APC funding for OA-journals not included in agreements

Researchers at Lund University can apply for funding of the APC in pure open access journals when the journal is not covered by any of the publisher agreements.

This financial publishing support does not include extra costs for pages and color images.

The University Library initially covers the full Article processing charge (APC). The cost is later distributed across faculties and invoiced accordingly. Depending on your faculty’s internal policy, you may be required to cover part of the publication fee at a later stage.

If the journal is covered by an agreement, no application is required.

Search for journals included in the publisher agreements.

Terms and conditions for a granted application

The following criteria must be met in order for us to grant an application:

Terms for the author

• The applicant must be the corresponding author of the article.
• The applicant's affiliation to Lund University must be stated in the article.
• The applicant must be an employee at LU and have a LUCAT, and must be funded by LU. Researchers who are funded by Region Skåne are not eligible.

Terms for the journal

• The journal must be pure open access. No support is granted for publishing in hybrid journals or journals with delayed open access.
• The journal must meet some quality requirements and follow good publishing practices for scientific journals. At least one of the following requirements must be met:
  - The journal is registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
  - The publisher is a member of the OASPA.
  - The journal is indexed in a quality-controlled database such as Scopus or Web of Science.
• The journal must not have level 0 in the Norwegian Register during the year of publication or the following year.

Read more about choosing where to publish and how to assess journals and publishers

How to apply

1. Apply by filling out the application form, which is sent to the University Library. Apply in connection with the submission of a manuscript.
   Application form
2. You will get a reply as to whether your application has been approved or not. Upon approval, we also send additional instructions for handling the invoice.

Hybrid journals are not covered

APCs for hybrid journals are not covered by this APC funding for the following reasons:

• The average hybrid journal APC is more expensive than the average OA journal APC. 
• Few publishers have a clear correlation between the subscription price and the number of APC-funded papers in a journal (the double-dipping problem). I.e. the subscription price should go down when the number of articles paid by an APC increases. This is beginning to improve, but it´s still the main reason most Universities don’t support publishing in hybrid journals if it´s not included in an agreement. In short, we try to make as much as possible to support a transition towards open access with the limited amount of resources there is.
• Publishing in hybrid journals is already well covered by several national agreements at Lund University.