Publication fund

You can apply for funding if you are a member of the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and are  responsible for paying the article’s OA fees as a corresponding author. Furthermore, you must have an ORCID and use it for your article. Students are members of the Charité.

Please ensure compliance with the Charité's affiliation guidelines [PDF].

Open Access fees for articles in OA journals with quality-assured publication services can be fully funded centrally from 2023 onwards with up to EUR 2,000 (incl. VAT) if the eligibility requirements below are met. Partial funding is possible in case of higher fees. DEAL articles in Gold OA journals will be treated in the same way.

Effective immediately and retroactive to January 1, 2023, Gold OA articles originating from DFG-funded research can be funded with up to EUR 1,400 (incl. VAT), even if the journal does not fully meet the known criteria. However, minimum criteria apply.

On the initiative of the Vice Deans for Research, the criteria for open access funding 2023 were developed on the basis of a list of eligible journals and adopted by the Faculty Board on 22.09.2022.

As of 01.01.2023, the following funding requirements apply for maximum funding:

1. As a member of the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin you are responsible for the payment of the publication fees as a "corresponding author". Please ensure compliance with the Charité's affiliation guidelines [PDF].
2. As corresponding author, you have an ORCID and use it for your article.
3. Your article is a research article or review.
4. Articles in genuine open access journals (Gold Open Access) can be funded if the journal is listed in the latest list of eligible journals and is marked as eligible there.
5. The article must be published under a Creative Commons license, preferably CC BY.
6. Page charges, color charges and submission fees are not eligible for funding, nor are publications that have already been paid for with third-party funds or for which publication funds are available in a third-party funded project.

Articles originating from DFG-funded research can be funded with up to EUR 1,400 (incl. VAT) if the following minimum requirements are met:

• criteria 1-3 as well as 5 and 6 are fulfilled,
• in deviation from criterium 4, the selected journal must be
• listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• and must not be a mirror journal^[1].

Acknowledgement of financial support from the Publication Fund is requested. We suggest the following wording:

We acknowledge financial support from the Open Access Publication Fund of Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin..

After publication, the article will also be made available worldwide via the Charité’s open access repository, which is part of the institutional repository of Freie Universität Berlin (Refubium). 

¹ Mirror journals are seemingly genuine open access journals that have high similarities to hybrid journals from the same publisher. The following characteristics are usually associated with mirror journals: similar or identical editorial board, similarity of name, own designation as mirror journal (or comparable terminology), identical aims & scope. These journals are therefore to be classified as a type of hybrid journal and are therefore not eligible for funding.

For applications to the fund submitted in 2022, the following applies: if an invoice is received at publikationsfonds(at)charite.de  by March 31, 2023 (invoice dated 2023), the funding criteria from 2022 or 2023, whichever is more favorable to the applicant, will be applied. For articles in 100% Open Access journals by DEAL-publishers (Wiley and Springer Nature), this also applies to all articles submitted to the publisher by 31.12.2022.

If the funds available in 2023 are foreseeably insufficient to continue funding until the end of the year, the maximum funding amount per article will be reduced accordingly.

The funding conditions for open access (OA) articles at the Charité will be continuously evaluated during the grant period of the DFG programme "OA Publication Costs" (2022-2024) and, if necessary, changed with an announcement. Should the funding conditions be changed, we will inform you on this page.

Please use the application form "Antrag auf Übernahme von Open-Access-Publikationskosten (DE)". 

It is best to attach the invoice to the application form and let the Medical Library settle the invoice for your eligible article. If you have already paid your invoice from household funds or LOM, then use the application form to request a funds transfer.

Please note that:

• no reimbursement to a private account is possible
• funding can only be made within the budget year that corresponds to the invoice date. This means that for invoices received in December, it is best to apply for direct funding rather than paying an invoice and then trying to obtain reimbursement.

When generating an invoice, please ensure that.

• a) the publisher addresses the invoice to Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, not to your private address.
• b) the invoice contains the name of the corresponding author, the title of the journal, the title of the article and the publication date (if known).
• c) in the case of invoices from abroad, the invoice amount is shown without VAT. You may need the VAT ID of the Charité: DE228847810.
• d) discounts granted by the publisher must be listed on the invoice.

Applications for all types of funding will be processed in the order in which complete applications are received. An application is only complete with an invoice and the eligibility criteria of the corresponding accounting year apply.

You can apply for full reimbursement as soon as the article has been accepted by the journal and you have received a price quotation or an invoice from the publisher. To do so, please use the web form Antrag auf Übernahme von Open-Access-Publikationskosten (DE).

Details on the funding of articles in gold or hybrid journals can be found on our webpage "Publishing Agreements".

In 2022, there will be a partial funding model for articles in gold OA journals of the DEAL publishers Wiley and Springer: details can be found on our website "Publishing agreements".

From 01.01.2023, the funding requirements of the Publication Fund will apply to articles in Gold OA journals of the DEAL publishers Wiley and Springer Nature.

Please also note the current publisher agreements  which allow you, as a Charité author, discounts or fee waivers.

Furthermore, there are two free forms of Open Access:

• Publish in quality-assured "Diamond" or "Platinum" journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is the most comprehensive directory of quality-assured Open Access journals and offers a filter for Diamond and Platinum journals that are not financed by fees (APCs) and are free of charge for authors.
• Choose the so-called green road to Open Access, where authors publish in traditional journals (closed) and deposit a version of their article permitted by the publisher on an Open Access publication server in parallel - e.g. in the institutional repository of Charité and FU, Refubium. (If an embargo period must be observed between deposit and release, this can be deposited in the repository so that you no longer have to worry about it. The Open Access team of the Medical Library will be happy to help you with this).

The publication fund provides authors with financial relief when all eligibility requirements are met. The Charité Publication Fund is intended to motivate authors to publish in journals that offer a high-quality publication service, which is ultimately what the article fees pay for. Only such journals appear in our list of eligible journals.

The publication fund is one of several services offered by the medical library to support Charité authors with open access publishing.

Furthermore, on behalf of the Charité, the medical library concludes transformative and other beneficial contracts with publishers, it advises and supports authors in their choice of publication venue, it manages the Charité institutional repository, and the medical library is an integral partner in the university publishing house BerlinUP​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.