Please note: The Publication Fund is intended to cover the costs of journal articles submitted to publishers with whom the University Library has not concluded a separate agreement. Therefore, please inform yourself about the funding options that Freie Universität Berlin has concluded with publishers.

Funding conditions

Freie Universität Berlin has set the following conditions for the funding of publication fees:

1. Publication fees can only be paid or reimbursed if they do not exceed the maximum amount of 2000.00 EUR excl. VAT per article. This corresponds to an invoice amount of max. 2380,00 EUR incl. taxes. Higher invoice amounts cannot be paid via the FU Open Access Publication Fund, not even on a pro-rata basis or as a split invoice.
2. Up to two OA journal articles per person can be funded per year.
3. Only articles for which members of Freie Universität Berlin are responsible for paying the publication fees as "Submitting" or "Corresponding Author" will be funded.
4. Applicants must not be able to pay the publication costs from third-party funds (i.e. within the framework of DFG, BMBF, EU projects or other projects funded by third parties).
5. The article must be published in a purely Open Access journal, i.e. all articles in the journal must be accessible worldwide free of charge in their entirety without a subscription fee immediately upon publication
6. The article must be published under an open licence (for example, a Creative Commons licence - preferably CC BY).
7. The OA journal in which the article is published must have appropriate, clearly documented quality assurance strategies (i.e. especially peer review processes).

8. Applicants should have registered with ORCID and should have an ORCID iD.

Not eligible are:

1. Publications in hybrid journals, i.e. articles made available in subscription-based journals with paid open access options.
2. Articles in so-called mirror journals/sister journals, i.e. Open Access offshoots of subscription-based journals. Exceptions apply to publications, for example, within the framework of the DEAL agreements with Wiley and Springer Nature.
3. Page Charges, Colour Charges and Submission Fees.

Scope of application:
Funding conditions apply from 01 January 2023. Limited funds are available for the publication fund. If it is foreseeable that the fund will be exhausted, the funding conditions may be changed. Should this be the case, you will find the relevant information on this page. The final decision on funding lies with the University Library.

How to submit an application

Please check whether the open-access journal to which you submit your article fulfills the conditions for funding. If your publication meets the criteria please proceed as follows:

You have submitted your manuscript to the publisher

Please fill in the web-form for direct payment. Additionally send us an e-mail with the publisher's price quote to edocs@ub.fu-berlin.de

In your article, please mention the provision of funding through the Freie Universität Berlin. Our suggestion:
Supported by Open Access Funds of Freie Universität Berlin. (articles in English language)
Gefördert aus Open-Access-Mitteln der Freien Universität Berlin (articles in German language)

After the publisher’s invoice has been paid by the library, you will receive a message from the Institutional Repository Editorial Team. As soon as your article is published, it will also be made available worldwide through the institutional repository Refubium.

For further information please see FAQ

The Fund is administered by the University Library. All articles funded to date are deposited in the University's institutional repository Refubium.