OA Fund FAQs

With its Open Access (OA) Publication Fund, the University of Bern supports researchers at the University of Bern in publishing articles in OA Gold journals or books in OA Gold. 
As of 2022, the OA Fund of the University of Bern is part of the national Open Access Fund.

• Check whether the funding criteria of the OA Fund are met.

• APCs and BPCs for articles in OA-only journals and for books and book chapters in OA can then be applied for using this web form.

• We are also part of a national contract with the publisher Frontiers. As soon as the contract is signed (probably April 2022), the library will pay article processing charges for articles directly to Frontiers for as long as the designated Frontiers-fund lasts. 

The fund runs on a first-come-first-served principle. The date of the application submission is decisive particularly once the fund is running low.
When the fund is depleted, publications can no longer be supported until the following calendar year.
You can check the balance of the fund anytime on our website.

• You need a campus account to be eligible. Faculty and emeriti accounts are not eligible.
• We can only accept invoices that are dated in the current calendar year.
• Make sure to check the journal you wish to publish in (see “Journal” below on this webpage).

The conditions are defined in our criteria. 

• The fund will pay for APCs provided they do not exceed 2’500 CHF (not including VAT)
• BPCs will be covered for up to 8’000 CHF.
• Charges will only be paid, if the application fulfills the criteria

Please submit your application as quickly as possible after you get the invoice and expect a turn-around time of two weeks.

Should the application be successful, the fund will pay the publisher directly.

Do not pay the amount via the online payment form.
Request an invoice as a PDF from your publisher and hand it in to us with your application. Do not pay the invoice.

Please allow for a turn-around of two weeks.

Checking ahead of time whether all criteria are fulfilled and all information was filled in accurately (including attachments) will minimize the risk of lengthy follow-up correspondence and clarifications.

In agreement with the Grants Office we allow for exceptions, when applicants who receive(d) funding from the EU no longer have any funds in their “dissemination budget” to cover APCs or BPCs for open access publications.
We will need an official letter from the PI/Supervisor of the applicant that confirms that the author has depleted their dissemination budget.

If funds are still available, applications with invoices from the previous year can still be submitted in the first week of January. The exact deadline will be communicated on the website in December. After that, only applications with invoices from the current year can be submitted.

Applications for the new year can be submitted as of the first of January.

• The fund supports only publications in pure open access journals.
• Articles must be published with a CC-BY license. Please note that we do not accept any more restrictive cc-licences (e.g. CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-ND).
• Publications in hybrid OA journals or predatory journals will not receive funding.

A hybrid journal is a subscription journal that also publishes articles in open access, for which the authors pay an APC (see the section "How does Open Access work" on our website).
You can tell whether a journal is hybrid if

• Only some articles are in open access, while others are behind a paywall
• Access to the journal requires a subscription
• The journal is not listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (https://doaj.org/)

Should the journal in which you wish to publish be hybrid, we recommend you check our Read & Publish website to see whether there is a consortial deal that would cover the cost of publishing in the journal you chose.

A journal is probably predatory (and thus not a credible scholarly journal) if

• The journal is not listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (https://doaj.org/)
• The journal is not listed in the usual indexes such as Web of Science, Scopus or Index Medicus
• You find complaints of researchers (e.g. about e-mail spamming)
• Lack of transparency of the publisher
• No professional invoicing

The following checklist will help you to recognize a predatory journal. We also recommend that you check each new journal that you consider publishing in against the criteria on the website Think.Check.Submit https://thinkchecksubmit.org/.

Once your application is approved, we will send you the correct billing address. You will then have to request an adjustet invoice from the publisher to reflect this billing address. 

Send us the invoice as a PDF.
Do not pay the APCs or BPCs with a credit card.
Once your application is successful, we will pay the publisher directly.
Make sure to send us the application as soon as you can after you receive the invoice.

It is possible that you logged on with your student account. To upload publications in BORIS you need to log on with one of the following two account types:

• Members of the University of Bern with a campus account
• Members of the Insel-Spital with an I-account

If you log on with one of these two accounts, you can upload your publication in your user area.

You only need to upload your publication and submit the record. The BORIS-team will then check all your information and select the correct license and embargo length. Only after the record has been checked for correctness will the entry be published.

Acknowledging funding from our fund will be most appreciated. Please use the following text:

• German: Diese Open Access Publikation wurde von der Universität Bern und swissuniversities gefördert.
• English: Open access funding was provided by the University of Bern and swissuniversities.

Should you not find an answer to your question in these FAQs or if you are unsure about how to proceed, we are happy to help.
You can reach us at oafonds@unibe.ch.