Open Access Monograph Fund

• Funding from the OA Monograph Fund is geared towards researchers from all subject areas at the University of Bayreuth. Applications from early-career researchers – for example, to support the publication of a dissertation or postdoctoral thesis – are also welcome. Please note that only dissertations that have been written at the University of Bayreuth and that have received at least the overall grade "magna cum laude" can be supported by the Monograph Fund.
• The funds from the OA Monograph Fund can only be used for publications whose paying authors or editors are members of the University of Bayreuth at the time of publication (publication date). In this regard, please note the recommendations of the University Governing Board regarding the specification of institutional affiliation. In addition, applicants are recommended to provide an ORCID iD.
• Only one publication (monograph or edited volume) per person can be funded per year.

• The OA Monograph Fund supports both monographs and edited volumes that have not yet been published elsewhere.
• In the case of edited volumes, funding is only possible if no other funding is available (e.g., by means of conference or membership fees). For edited volumes, only the editors can apply for funding in the context of publication of the entire volume in open access; however, funding of individual contributions within an edited volume is not possible. In the case of co-editorship (= several editors), the University Library will check on a case-by-case basis whether funding is possible.
• In principle, funding is only possible for publications that undergo a professionally recognized quality review process. In order to determine this as early as possible, researchers should check in advance of submitting an application whether the publishers being considered for the publication are members of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) or listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). We also recommend that you consult Think.Check.Submit.
• Funding can also be provided for OA books that are published simultaneously in a print version. In this case, however, the funding from the OA Monograph Fund may only be used for the freely accessible digital version, which must be easy to find and citable. In principle, it is not possible to cover printing cost subsidies from the OA Monograph Fund.

• A maximum of 2,500 euros per publication can be applied for from the OA Monograph Fund for the publication of OA books. Any publication costs in excess of this must be borne by the applicants themselves. Should a personal contribution be necessary, the University Library requests notification of a suitable account in the course of the application for funding.
• It is possible to combine funding from the OA Monograph Fund with other funds (professional funds, material funds, third-party funds). If the authors or editors have access to full funding from another source, funding from the OA Monograph Fund is not possible.
• It is not possible to reserve funding; the decisive factor is whether sufficient funds are still available in the OA Monograph Fund at the time of invoicing. If the fund is fully expended, no further applications for funding can be accepted.

• Grants from the OA Monograph Fund can only be used to pay so-called Book Processing Charges (BPCs), which arise, for example, in the course of quality assurance procedures, editing work, or measures to make the publication easier to find.
• The BPCs must be presented transparently by the publishers eligible for publication; this is checked by the University Library in the course of the application. Researchers should obtain two comparative offers from potential publishers of their choice before or in the course of submitting an application for funding from the OA Monograph Fund. If only one publisher's offer is obtained, this must be justified separately on request. The evaluation of the publisher's offers by the University Library is based on the quality standards for open access books defined by the University Publishers Working Group, which must be met.
• Other fees – for example, administrative fees, fees for licensing, for colour illustrations, or (additional) page numbers – cannot be covered by the OA Monograph Fund.
• The assumption of printing cost subsidies in the case of publications that appear in parallel in print and in OA is generally not possible; the subsidies from the OA Monograph Fund may only be used for the freely accessible digital version, which must be easy to find and citable.

• Authors and editors must provide publications supported by the OA Monograph Fund with licenses that regulate possible subsequent use in a legally secure manner. For this purpose, the use of the Creative Commons licenses CC-BY or CC-BY-SA is recommended; if necessary, CC-BY-ND is also possible.
• When publishing their monograph or edited volume in Open Access, the authors or editors grant the publisher only simple usage and exploitation rights for their publication.
• The funded publication contains a DOI or – if this is not possible – a comparable persistent identifier.
• If possible, the funded publications will be linked to the ORCID profile of the authors or editors.

To apply for funding from the OA Monograph Fund, please use our webform which you can also use to state general questions about Open Access (e.g. regarding the DEAL-contract).

• Funded publications are listed on ERef Bayreuth and secondary published on EPub Bayreuth.
• The BPCs of funded monographs are reported annually to the Open Dataset "OA Monograph Charges (BPCs)" in the GitHub repository "Datasets on fee-based Open-Access-publishing" (DOI, funding year, costs).
• In addition, each article should contain a reference to the funding in the acknowledgements. Please refer to the requirements on our information page on Funding Acknowledgements.

Please take notice: Applications for funding from the Open Access Monographs Fund can only be processed by the UB Open Access Team if a corresponding application has been submitted in parallel via our web form. The web form contains binding instructions for inserting the Funding Acknowledgement. If the applicant declares that no Funding Acknowledgement will be included in the publication or if the publication does not contain a Funding Acknowledgement after it has been published, funding from the Open Access Monographs Fund will not be possible and we reserve the right to reclaim any amounts paid as part of the funding.

For further inquiries about funding opportunities, please feel free to contact the OA Support Team: oa@uni-bayreuth.de