E-MailOpen Access Publishing Fund
Publishing fund to be continued in 2025.
The University Library offers a DFG-supported publishing fund also in 2025. Please submit funding applications via our electronic application form. Please note the funding conditions provided below as well as the information on discount agreements with individual publishers.
Please note: if you want to access the application form from off campus, you will first be asked to authenticate yourself using your Uni-ID.
- Funding conditions
- How to receive funding?
- Internal settlement of the remaining costs
- Discounts on open access publications
- Fund for Open Access Monographs
Funding conditions
- A maximum of € 1000 gross will be subsidized per publication. Any costs exceeding this amount must be covered as a co-payment.
- You are a researcher at Heidelberg University (according to LHG §9 section 1) as well as the corresponding author (CA) of the article, who is responsible for the payment of the publication fee. The article was created in connection with your position at Heidelberg University and accordingly you include the university as your affiliation in the article.
- The article is published in a purely open access journal, which means that all articles of the journal are freely available immediately after publication. However open access options in otherwise subscription-based journals (so-called hybrid or open choice journals) cannot be funded.
- The journal must be listed in JCR or DOAJ.
- Only „research articles“ can be funded. According to the DFG funding program, „research articles“ are publications which convey scientific knowledge. This includes articles in the categories „original paper, review paper, brief communication“ etc. „Non-research articles“ are, for example, „letters“ or „comments“. „Non-research articles“ are not eligible for funding.
- Funding for articles in so-called “mirror journals” is excluded according to the DFG funding program.
An overview and further information about possible “mirror journals” can be found here. - The publication must be assigned an appropriate open content license. CC-BY and CC-BY-SA are strongly recommended. CC-BY licenses that contain an NC clause (CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC-SA, CC-BY-NC-ND) are not recommended. Further licenses outside the CC spectrum have to be requested and will be checked individually.
- The selected journal offers a suitable mechanism of quality assurance for its published articles accepted in the respective scientific community (i.e. typically peer review).
- Each funded publication must contain both a reference to the financial support of the publication costs and, if applicable, a reference to the third-party funded project from which it originated. (Example: „For the publication fee we acknowledge financial support by Heidelberg University.“)
- If this is offered by the publisher, the authors should make use of the possibility of linking to their ORCID.
How to receive funding?
Please submit your application for cost support using our electronic application form.
As soon as you receive the publisher's invoice for the article, you can submit an application to cover the publication fees. With your request, you submit the still unpaid invoice to us. We will take care of paying the publisher and then invoice you internally for the remaining amount exceeding the cost support. Please make sure that the publisher's invoice contains the following information.
- Addressee of the invoice: submitting/corresponding author under his/her institutional address at Heidelberg University
- Invoicing party (i.e. the publisher)
- Explicit invoice item (i.e. the article)
- Journal title
- Invoice date
- Invoice or order number
- Invoices from foreign countries (other EU-countries and third party countries): net invoice stating the VAT number of Heidelberg University as well as the VAT number of the publisher. The universities’ VAT number is DE 811225433.
If the above-mentioned requirements for cost support are met, we will transfer the invoice amount to the publisher, provided that the fund has not yet been exhausted. Incoming applications that include an invoice will be processed in the order in which they are received until the available funds are exhausted. The required co-payment of the costs will subsequently be invoiced internally.
Once the article has been published by the publisher, we would be grateful for a brief e-mail in which you send us the link to the paper. Publications supported by the fund will be listed in heiBIB, the Heidelberg University Bibliography.
Since the financial resources of the fund are limited, unfortunately no guarantee for cost can be made. The determination of whether funds are still available will be made when the complete application documents are received or, in the case of the publishers BMJ, Frontiers, Springer, Wiley, at the time of publication of the article. If necessary, you can inquire about the funds still available via our contact address.
Since the financial resources of the fund are limited, unfortunately no guarantee for cost can be made. The determination of whether funds are still available will be made when the complete application documents are received or, in the case of the publishers BMJ, Frontiers, Springer, Wiley, at the time of publication of the article. If necessary, you can inquire about the funds still available via our contact address. Publications supported by the fund will be listed in heiBIB, the Heidelberg University Bibliography.
In case you received a cost support by the publishing fund, please send us a short e-mail notification as soon as the publisher has published your article.
Internal settlement of the remaining costs
We will invoice you or your institute internally for the costs (gross costs including 19% tax) that exceed the above-mentioned funding amount. You agree to this procedure on the electronic application form. Any in-house arrangements for financing that may be required must be made by you.
For internal invoicing, we need an invoice address. Usually, this is the university office address. Invoicing to other addresses is not possible for addresses in Germany; exceptions can only be considered in justified individual cases. Invoicing to international addresses is generally not possible. Invoice splitting to several institutions is also not possible.
For publishing invoices that show a foreign currency, we use the exchange rate at the time the invoice is booked by our financial administration.
Please note that all invoices are subject to 19% sales tax. This also applies to foreign invoices that show only the net amount. Here, too, the university is obligated to pay the corresponding tax in Germany. Accordingly, the total invoice amount increases by the tax portion.
Discounts on open access publications
Authors of the University can obtain discounts on open access publications from various publishers, irrespective of whether they are supported by the Publishing Fund or not. Further information can be found on our overview page on open access discounts .
Fund for Open Access Monographs
The UB supports Open Access monographs that have been produced in the course of a DFG project with up to 5000 Euros. You can find more information here.
