The 2013 Fund is earmarked for financing the publication of articles that were made available or accepted for publication in open access journals in 2013 and incurred publication fees. Individual authors can be reimbursed for up to a maximum of 2,000 euros per article. These funds are only available for articles published in genuine open access journals, i.e., the article must have been freely accessible over the Internet upon publication. The funds are not available for articles that were published in journals requiring a subscription, for example Open Choice (Springer) or Online Open (Wiley) or where the costs of publication were covered by externally funded projects. The Open Access Publishing Fund is managed by the University Library.

Freie Universität has been supporting open access publishing for several years. The Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS) is involved in the implementation of freely available electronic journals, and the University Library makes publications by members of the university available via the university's institutional repository. In 2006 the university’s president signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Academic Knowledge, and in 2008 the Academic Senate adopted an Open Access Policy for Freie Universität. The goal of these efforts is to ensure that research findings by members of Freie Universität Berlin are made available worldwide and without barriers.