Research funders' OA policies

Most research funders now have policies in place that require grant holders to make any resulting publications Open Access. By accepting a research grant, the grant holder is required to provide Open Access to the publications arising from the funded research. Funder requirements apply even if the research was only partially funded by that organization. If your article acknowledges support from more than one funder, you must ensure that all funder requirements are met.

More information about funders

It is important to be aware of your research funder policy on Open Access before submitting a manuscript, as how you comply with your funder’s Open Access requirements will largely depend on the policy of the publisher of the journal you are intending to publish in.
Open Access requirements differ among funders. We have included the most important requirements of some major funders below. Other funder Open Access policies can be checked using the SHERPA Juliet database.

  • The SNSF requires that all scientific works published in journals and books (i.e. monographs, anthologies, book chapters) that were fully or partially financed (≥ 50%) by SNSF grants are published Open Access. Researchers can fulfill this requirement by:

    • publishing directly in pure Open Access scientific journals. The SNSF provides funds for covering publication costs in these journals, which are known as “article processing charges” (APC). Pure Open Access journals can be found via the Directory of Open Access Journals.
    • publishing in a subscription journal and pay an additional article processing charge to release their publication for Open Access (hybrid Open Access). The SNSF does not cover this type of publication cost but the SNSF’s Open Access requirement is met by adopting this approach. If a journal offers you to publish your article Open Access for a fee but is not included in the Directory of Open Access Journals , it is a hybrid Open Access journal.
    • alternatively, you can also publish articles in a subscription journal and make the accepted version of the paper (after peer review) freely available in DORA (Green Road to Open Access). Only a few publishers allow to make the published version Open Access in an institutional repository (e.g. DORA). Articles must be made available no later than 6 months after the original publication date. You can check if your chosen journal offers a compliant embargo period at SHERPA/RoMEO, but you may also wish to check on the journal homepage or directly with the publisher, as embargo periods can vary depending on the situation.

    Roads to Open Access – Journal Articles by SNSF is licensed under CC BY.

     

    New Open Access Regulations (2023)

    New OA regulations apply to all grant applications submitted from 1 January 2023. The new rules apply only to scientific articles. The rules for books and book chapters remain unchanged. As before, the OA commitment can be fulfilled in three different ways: publication in an Open Access journal (gold road), in a hybrid journal, or by publishing in a subscription journal and making the accepted version of the paper (after peer review) freely available in a digital repository (e.g. DORA). The main changes are:

    1. Articles resulting from SNSF-funded research projects must be freely available immediately; no embargo period allowed.
    2. The SNSF requires a CC-BY licence for all articles.
    3. SNSF is adopting the Rights Retention Strategy developed by cOAlition S: on submitting the manuscript, researchers reserve the right to make it freely available with immediate effect under a CC-BY licence, citing their commitment to the SNSF. Grantees must inform publishers of the requirement of publishing under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence, e.g. by including the following statement in the acknowledgements field:
      “This research was funded in whole or in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, a CC BY public copyright licence is applied to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.”
      The authors immediately make their “Author’s Accepted Manuscript” (including changes following peer review, but excluding layout and other services of the publisher) freely available via a repository.

    Funding

    The SNSF offers funding for Article Processing Charges (APCs) for publications in pure Open Access journals. Please note that the SNSF does not fund the “hybrid” publication model, i.e. fees for publishing Open Access in subscription journals. The funding is independent from the project budget and applications can be submitted via ChronosHub (https://chronoshub.io/snsf/apc-funding-request) at any time, even after the project has ended. A detailed guide for the settlement of APCs via ChronosHub is available at https://oa100.snf.ch/en/funding/journal-articles/.

    More Info

  • Horizon 2020 mandates Open Access for all peer-reviewed publications relating to the grant. In addition, Horizon 2020 encourages beneficiaries to provide Open Access to other types of output (some of which might not be peer-reviewed) such as book chapters or conference proceedings.

    Compliance with the Open Access mandate is a two-step process:

    1. Deposit the published version or the accepted version (after peer-review) of your publication into a repository (such as DORA).
    2. Ensure that the publication deposited in the repository is Open Access within a maximum of 6 months after the initial publication (12 months for publications in Social Sciences and Humanities).

    There are two main routes to compliance with the Open Access requirement in Horizon 2020:

    • Green Open Access (or self-archiving). Provided the publisher's embargo for self-archiving is no longer than 6 months (12 for Social Sciences and Humanities), you can comply by depositing the accepted version of your publication in DORA. You can check if your chosen journal offers a compliant embargo period at SHERPA/RoMEO , but you may also wish to check on the journal homepage or directly with the publisher, as embargo periods can vary depending on the situation.
    • Gold/Hybrid Open Access. Researchers can publish in a journal that gives the option for the work to be immediately Open Access. This could be a pure OA journal or a hybrid OA journal that makes articles OA on an individual basis. This usually involves the payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC). Even if the journal publishes the article Open Access you still need to deposit the article in a repository such as DORA .

    Adapted from H2020 Open Access Mandate by OpenAIRE is licensed under CC BY 4.0

    Funding

    Fees for Open Access publications in pure and hybrid Open Access journals can be claimed as project expenses. Article Processing Charges are eligible costs to Horizon 2020 grants and can be reimbursed by Horizon 2020 if they occur during the duration of the grant. You will need to indicate expected costs in your grant proposal.

    More Info

  • For ERC actions, the rules for Open Access to scientific publications are in principle the same as for other Horizon 2020 projects . All peer-reviewed publications resulting from ERC grants need to be deposited in a repository and should be made Open Access no later than six months after the official publication date. However, the ERC recommends depositing the paper in a discipline-specific repository. The recommended repository for Life Sciences is Europe PubMed Central and for Physical Sciences and Engineering arXiv is recommended. If there is no appropriate discipline specific repository, researchers should make their publications available in institutional repositories such as DORA.

    Funding

    Fees for Open Access publications in pure and hybrid Open Access journals are eligible costs that can be charged against ERC grants during the duration of the project. You will need to indicate expected costs in your grant proposal.

    More Info

  • All publications arising from the funding shall be available immediately upon their publication, without any embargo period. Publications shall be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC BY 4.0) or an equivalent license. Thus, you need to publish either in a pure Open Access Journal or a hybrid Open Access journal which allows publishing under a CC BY license. In addition, all publications need to be deposited in a repository (e.g. DORA) without an embargo.

    Funding

    The foundation pays reasonable publication fees required by a publisher. To access this funding, authors will need to use the Chronos system.

    More Info

  • Eawag requirements

    • Researchers at Eawag are required to deposit an electronic copy of the accepted manuscript of all peer-reviewed articles in the institutional repository DORA Eawag immediately after publication. Lib4RI makes the full text and bibliographic details of these publications accessible to the public, provided that there are no legal objections. This applies to all articles authored or co-authored while the person is/was employed or affiliated at Eawag.
    • Open Access Publishing at Eawag – Provisional Guidelines (intranet only)

    Empa requirements

    • Researchers at Empa are required to deposit an electronic copy of the accepted manuscript of all peer-reviewed articles in the institutional repository DORA Empa immediately after publication. Lib4RI makes the full text and bibliographic details of these publications accessible to the public, provided that there are no legal objections. This applies to all articles authored or co-authored while the person is/was employed or affiliated at Empa.
    • Open Access Policy and funding (Intranet only)

Funder OA policy vs. publishers' policies: copyright & embargo issues

If you want to comply with a funder OA mandate via the Green (self-archiving) route to Open Access, you will need to check whether your chosen subscription journal offers a compliant embargo period. While many funders (e.g. SNSF, EC) mandate a maximum of six months embargo, many journals require an embargo period of more than six months. In practical terms this means that if your research is funded by the SNSF or a Horizon 2020 project, you are not allowed to publish your research results in thousands of subscription journals (e.g. most journals of Springer, Wiley, Elsevier) unless you are willing and able to pay for hybrid Open Access in these journals.

What can you do about this situation?

  • Think about a strategy how to comply with the Open Access mandate of your funding agency before you submit a manuscript to a journal. Once your paper is accepted for publication in a journal, your options for compliance are limited.

    • SHERPA/RoMEO provides information about the self-archiving policies of journals. Condition for self-archiving vary much among journals/publishers. While one journal allows you to make the published version of your article freely available in a repository, a “similar” journal in the same subject field but from a different publisher only allows that the accepted version is made freely available in a repository after 24 months.
    • If your chosen journal does not offer a compliant embargo period for the Green route to Open Access, is paying for hybrid Open Access an option? Does your funder/institution/working group provide funds for paying the Article Processing Charges for publishing hybrid Open Access?

  • As the author, you are the copyright holder unless and until you transfer the copyright to a publisher in a signed agreement. While traditional publishing agreements often require that authors grant exclusive rights to the publisher, authors can negotiate with a publisher about retaining certain rights. In order to meet the Open Access requirements of many research funders (e.g. SNSF, Horizon 2020) it is recommended that you negotiate to keep the right to make the accepted or published version of your paper Open Access in an institutional repository.
    Remember that you are in control. The publisher cannot publish your work without your permission and he is gaining a major benefit in obtaining your work for free. Thus, you are in an excellent position to ask to retain certain rights.
    Attaching an addendum is a straightforward way to propose changes to a publishing contract. An addendum to the publishing contract is a separate document that, when signed by both parties, includes terms superseding any contradicting terms within the proposed agreement.

    There are pre-fabricated addenda created specifically to assist scholarly authors in retaining key rights to their work:

    • Horizon 2020 provides an amendment to publishing agreements that authors and publishers can sign to ensure authors have the rights they need to comply: H2020 OA Guide Model for Publishing
    • Science Commons offers an addendum generator that will create an addendum adapted to your needs. The “Delayed Access” option is sufficient to comply with the OA mandate of SNSF and Horizon 2020 via the Green route to Open Access: Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine

    Be sure to obtain confirmation that your amendments to the agreement are received and accepted. Otherwise there is no valid agreement. Be sure to get approval from the publisher to any such changes in writing.

    As an alternative to using addenda, the SNSF recommends to contact the publisher or the editors of the (non-compliant) journal and inform them about the SNSF’s OA requirement and the obligation to provide open access after a maximum of 6 months before you submit the paper. The SNSF has prepared a standard e-mail that authors can use when approaching publishers. See Standard e-mail for contacting publishers.

    More info about negotiating publishing agreements:

  • With a few keystrokes researchers at Eawag, Empa, PSI & WSL can eliminate any embargo (12-48 months) for Open Access publishing of accepted manuscripts in DORA. The method described here works exclusively for articles published in an Elsevier journal.

    Background: Elsevier’s Sharing Policy

    Elsevier’s Sharing Policy makes a distinction between an author’s personal website or blog and the repository at the institution where that author works. Authors are able to post accepted manuscripts to their personal websites for Open Access immediately after publication by Elsevier (no embargo), but a manuscript posted to an institutional repository such as DORA must be restricted only to internal users for the duration of 12-48 months. At the same time, Elsevier requires authors to attach a Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) license to all posted accepted manuscripts.
    The results is that authors may post an appropriately licensed copy of the accepted manuscript on their personal site or blog, at which point the DORA team may deposit without an embargo in DORA. This is made possible not through the license granted in the publication agreement, but through the CC license on the author’s version, which the sharing policy mandates.

    A CC-BY-NC-ND license gives everyone the following permission for the licensed item:

    Practical Application

    1. (a) If there is already a record in DORA for the Elsevier article: Got to the page for the article in DORA and click on Feedback > Submit an Accepted Version. Attach the PDF of the accepted manuscript to the mail message and send it to @email.
      (b) If there is not yet a record in DORA for the Elsevier article: Submit your article to DORA via one of these forms:
      Submit a publication to DORA Eawag
      Submit a publication to DORA Empa
      Submit a publication to DORA PSI
      Submit a publication to DORA WSL
      and upload the accepted version of your article.
    2. The DORA team attaches a citation & DOI (of the final published article) and the CC-BY-NC-ND license to the PDF. If needed, we create a record for this publication in DORA and upload the accepted manuscript. Access to the accepted manuscript is initially restricted to internal users for the duration of the embargo period required by Elsevier. We will inform you via e-mail when the accepted manuscript is available in DORA.
    3. Download the accepted manuscript from DORA (now with citation, DOI and CC-BY-NC-ND license!) and upload the file to your personal website or blog. Do not just add a link to the accepted version in DORA on your personal website or blog; upload the file to the server hosting your website and link to this file.
    4. Send an e-mail with the URL of the webpage where you openly share the accepted manuscript to @email .
    5. The DORA team removes the embargo for the accepted manuscript and makes it Open Access in DORA.

    FAQs

    • What qualifies as a “personal website or blog”?
      Elsevier does not specify this any further. Therefore, define it how it makes sense to you. For example, your personal page on eawag.ch, empa.ch, psi.ch or wsl.ch could be considered as a personal website because the author has control over the content.
    • What is an accepted manuscript?
      The accepted version, also called ‘postprint’, is the author’s final manuscript, which has been accepted for publication by the editor. It contains all revisions made during the peer review process. The publisher has not yet started any copy-editing or typesetting in preparation for publication of the manuscript. It is important to note that proofs and offprints sent to the author from the publisher are not accepted versions. See also here .
    • What are journal “pre-proofs”?
      “Pre-proofs” is just another name for “accepted manuscript”. This term was recently introduced by Elsevier and used for accepted manuscripts available on ScienceDirect; see also: FUD
    • What happens to the accepted manuscript in DORA if I delete my personal website or blog?
      Nothing, Creative Commons licenses are irrevocable. This means that once we have received the accepted manuscript from your personal website under a CC license, we will always have the right to use it in DORA under those license terms, even if the licensor changes his or her mind and stops distributing under the CC license terms.
    • Does this also work for other publishers?
      To our knowledge, Elsevier is the only publisher (of closed access journals) that gives authors the right / mandates to publish accepted manuscripts under a CC license.

    Further reading

    Bolick, J. (2018). Leveraging Elsevier’s Creative Commons License Requirement to Undermine Embargoes. Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship, 2(2), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v2i2.7415