Some good news for researchers applying for grants from the recently launched European Research Council (ERC).The council's grant application guidelines confirm that publication costs (such as BioMed Central article processing charges) can be included as part of the direct costs of the grant. ERC funding also includes an indirect component, and BioMed Central encourages institutions to consider allocating a fraction of this to a central fund to support open access publication by ERC-funded authors.
The ERC is one of the first public funding agencies (after the NIH) willing to pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals.
Update (3/31/07). The March 30 version of the guidelines is now online. The policy is unchanged and still appears on pp. 12 and 35.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/06/2007 10:10:00 AM.
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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
