Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Sunday, August 12, 2007

DFG funds to support OA journals

The German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or DFG) has announced a funding program to launch new science journals, expand existing journals, and help print journals make the transition to electronic publication.  To be eligible for funding, the journals must meet the DFG guidelines for open access, peer review, and preservation.  (Thanks to the Informationsplattform Open Access.)

Update. See this comment by Tom Wilson:

The enlightened character of this development compares favourably with the still unresolved policy of the UK Research Councils, which seem continually to be running scared of actually making a decision....[T]he RCUK considers that there are only two forms of open access, "author pays" and "self-archiving". The notion that research funds, instead of supporting commercial publishers through "author payments", could go to the formation of new, collaborative, no fee, no subscription e-journals, is not on their agenda. The real reason for this, of course, is that the Research Councils fear offending government policy towards business - even if those businesses lie mainly outside the UK....

Update. Klaus Graf argues that the DFG guidelines only require removing price barriers, not removing permission barriers. Read the German original or Google's English.