Publication Fund for Journal Articles

With the approval in the new funding program Open Access Publication Costs (OAK) of the DFG for the years 2022-2024, the funding criteria and the funding model for the RUB Open Access Publication Fund change, although it is still only available for Gold OA.

If the funding criteria are met, publication costs of up to 2,000 euros gross per article will be fully covered by central funds (DFG / UB / Rectorate). Only the pure APC is eligible for funding. If the total costs per article exceed 2,000 euros, the additional costs must be bindingly committed. The UB handles the payment and invoices these costs annually in retrospect per faculty / institution / clinic.

The aim of the DFG funding program is to record the number and costs of all open access publications at RUB, including those financed decentrally, in as automated and standardized manner as possible. Please support us in this endeavor and report your open access publications to oa@rub.de, even if funding through the publication fund is not an option. Please submit funding requests for gold open access articles exclusively via the green web form. Please check the ISSN first:

Required information on publishers’ invoices

If approved, the invoice should be addressed as follows

                            Ruhr University Bochum           
                            University Library Bochum
                            Journals Department, UB 5/8
                            D44780 Bochum
                            (email: journals-ub@rub.de)

Please note, that invoices from other European countries have to state the VAT-Nr. of the Ruhr University Bochum (DE 127056261) and the UID of the publisher.

Criteria for funding (according to DFG guidelines):

• Your article is published in a Gold Open Access journal, all articles of which are accessible to users free of charge via the Internet immediately upon publication ("genuine Open Access journals", cf. Directory of Open Access Journals).
• As a member of the RUB you are the "corresponding author". If you work at several institutions, the Ruhr University Bochum must be named as the first affiliation in the publication.
• The journal meets the scientific quality criteria for the respective subject. Only research articles or review papers are eligible.
• Your article is published under a CC license. The reuse of the publications must be regulated in a legally secure manner in each case. You grant a non-exclusive right to use your publication in the course of making it open access.
• If possible, publications should be assigned a DOI and linked to an author's ORCID profile.
• Authors who publish results from third-party funded projects are obliged to check whether the publication costs can be paid from third-party funds provided for this purpose (e.g. ERC) and to exhaust these funds. Publications from DFG projects are eligible for funding, provided that the publication cost allowance has been exhausted.
• The supported publications will be archived on the RUB repository.
• The payment of additional costs of more than 2,000 euros is bindingly agreed. Invoicing will be done by collective invoice after the end of a publication year. If necessary, please contact the responsible dean's office for this purpose.

Articles in so-called mirror journals are not eligible for DFG funding, even if they are listed in the DOAJ. Mirror journals are OA offshoots of existing closed-access journals with similar names and are therefore a form of hybrid journal.

Transparency:
The Ruhr-Universität Bochum supports the appeal for disclosure of APC payments of the Alliance of German Scientific Organisations and participates in the Open APC project for cost transparency of Open Access publication fees.