Funding Acknowledgements The use of Funding Acknowledgements is governed by the DFG's guidelines for use.

In the second funding phase, a fixed grant of 1,400 EUR per article will be awarded for the publication of research articles, and for both phases of funding: Funding can also be requested for open-access monographs and open-access books, but only for those that can be proven to have been produced by a DFG project and for which the author is employed by the applying institution. Up to 5,000 EUR per title can be requested for the publication of open access books. Collective volumes also count as Open Access books, provided that no other funding is provided for these publications (e.g. through conference fees or membership fees). For anthologies, only the publishers can receive funding, not individual contributors. Funding can also be requested for research data publications or other publications that are primarily open access (e.g. enhanced publications, preprints, i.e. pre-versions of articles that are published in open access, or articles that are published only via publication servers without prior peer review), provided that the costs per publication can be determined. In the case of consortial Open Access models or membership fees, a grant of 700 / 1400 EUR per article or 5000 EUR per book can be applied for. Double funding of the same publication in different forms of aggregation (e.g. preprint and journal article, contribution to anthology and journal article) is not possible.  Publication fees can be paid for Open Access publications that are subject to a professionally recognized quality review process. In principle, open peer review, post-publication peer review, community peer review, etc. are also recognized as such a procedure, provided that verification and correction options are provided during the publication process or a