Since last December, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council) has regarded the cost of publishing research papers as part of the cost of research. In practice this means that recipients of its research grants may request 750 Euro per project per year to defray the costs of publishing their work. It doesn't matter whether they want to publish a monograph, a CD, or an article in a traditional or open-access journal. Try the German text of the policy, or Google's English translation. (Thanks to BioMed Central.)
PS. This is precisely the policy that should be adopted by all organizations that fund research, whether they are foundations, governments, or universities. It allows open-access journals to cover their expenses through fees on incoming articles (paid on behalf of authors by their research grants) so that they needn't charge fees for outgoing articles (paid on behalf of readers by libraries). If you know of other foundations, governments, or universities with this enlightened policy, let me know and I'll start a public list of them.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/14/2002 03:00:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
