Funding of publication costs and targeted support for research-friendly publication infrastructures / Topics and background information on the DFG website

Funding of publication costs and targeted support for research-friendly publication infrastructures / Topics and background information on the DFG website

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is increasing its efforts to enable free online access to publications and other research findings. The DFG has adopted and implemented further measures to support open access for the changing requirements of science, the humanities and research. These are interlinked and range from improved conditions for funding publication costs, the establishment of a scientifically adequate publication infrastructure and active involvement in national and international working groups.

“I am very pleased that the DFG has adopted these measures to consistently extend its support for open access,” emphasises DFG President Professor Dr. Katja Becker. “The coronavirus pandemic has once again demonstrated how important it is to have open and rapid exchange of research findings to promote both advances in knowledge and social developments. The DFG therefore seeks to support researchers from all disciplines in the best way possible.”

The DFG fine tuned its open access policy in 2020. Researchers are now encouraged to publish their findings from DFG-funded research projects via open access. To achieve this objective, the DFG is using its funding programmes to support both the funding of publication fees and the establishment of suitable publication infrastructures.

The DFG awards subsidies towards publication fees via its “Open Access Publication Funding” programme introduced in autumn 2020. This enables both the fees for journal articles as well as for open access monographs to be funded. Many universities and non-university research institutions face the financial challenge that publishers demand fees for the publication of research findings via open access. This new programme is intended to assist institutions and their researchers with the transition to open access.

Even beyond the funding of publication fees, the various specialist scientific communities in Germany are reliant on the further development of research-friendly standards and infrastructures. The DFG uses its newly accentuated “Infrastructures for Scholarly Publishing” funding programme to support the transition to open access via the establishment and expansion of suitable publication infrastructures and thus also promotes the (further) development of structural conditions within publishing.

Moreover, the DFG is actively involved nationally and internationally such as in the prioritised Digital Information Initiative, Science Europe and the Knowledge Exchange initiative on the topic of open access. At the end of 2020, the DFG also joined the ENABLE! community, which is building a partnership network to enable open access publishing in the humanities and social sciences, including through the development of innovative co-publishing models.

All of these measures are described in greater detail in a new section of the website dedicated to the “open access” topic. This section provides background information, outlines research policy positions adopted by the DFG and portrays both the funding opportunities for the transition to open access and the DFG’s active involvement in national and international working groups.

The DFG has been supporting open access since 2003. Open access enables researchers to distribute their work globally and to quickly and directly receive the publications of others, and without technical, financial or organisational barriers restricting their further dissemination or use of these publications.

Further Information

The DFG open access website:

• www.dfg.de/lis/openaccess/en

The “Open Access Publication Funding” programme:

• www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/programmes/infrastructure/lis/funding_opportunities/ open_access_publication_funding/

The “Infrastructures for Scholarly Publishing” programme:

• www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/programmes/infrastructure/lis/funding_opportunities/ infrastructures_publishing/

The ENABLE! community’s website:

• https://enable-oa.org

Media contact:

• Dr. Rembert Unterstell
  DFG Press and Public Relations
  Tel. +49 228 885-2109
  presse@dfg.de

Programme contacts at the DFG Head Office:

For the “Open Access Publication Funding” programme:

• Dr. Angela Holzer
  Scientific Library Services and Information Systems
  Tel. +49 228 885-2568
  angela.holzer@dfg.de

For the “Infrastructures for Scholarly Publishing” programme:

• Dr. Juliane Kant
  Scientific Library Services and Information Systems
  Tel. +49 228 885-2009
  juliane.kant@dfg.de