Yes. For institutions that have not yet implemented the Code, funding remains blocked until the institution provides evidence that the Code has been implemented. Please refer to the Code of Conduct(externer Link) for further information.

Yes, non-university research institutions may submit proposals. Proposals are submitted by the management of the institute or the legally independent organisation. Proposal submission may be delegated via a form (DFG form 12.201(interner Link)).

Yes, higher education institutions at which OA publications are produced are also eligible to submit proposals. Private higher education institutions are likewise eligible to submit proposals if they are state-approved. 

Yes. Funding needs in the second phase of the programme (2024–2027) can only be calculated based on publications arising from DFG research funding. (The use of the funds remains flexible, meaning that the funds may also be used for articles that do not result directly from DFG-funded research. However, applicants are required to provide sufficient funding to enable publication of all open access publications that demonstrably arise from a DFG project.)

The funding period is the period to which the proposal relates, i.e. the period following the year in which the proposal is submitted (“publication year”). If for example a proposal were submitted for a three-year funding period in 2026, the funding period would be 2027-2029.

The second phase of funding aims to gravitate towards the principle of financial responsibility. For this reason, only articles that demonstrably arise from a DFG project can be used to form the basis of a needs calculation. In order to account for this, lump sum allowance for these articles is increased to €1,400.

No. A renewal proposal must be submitted in full. It must address what has already been implemented during the first funding period.

No. You do not have to submit an interim report along with a renewal proposal. (Exception: An interim report is required if the reviewers specified this as a condition in their feedback on the first-time proposal. If the institution is successful in obtaining funds for an additional funding period, the final report to be submitted after funding expires must describe the work performed and results achieved during all years of funding (first and second funding period). In the event that the renewal proposal is rejected, a final report must be submitted by the date specified in the initial award letter. A “Final Report” template (DFG form 12.02(interner Link) – 01/23) is available to all grant recipients for submitting interim reports and final reports.

The development of suitable methods is left to the applicant. The guidelines (DFG form 12.21(interner Link) – 03/25) clearly define the basis on which the funding needs calculation is to be undertaken. Note: Reviewers are requested to carry out a plausibility check on the publication numbers cited in the proposal using the Open Access Monitor.

The Open Access Monitor(externer Link) at Forschungszentrum Jülich offers a service which is designed to help determine the number of open access publications: this can be used to calculate the requested funding amount and also to query data on past publication numbers. The Open Access Monitor provides instructions on how to use it for this purpose in the context of funding proposals: please refer to the latest version on the Open Access Monitor homepage.

Only open access publications resulting from DFG-funded research and authored by corresponding authors or lead authors affiliated with the applying institution (and responsible for payment) may be included in the calculation. However, since funding acknowledgements do not always clearly indicate whether the corresponding author or any co-author received DFG funding, the publications do not need to be manually checked, thereby reducing the administrative workload. This vagueness in the funding calculation is acceptable at present.

“Required to pay fees” here means that costs are incurred by the institution. This can also be the case through memberships of preprint servers or other consortium models (including Diamond Open Access). With SCOAP³, the consortium payment is based on the publication share, but the number of publications that come from the respective institution is the deciding factor when submitting the proposal. It is possible to apply for funds if the institution participates in SCOAP³-DE.

As a matter of principle, publications that have no other funding acknowledgement than being funded through the “Open Access Publication Funding” programme and have received no other DFG funding may not be included in the calculation of the requested funding amount. In order to reduce the amount of checking work required, however, publications figuring in the Open Access Monitor analysis do not need to be checked manually to this effect. This vagueness in the funding calculation is acceptable at present. Please ensure in your workflows that funding through the “Open Access Publication Funding” programme is not indicated in the funding acknowledgements in future.

It is possible to request €1,400 per eligible open access article and €5,000 per eligible open access book. The allowance does not differ according to research sectors or disciplines.

The proposal always refers to the publication years following the year of submission, i.e. in 2026, funds are requested for the publication years 2027 and following.

When submitting your proposal, you should refer to the agreements listed by ESAC(externer Link). If you are participating in an agreement that is not listed, please specify it and include the resulting publications in your calculation. The review panel will then decide whether the publications in question may be included in the calculation of the requested funding amount.

The applicant institution must be or plan to be party to an agreement in the period for which the funds are requested.

Yes.

“Research articles” are publications which convey scientific knowledge. This includes articles of the categories original paper, review paper, brief communication, etc.

Funds can also be used for this purpose if publications by the institution’s authors are made available via these publication infrastructures. This applies to all so-called Diamond journals/infrastructures, i.e. publication outlets operated by publicly funded institutions or infrastructures supported by collective funding which generally do not charge authors directly for publication services, but may be supported by the institution through institutional or collective funding.

No subsidies are available for dissertations published via the university server if this forms a part of the normal services provided by the university. In the case of book publications that incur additional costs, such as through a university press, a subsidy may be granted.

Yes, please include tables wherever possible, especially under section 6.1. The tables should clearly indicate the amount of funding requested and the corresponding time periods. Please refer to the according template(interner Link) (in German only).

Here, you should state the number of publications for which you seek funding. If possible, please provide a breakdown according to publishers/publication platforms and differentiate between articles and books. 

Please use table formats. Here you can find a template(interner Link) for this format (in German only).

Please provide a clear overview of your institution’s publication output for the years 2023–2025. Use a table to list all publications in the period 2023–2025 that may be included in the funding calculation, separated by Open Access Gold, transformative agreements and other funding models, where applicable.

Open access books resulting from DFG-funded research in the period 2023–2025 that are to be included in the funding calculation should be listed individually. 

Please do not make projections about future numbers of articles. 

In your proposal, specify the funds available for open access publishing and their sources.

Do not apply any reductions: these will be made by the DFG Head Office.

In this case, do not draw down those funds you do not require.

The outcome of the first review year was that particular importance is attached to the criterion “Work Programme and Implementation” (see “Review Criteria”). The strategic embedding of the project in the institution and the planned measures are to be presented here. The planning should also include a timeline. If a working group is established, it should be capable of implementing the project and also ensuring coordination across different organisational units, where applicable. 

The outcome of the second review year was that the development of information budgets remains insufficient and should be given greater attention during the review process in the second programme phase. 

In the third year of the review, it became clear that the programme’s funding objectives were well addressed and could be achieved, especially when it came to renewal proposals. It was found that the word “information budget” was frequently used in proposals, however, it was not applied and comprehended consistently or based on conceptional thinking and systematic tasks. Structural reasons in particular lead to rejections. The attitude of the university or institution management towards administrative processes and towards the university’s or institution’s infrastructure remains a central point. 

In the first year of the second phase of the funding programme "Open Access Publication Funding", one key focus of the review process was the comparison between what institutions had achieved during the first project phase and what they were planning for the second phase. The establishment of structures at the institution, involving the relevant internal units, continued to be regarded as important. 

The reports on the individual funding rounds are available on the programme website(interner Link).

It is not necessary to establish new processes or structures if the existing ones are sufficient to meet the programme’s objectives. This must be clearly demonstrated and justified in the proposal, however.

Yes. 

It is also possible to obtain funding for articles published in journals that are not listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), providing quality assurance is ensured. Here, we ask institutions to check on a case-by-case basis.

When using the funds, the total amount of DFG funds spent must correlate with the number of eligible publications during the funding period. 

It is not necessary to account for €1,400 per article; DFG funds can be flexibly included in an integrated (information) budget and reinforce the institution’s total funds. However, it must be possible to provide evidence of the actual use of DFG funds (e.g. for a specific segment of eligible publications). All eligible publications must therefore be verifiable, even if no DFG funds are used for them.

• Example: In 2024, 70 articles of an institution are eligible for funding. The institution can therefore use an amount of €98,000. It can share this amount of €98,000 among 40 articles, but it must be able to provide evidence of all 70 eligible articles and their funding. This applies correspondingly to the entire funding period.

All articles that are not excluded by the funding guidelines are eligible for funding. In the second phase of the funding programme, you may therefore continue to request and use funds for open access articles that did not result from DFG-funded research. It remains the case that the total amount of DFG funds spent must correlate with the number of eligible publications issued during the funding period. 

• Example: Your institution has been allocated funds for 800 open access articles. During the funding period, however, your institution can only provide evidence of 600 articles resulting from DFG-funded research. In this case, the funds for the remaining 200 articles may be drawn down and used for other eligible open access articles, even if these do not originate from DFG-funded research. 

The data must be submitted to Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) based on the metadata schema provided by the FZJ. For further information please refer to the programme monitoring(externer Link) by the FZJ.

Yes. Please note that dissertations produced at an institution within the framework of DFG-funded projects or networks are, in principle, eligible for funding. However, established and existing open access publication options should be used primarily, such as the institution’s publication servers or subject-specific publication repositories. If these infrastructures are operated by the institution as part of its core facilities and constitute a core task, DFG funds may neither be requested nor used to cover their costs.

No. Secondary publications are not eligible for funding.

Nor can articles that have been paid for via so-called hybrid Article Processing Charges APC and undergo secondary publication be included in the calculation or financed from DFG funds.

The funding of so-called Article Development Charges (ADC) is not possible.

Yes, if these preprints incur costs, e.g. due to membership fees or contributions to infrastructures. However, it is only permissible to use DFG funds once per “aggregate state” of a publication, i.e. not for the preprint and the open access article.

Quality assurance of content within the scope of the programme is defined as requiring a scholarly review and documentation process, either prior to or following publication. This may take the form of a community peer review or a post-publication peer review. Good research practice(interner Link) applies to all publications funded under the programme.

Legally secure reuse of the funded publications must be ensured, which is regulated by means of CC or other licences that enable reuse as defined by the Berlin Declaration The guidelines (DFG form 12.21(interner Link)) list standards that serve as orientation.

Yes, the guidelines for this programme are available in a special section of the Funding Guidelines (DFG form 2.00(interner Link)). 

• Use of the funds for non-research articles
• Funding of publications in mirror journals, where these are clearly identifiable as such
• Fees for submission charges, page charges, colour charges, etc.
• Use of the funds for opt-out articles, i.e. articles that do not ultimately appear in open access
• Use of funds for administrative fees relating to a publication
• Funding of individual articles in edited volumes
• Use for conference proceedings if the publication is financed from other sources (e.g. admission fees, membership fees)
• Minimum participation fee for DEAL agreement with Elsevier
• Article Development Charge (ADC)

After being approved, the funds can be drawn down via DFG form 41.0402(interner Link) (in German only). Please always make a needs-based request for funds. The first drawdown of an approved project must be sent via postal service to the address stated in the form. Subsequent drawdowns can be submitted digitally. Attachments to the drawdown (e.g. list of publications) are not required.

The Proof of Use (DFG form 41.050(interner Link), in German only) for this programme is provided on the programme website.

For further information on the proof of use, please refer to the Funding Guidelines (DFG form 2.00(interner Link) - Section 8).

The FZJ provides all information on monitoring here(externer Link).

DFG funds may also be used for articles/monographs for which the invoice is not received until the beginning of 2026, providing (i) the articles/monographs were published in 2025 (i.e. within the funding period) and (ii) the institution applied for a cost-neutral extension. The funds are then available for the time period of the approved term extension.

Please fill in the DFG form 41.45(interner Link) (in German only) and send it to FIN2@dfg.de(externer Link).

Please apply for a cost-neutral extension as early as possible, but no later than six weeks before the end of the year.

Since 2023 there has been a Service Level Agreement between the DFG and the OAPEN Foundation for the use of the OAPEN Library as a repository for the secondary publication of DFG-funded open access books. Initially, monographs are uploaded to this repository that have arisen in connection with DFG-funded research and have received funding under the programme "Open Access Publication Funding". 

The OAPEN Library receives the metadata of the relevant publications via monitoring reports from Forschungszentrum Jülich and independently manages the upload of the publications to the repository. This process incurs no additional effort or cost for institutions funded under the "Open Access Publication Funding" programme.

Here you can find further information about the information event(externer Link) on the cooperation between the DFG and the OAPEN Library on 14 March 2023.

Please also have a look at the detailed information on the DFG collection in the OAPEN Library(externer Link).

Only institutions or their executives can submit proposals under the “Open Access Publication Funding” programme. Individual researchers can, however, also use their internal project publication funds or funding for direct project costs from the research funding for open access purposes. 

Researchers can continue to directly apply for internal project publication funds. However, The DFG does recommend that researchers contact the central information units when open access publications are involved, so that duplicate funding is avoided.

Yes, but duplicate funding of the same publication by the project recipients must be excluded. However, internal project funds can be used to co-finance open access publications.

The introduction of funding acknowledgements is regulated in the “General section” of the Funding Guidelines (see DFG form 2.00(interner Link), section 13). Each project owner is individually responsible for this insertion. In the programme context, however, it may be appropriate for the applicant institution to draw its institutional authors' attention to this DFG requirement.

Supplementary note: The University of Göttingen’s rapid test provides an overview of individual aspects that are relevant to DFG funding, including the coverage of publications with ORCID links and the use of funding acknowledgements. For further information please refer to their "Open Access Metadata Compliance Checker"(externer Link). 

Yes, the funds can be used for all those affiliated with a university or institute.