Open Access Publishing Fund
You are planning to publish an article in an open access journal? Then you can apply for funding from the university’s Open Access Publishing Fund to cover the publication fee – also known as article processing charge (APC).
The Open Access Publishing Fund is financed by the University Library and the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). Since 2022 it is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In the previous years (2017–2021) the publishing fund has been supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg (MWK).
1. Who can apply for funding?
If you are primarily employed by the University of Mannheim, or if you are a doctoral student at the University of Mannheim, then you can apply for funding to cover the publication fee for your article. At the same time, you must be responsible for the payment of the publication fee as a “submitting author” or “corresponding author”.
2. Which open access journals are eligible for funding?
The article must be published in a genuine open access journal, i.e. all articles in the journal must be fully accessible on the web free of charge as soon as they are published. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists such journals.
Articles in so-called hybrid open access journals – subscription-based journals with open access options – as well as articles in Mirror Journals cannot be funded.
For information on funding of publications in hybrid journals of individual publishers within transformation agreements, see Publishing open access with a publisher.
In addition, the journal must apply quality assurance procedures recognized by the respective academic community – usually a peer review process.
3. When can you apply for funding?
You can submit an application for funding throughout the entire publication process: before you submit your manuscript, during the review process, or when your manuscript is accepted by the publisher.
4. Cost limit
A publication fee of up to EUR 2,000 plus VAT can be covered for your article in full. In the case of higher publication fees, EUR 2,000 plus VAT will be covered on a pro rata basis. The remaining costs are to be borne by the applicant.
5. Invoice
The invoice must be issued to the University of Mannheim. Please use this invoice address: Universität Mannheim, Kreditorenbuchhaltung, 68131 Mannheim, Germany.
In addition, the invoice should include following information:
- Leitkriterium: K4010000001F1000M
- Your name and the title of the article.
- The value-added tax identification number (VAT ID) of the University of Mannheim: DE 143845342 (if required).
6. Acknowledgements
Your article should include an acknowledgment of the financial support by the University of Mannheim or MZES.
For example: “The publication of this article was funded by the University of Mannheim” or “The publication of this article was funded by the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES)”.
For publications resulting from a DFG-funded project, the project must be mentioned in the Acknowledgements.
7. Listing in MADOC
The University Library will catalog the article in the University Bibliography on the MADOC research repository and label it as supported by the publishing fund. In addition, the full text will be archived and made accessible on MADOC. The data will also be submitted to the DFG and to openAPC.
We are happy to advise you on this matter: publikationsdiensteuni-mannheim.de.
