Open Access Fund

No extra application is necessary for publications under DEAL contracts!

If the publication takes place within the framework of the DEAL contracts with Elsevier, Wiley or Springer in a Gold Open Access journal, no application is necessary! The processing is done entirely by the SUB and the costs are covered automatically. In DEAL hybrid journals, the financing of the OA publication is already arranged via the DEAL contract. Further information and lists of DEAL journals can be found on the following websites:

• Elsevier-DEAL-Contract
• Wiley-DEAL-Contract
• Springer-nature-DEAL-Contract
• Springer nature / nature branded Journals

Enter the ISSN (xxxx-xxxx) of the journal you have selected in the input field. If the ISSN and other information are displayed as a suggestion/result, then the journal is included in the DEAL contract mentioned and UHH authors can publish their articles Open Access free of charge. Information without guarantee!

The application procedure for granting funding from the UHH-OAF for publications that are not published within the framework of DEAL (Publisher Elsevier, Springer or Wiley) and for books/monographs is carried out via a web form.

An application for cost coverage should be submitted at the latest as soon as the article has been accepted by the journal or, in the case of a monograph, as soon as it has been accepted by the publisher. If an assurance of cost coverage is needed at an early stage when submitting an article or planning a book or monograph, the corresponding funds can also be reserved in the UHH-OAF. In any case, however, the request must be made before the publisher's invoice is paid. Invoices are paid centrally via the fund; there is no transfer or reimbursement of funds to cost centres, WBS elements or other accounts.

Applications submitted via the web form are automatically checked for eligibility exclusively according to the eligibility criteria listed below. If the criteria are met and sufficient funds are still available in the fund, an immediate confirmation will be sent. You will receive the confirmation by email with an application number and further information on how to submit the invoice. Currency fluctuations for non-euro invoices will be covered by UHH-OAF.

The information from the web form is automatically written into the Research Information System (FIS). These basic details are completed and quality-assured in the FIS by automatic processes and by the SUB and the FIS team.

If the journal you have chosen is incorrectly identified as a mirror journal or DEAL journal and therefore funding is rejected, please contact openaccess"AT"uni-hamburg.de.

Funding criteria

• The corresponding or main author of the publication is a member of the UHH.
• UHH must be specified as the affiliation.
• The publication is a scientific article (research article), a book or a monograph, which has been reviewed in a recognised peer review procedure before publication and the rules of good scientific practice have been observed.
• If possible, the publication will appear in a journal listed in the DOAJ .
• The publication must not appear in mirror journals (exclusion criterion).
• A licence to enable legally compliant subsequent use is used. A Creative Commons licence CC-BY for journal articles and CC-BY or CC-BY-SA for open access monographs is recommended.
• Specification of a Funding Acknowledgement in the publication: (suggested wording)
  We acknowledge financial support from the Open Access Publication Fund of Universität Hamburg. 
• A publisher's invoice must be submitted for final payment.
  (Note: The choice of journal/publisher is the sole responsibility of the authors. No comparative offers are required for the assumption of costs. In order to check the funds still available in the UHH-OAF, the costs must be stated).
• The publication (metadata and full text) is recorded in the FIS of the UHH and published on UHH websites and transferred to the long-term archiving of the SUB. The SUB stores the publications (metadata and full texts) - itself or through third parties - and makes them available within the scope of its library tasks and in compliance with copyright authorisations.
• In the case of high APCs, depending on the availability of funds in the UHH-OAF, only partial funding may be provided and co-financing may be necessary. There is no entitlement to funding.

What is not funded or what costs cannot be reimbursed?

• No retroactive assumption of costs! The publication date must be after 01.01.2023 and the invoice must not have been paid yet.
• No funding for "non-research" publications (editorial notes, reviews, reports).
• Page charges, colour charges and submission fees or printing costs as well as publications for which sufficient publication funds are available in a third-party funded project are not funded.
• No funding is provided for the costs of publications that do not appear in Open Access.
• No funding for dissertations and post-doctoral theses.
• No funding of articles in anthologies and conference proceedings if these are financed by conference or membership fees.

In 2023, a central Open Access Fund (UHH-OAF) was set up at UHH (excluding the Faculty of Medicine) with a total amount of €300,000. The total amount was divided into €200,000 for publications outside of DEAL (UHH fund management) and €100,000 for publications in fee-based Gold Open Access journals in the DEAL contracts with Wiley and Springer (SUB fund management).

Promotion of non DEAL publications

By 31.12.2023, 99 applications for cost coverage had been submitted, of which

• 51 applications fully or partially funded (4 applications),
• 4 applications were withdrawn (one article was not accepted by the journal, three articles were funded from other sources or no costs were incurred),
• 44 applications could not be funded due to lack of funds or were already submitted for 2024.

Of the 99 applications submitted, 74 related to journal articles and 25 to book publications or collective works.

Promotion Gold-Open-Access in DEAL

The SUB's dedicated share of €100,000 in the UHH-OAF was used for fee-based Gold Open Access publications from the DEAL contracts with Wiley and Springer. Here, 40 publications were funded.

Distribution of funded publications among the faculties

The following table shows the distribution of funded publications among the faculties, broken down by publication type (journal article, book) and funding line in the UHHOAF.

Distribution of funded publications among publishers

The following table shows the distribution of the funded publications among the publishers, the publication type and the associated total costs, sorted by the number of publications (publications in the DEAL publishers Wiley and Springer are not listed here).