Financing of open access and obligations for sites of research
The costs of ensuring open access to scientific publications published under the Research Council’s funding terms and conditions may be included in the overheads of sites of research, insofar as the implementation of the publication is in compliance with the above conditions for open access.
The open access costs to be taken into account in the overheads mean that the site of research can finance the open access of the articles produced by the project it supports, even if the funding period for the project has already expired. The Research Council obliges the site of research to take into account in the overheads percentage the funding needed for the site’s research projects to implement open access. Furthermore, the site of research is obliged to ensure that the project meets the open access requirements set out in the Research Council’s funding terms and conditions and to finance open access to publications accordingly. Through cooperation between the Research Council and the sites of research, the practical implementation and financing of open access must be made as easy as possible for researchers.
The costs of open access to peer-reviewed articles refer to the following costs:
Article processing charges (APC) required by the Plan-S-compliant journal that supports immediate open access. The Research Council encourages international scientific publishers to join the cOAlition S Journal Comparison Service, which aims to shed light on publishing fees and services.
Maintenance and development costs for Plan-S-compliant parallel repository maintained by the site of research. Costs of articles published in accordance with Plan S within the framework of a transformative agreement with a publisher committed to promoting immediate open access until 31 December 2024, or costs of articles published in accordance with Plan S in a transformative journal committed to promoting immediate open access until 31 December 2024. These costs comprise two different types of agreements:
- organisation’s fees resulting from participation in the FinELib consortium that concern Plan-S-compliant open access costs until 31 December 2024 in accordance with agreements concluded between FinELib and scientific publishers
- Plan-S-compliant open access costs incurred by an individual research organisation until 31 December 2024 for subscription contracts concluded between the organisation and scientific publishers.
Justified layout and editing costs related to the preparation of scientific publications may be financed as research costs for the research project if they are associated with the project’s research or action plan.
