Open access policies of research funding organisations

The BMFTR’s Open Access website can be found here (German only).

The current Open Access guidelines of the BMFTR can be found here (May 2023).

The Post-Grant Funds of the BMBF are now defunct and applications will no longer be considered: press release in German only

So far, the BMFTR has not yet released any information on Open Access funding availability (Februar 2026).

The DFG requestes grant recipients to publish their project results in open access for the purpose of adequate scholarly communication. .The publication in question should either be published directly in quality-assured or recognised specialist open access journals or on open access platforms or, in addition to being published by a publishing company, be entered in discipline-specific or institutional electronic archives (repositories), if possible without a time delay. (cf. DFG form 2.00).
However, this is not an obligation, and the DFG does not state any requirements with regard to mandatory long-term archiving in specific open access repositories (as of 2026).

The fixed publication funding may be saved up over the duration of a project a.d. if necessary, may be increased with funding reallocated from other projects.

As an additional grant to cover the publishing costs of scientific project findings,

• up to 750 EUR per year can be requested. Publications may be in any form with the exception of grey literature. (Form 52.01 – section 2.6 a)

• up to 5,000 EUR per year may be approved if the project results call for a book format provided the expenses can be justified . (Form 52.01 – section 2.6 a)

• up to 80% of the open-access costs may be contributed for very high-cost book publications, particularly for long-term DFG projects or other projects (e.g. literary editions, text volumes, illustrated volumes or excavation reports) . This grant is applied for upon completion of the project. (Form 51.10 – section III)

Immediate Open Access is required for all Horizon Europe-backed publications that have undergone a peer-review process.

You can find Open Access information in the ERC Grant Agreement on pages 385-389.

All ERC project-based publications have to be made available via a repository, even if they were originally published in a fully Open Access journal.

Only fully Open Access fees can be covered by an ERC grant.

Research articles arising from Horizon Europe-funded projects can be published primarily and free of charge via the publishing platform Open Research Europe. Peer Review is open and authors can recommend reviewers. All article versions will be published via the platform and fulfil the ERC’s Open Access mandate (FAQs).

Step-by-step guide to comply with the Open Science Requirements of the ERC (including publications)

To view the fact sheet and apply for the follow-on programme, click here.

“In accordance with the Berlin Declaration and Plan S of cOAlition S, the FWF requires all funding recipients, principal investigators, and project staff to make their peer-reviewed research results freely accessible on the internet if they result in full or in part from FWF-funded projects.

FWF Open Access Policy for Peer-Reviewed Articles Publications

FWF Open Access Policy for Peer-Reviewed Book Publications

In addition to the approved project budget, there is the option of an open access flat rate. This is for open access publication costs of peer-reviewed journal articles, anthology contributions, or similar that result entirely or partially from FWF-funded projects.

An overview of all FWF policies can be found here.

The Helmholtz Open Science Policy (2022) has established open access as the standard publication practice and pursues the long-term goal of achieving a 100% open access rate from 2025 onwards. This policy covers publications (articles and books), research data, and research software.

• The publication must either be primarily published in an open access journal or republished after no more than six months via a repository (such as OPEN FAU). An exception is made in the humanities and social sciences, where an embargo period of up to 12 months before archiving in an open access repository is permitted.  If the primary option is chosen, t, the publication must also be archived in an open access repository at the date of publication.
  Here is a list of Helmholtz repositories.  So-called hybrid journals should be avoided.
• The bibliographic data for publications must permit a reference to be made to the funded project.

If important reasons are presented (such as patent matters, data protection, security aspects), an exemption from open access publication may be granted. The Helmholtz Association must be notified of these reasons as soon as possible after the author has become aware of them.

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has binding regulations on open access.

Articles must either be published directly in a pure open access journal or republished within 6 months via an open access repository (such as OPEN FAU). Publication costs in peer-reviewed open access journals can be paid directly from the SNSF grant up to a maximum of CHF 3,000 per publication.

Books (monographs, dissertations, habilitation theses, legal commentaries, and editions) can be published with an embargo of up to 12 months. Costs can only be claimed provided the publisher releases the work immediately as open access.

• The SNSF covers the publisher’s services with an amount of CHF 5000 (basic grant), provided the services are set out in a binding agreement between the publisher and the author.
• The lump sum for doctoral theses and habilitations has been fixed at CHF 8000; if this lump sum is not sufficient to cover the publication costs, additional support may be requested.
• The base contribution for a Open Access book publication with up to 750.000 characters (including spaces) is CHF 15,000; additional funds may be available if the book has a larger number of characters, requires more effort for layout and rights clearance, if the book has enriched e-book functionalities (such as interactive or audio and video content), or if additional costs are incurred for the translation.

Open access costs for journal special issues, conference proceedings, commerative publications, new editions without additional research results, translations or collector’s editions are excluded.

If open access publication is not an option for legal reasons, the researchers must apply for exemption.

This SNSF regulation can be found here.

The NIH Public Access Policy requires that the accepted manuscript version (Author Accepted Manuscript – AAM) or the publisher’s version must be freely accessible in PubMed Central immediately upon publication (Official Date of Publication), provided that the research was funded in whole or in part by the NIH. This policy only applies to articles in journals and publication series with a peer review procedure; books, chapters of books, dissertations and similar are not subject to the regulation.

Further information can be found here.

The Open Access Policy of the Wellcome Trust sets mandatory requirements for all peer-reviewed research outputs supported by its funding.

The following regulations apply to original research articles, review articles, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings:

• Articles should preferably be published in pure open access journals or subscription journals that are subject to a transformative agreement (such as Project DEAL in Germany). Here you can find a summary of routes of compliance.
• Articles published in subscription journals must be made freely available via PubMed Central and Europe PubMed Central immediately upon publication.
• Articles must be licensed under a CC-BY license (in agreed-upon exceptional cases, under a CC-BY-ND license).
• Articles published in subscription journals must include the following statement in order to ensure that grantholders can continue to publish in any journal they choose while still complying with the principles of Plan S:
  This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.’

Scientific book publications must also be archived and made available on PMC Bookshelf via Europe PubMed Central within six months at the latest. If publication costs (BPC) are incurred, the book publication must be made available immediately without embargo under a Creative Commons license. The Wellcome Trust recommends the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license, but also accepts non-commercial licenses such as the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC-BY-NC) license or the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) license. Book publications should be registered at openaccess@wellcome.ac.uk.

The Wellcome Trust also offers a guide to its Open Access Policy. Non-compliance with the policy can be penalised by the rejection of future grant proposals a.d. in extreme cases, withdrawal of funding already obtained.