Open Access

The University of Rostock’s Open Access Publication Fund

As of 2017, the University of Rostock has set up an Open Access Publication Fund, from which it is possible to cover the costs of open access publications in journals under certain conditions. The publication fund will continue to be funded in 2021 and 2022 by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the Open Access Publishing programme (project number 325496636).

Application for funding

 

Application form

Please fill in the application form and send a scan of the signed document to openaccess.ubuni-rostockde. Please also send a publisher’s offer of publication costs, or an invoice for the publication costs that you may already have, to this e-mail address. After checking with the Open Access Department, you will receive binding information on whether the costs will be covered. If the invoice is issued by the publisher at a later date, please send it to us as soon as possible; payment of the invoice will be handled by the University Library. A refund of publication fees already paid is also possible, provided that the DFG funding conditions are met and the publication was not financed by third-party funds.

Deviating procedure for members of the Rostock University Medical School (UMR)

As with other scientific publications, please submit the form for the reimbursement of printing costs to the Dean's Office of the UMR (http://intranet.med.uni-rostock.de/forschung-lehre/formulare/). If funding from the Open Access Fund is possible, the Dean's Office will take care of claiming the costs from the university library and invoicing the library.

Funding criteria

According to the DFG guidelines, the following general conditions must be met:

  • Only articles in genuine open access journals can be funded; articles in journals that are in principle fee-based are not eligible for funding. An (incomplete) overview of genuine open access journals is provided, for example, by the Directory of Open Access Journals.
  • The journal must apply strict quality assurance procedures that are recognised in the respective subject. Here, we use the Directory of Open Access Journals to check whether the journal is listed there and thus whether a professionally appropriate quality assurance procedure is in place. If the journal of your publication is not listed there, we explicitly check the quality assurance procedure of this journal and consult with you as the author if we have any concerns.
  • The publication fees may not exceed a maximum of 2,000 EUR per article (incl. VAT). Full or partial funding for higher costs is, unfortunately, not possible.
  • You must be a member of the University of Rostock and responsible for paying the publication fees as the "corresponding author".

Further conditions are:

  • The publication to be funded must have a confirmation of publication (acceptance) and a publisher's offer or invoice.
  • Furthermore, publications at Rostock University Medical School can only be funded if the journal in which the publication is to be made has an impact factor. This does not apply to the other faculties.
  • Each funded publication should contain a reference to the funding. (Example wording: "This publication was funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of the University of Rostock/ Rostock University Medical School").

Required information on the publisher’s invoice

The publisher's invoice is paid centrally by the University Library or the University Medical School by bank transfer. The invoice must contain the following information:

  • Full address of the invoice recipient (i.e. the corresponding author)

  Autor:in (Corresponding/Submitting)
  Universität Rostock
  Fakultät / Lehrstuhl / Institut
  Straße
  D-18### Rostock
  Germany

  • Invoice date
  • Invoice and/or order number
  • Scope/type of service: Article Processing Charges for [Title of Article], [Name of Journal], [Year of Publication]
  • Invoice amount (net/gross)
  • Separate line item for VAT (19%)
  • VAT number of the service recipient
    • University of Rostock: DE 137385436
    • Rostock University Medical School: DE 246101670
  • Invoicing party’s VAT number (if located in the EU)
  • Invoicing party’s full address
  • Invoicing party’s account details (IBAN, BIC/ABA, Name of bank)

 

Publications funded to date

PLEASE NOTE: On invoices from abroad, the invoice amount is the net amount; accordingly, 19% VAT must be paid on the net amount. Since the DFG funding ceiling is EUR 2,000 gross (including VAT), invoices with a net amount of up to EUR 1,680 can currently be financed from the fund.

FAQ

FAQ

1. How do I apply for funding? Funding for the open access publication of journal articles is possible if the above-mentioned DFG funding criteria are met. It can be applied for on presentation of the publication confirmation (acceptance) or the invoice using this form. Along with the completed form, you also need to submit the publisher's confirmation of publication and, if available, the invoice. After your application has been reviewed by the University Library, you will be informed of the decision regarding funding. As soon as your publication has been published, please send us a short message.

2. Who do I contact if I have questions about Open Access? At the University of Rostock there are two options: for general questions about Open Access or the publication fund, contact the Open Access Officer at the University Library, Mr Malo (openaccess.ubuni-rostockde, tel.: 0381 498 8627). For subject-specific questions, for example about suitable journals or subject-specific quality criteria, it is best to contact the faculty representative for Open Access at your faculty.

3. Can Open Access publications also be partially funded? No, partial funding from the publication fund is not possible, as per the DFG's funding condition that costs may only be covered for publications with a maximum article cost of EUR 2,000 (incl. VAT). Costs may not be split in order to obtain funding.

4. Can Open Access publications also be paid for from other funds, for example from the department (e.g. literature funds) or from third-party funded projects? Yes, both are possible. For payment from department funds, cost type 4421 (Open Access Scientific Publications) is available. Some funding bodies (e.g. the DFG) explicitly stipulate in their funding regulations that funds for open access publications can be applied for or spent. If possible, you should already consider publication costs when applying for a project. If you have suitable third-party funds, you should use them. The publication fund is intended in particular for authors who do not have alternative means of financing open access publications.

5. Can submission fees also be funded? No, the funds from the publication fund are only available for publication fees of published journal articles; no submission fees can be covered.