Open Access Publishing Fund for Books

If your main occupation is at the University of Mannheim or you are a doctoral candidate at the University of Mannheim, you can apply for partial coverage of the costs of the open access publication fee for a book (BPC). Your role must be that of an editor or author of the book and you must be (co-)responsible for the entire book. The funding application can only be submitted once per book, even if several editors or authors are affiliated with the University of Mannheim.

The book must be published immediately and completely in open access without any delay to a possible parallel print edition. The open access version of the publication will be made freely available on the publisher's website.

The book is to be published under a Creative Commons (CC) or a comparable Open Access-compatible licence. For CC licences, it is recommended to choose the CC BY or CC BY-SA licence without further restrictions.

The quality of the content of the publication is ensured by a quality assurance or selection process that is standard in the discipline.

The application for funding must be accompanied by a concrete publishing offer including a cost calculation. The offer must clearly state which services are provided by the publishers and how high the costs are for the editors or authors. The publisher's offer must be comprehensible and consistent. Special requirements or obligations for the authors or publishers must also be specified. The cost calculation should be transparent and comprehensible. In particular, this should indicate whether certain costs are incurred exclusively for the print edition (e.g. printing costs) and are therefore not eligible for funding.

A maximum of 4,000 EUR of the net price plus VAT can be covered. If a print edition is planned in parallel to the open access edition, printing costs and other costs incurred only for the printed edition will not be covered.

If the total invoice exceeds the maximum funding amount or includes costs that are not eligible for funding, please indicate which other sources of funding are to be used. If several organisations are involved in the funding, the publisher should submit corresponding partial invoices.

Applications are generally processed in the order in which they are received. If the volume of applications exceeds the available resources, applications from early career researchers will be prioritised and care will be taken to ensure a fair distribution across all subject areas.

We expect publishers to fulfil the quality standards for open access books as comprehensively as possible.

The University Library lists the book in the university bibliography on the publication server MADOC. In addition, the full text will be archived and made accessible on MADOC. The publication data and cost information will also be submitted to the DFG and to openAPC.

We are happy to advise you on this matter: publikationsdienstemail-uni-mannheim.de.