Funding Acknowledgements
1. What are funding acknowledgements?
Funding acknowledgements are formal statements identifying the principal sources of financial support which underpin specific research activities. They indicate the funding that has been instrumental in enabling the research work, for instance by providing resources for personnel, infrastructure, datasets, materials or travel, and that has resulted in the publication.
2. Why are funding acknowledgements required?
Funding organisations provide resources for research projects. By indicating the source of funding for their work, funding recipients contribute to transparency regarding the use of funds. (Please also refer to our Practical note(externer Link)). They also help demonstrate which research results have directly emerged from a particular funding award. Such evidence may be relevant when reviewing renewal proposals, for example. Funding acknowledgements also support analyses; they are important when it comes to assessing and evaluating funding lines and further developing the funding portfolio. In addition, they are an instrument in the fields of research on research and bibliometrics. In the context of open access, they have a role to play in determining the necessary budgets for information provision and publication.
3. When must I include funding acknowledgements?
In the context of DFG funding, the funding agreement stipulates that “results derived from DFG-funded projects” must include a reference to the funding in publications. In scholarly publications, funding acknowledgements are now standard practice and are therefore mandatory under the DFG’s funding guidelines. In addition, funding acknowledgements should also be included in the context of industrial property rights, in popular science publications, in lectures, when publishing datasets, and on instrumentation and vehicles, in the customary form in each case. Funding must be referenced by means of an acknowledgement if there is a substantial and verifiable link between the funding and the publication. The researchers responsible for the publication are accountable for ensuring that this link between the funding and the referenced project exists and that this is correctly indicated.
In projects funded to support knowledge-driven research, it is not always necessarily clear where there is such a link to a project. Indicators that an acknowledgement may be required include the following:
- Is the content of the publication clearly derived from the project (or the project proposal)?
- Are there significant and verifiable overlaps between the project funding and the content of the publication (e.g. authors, resources, instrumentation used)?
- Has a sufficiently short amount of time passed between the project and the publication to plausibly suggest a relevant link?
A funding acknowledgement must not be included if there is no substantial and verifiable link to DFG funding. Neither should funding for publication costs provided by the DF(interner Link) be acknowledged. This may change in future if dedicated fields for recording the funding of APCs (Article Processing Charges) or BPCs (Book Processing Charges) are introduced through the relevant publishing infrastructures or general standards.
Please note that ensuring correct funding acknowledgements is an aspect of good research practic(externer Link). Breaches of the rules regarding the “publication of project results” set out in the DFG funding guidelines may in certain cases constitute scientific misconduct.
4. How must I include funding acknowledgements?
The wording is determined by the relevant funding guideline, whether general or programme-specific.
For publications under the Research Grants Programme, for example, the wording is as follows: in German: Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – Projektnummer(n), and in English: Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project number(s). If a publication relates to several projects, the project numbers must be separated by semicolons.
In the case of Clusters of Excellence, the wording is: Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) im Rahmen der Exzellenzstrategie des Bundes und der Länder – EXC Nummer – Projektnummer, and in English: Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC number – Project number.
The project number and the consortium number or acronym (e.g. SFB 124, EXC 69) can be found in the award letter and are also publicly available (e.g. for other participants) via the project information system GEPRI(externer Link).
Practical notes
Funding acknowledgements must be inserted correctly at the designated place in the manuscript – usually under “Funding”, “Funding Statement” or “Funding Information”, or otherwise under “Acknowledgements”. They should also be entered in the relevant entry fields of any submission form.
Many publishers (e.g. Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature) provide additional fields for this during the submission process, through these are not a substitute for including the wording in the article itself. If no free wording is possible, at the very least the project number (and, in the case of consortia, also the acronym) should appear and the DFG must be named (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
Only use the wording recommended by the DFG. Using an alternative wording may prevent your work from being correctly assigned – both by the DFG and in bibliometric databases.
If funders are to be selected from a drop-down list, the DFG is listed under the ROR ID 018mejw6(externer Link).
No. Since 2016 it has not been permitted to state reference numbers that are linked to an individual funding recipient; instead, the (less error-prone) project number must be stated.
Yes. The requirements for funding acknowledgements must be observed even in the case of project-related publications in which the original applicants are not involved.
Yes. The wording may be translated into other languages, but the title Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft should always appear in German.
A funding acknowledgement may be justified or required if results arise primarily from the use of major instrumentation.
Literature
Conducted by the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) and Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) on behalf of the DFG, the study Publikationen aus DFG-geförderten Projekten – Praxis und Nutzbarkeit von Funding Acknowledgements [Publications from DFG-Funded Projects – Practice and Usability of Funding Acknowledgement(interner Link)] examines whether and to what extent DFG funding recipients comply with the rules stipulated by the DFG for citing the DFG and the specific project identifier in funding acknowledgements. The study also contains a brief overview of the development of the requirements for citing DFG funding.
- Meier, A., Mittermaier, B., Möller, T., Ottaviani, M., Scheidt, B., & Stahlschmidt, S. (2023). Publikationen aus DFG-geförderten Projekten – Praxis und Nutzbarkeit von Funding Acknowledgements.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1487044(externer Link) - Möller, T., Scheidt, B., & Meier, A. (2024, November 16). Are there factors that influence the quality of funding acknowledgements in publications? 28th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI2024), Berlin, Germany. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1417415(externer Link)
Contact
| E-mail: | funding-acknowledgements@dfg.de |