In 2005 the University Board at Lund University took a decision on a publishing policy for the university that among other things says “Lund University should work to make all scientific journals adopt a publishing model, where the readers are given free access to the articles, directly or by self-archiving.” To support this transition a central fund supporting article processing costs was established in 2008. The fund is administered by the University Library. Earlier the publishing fund have been limited to a specified number of pure Open Access publishing houses and covered 100% of the article publishing cost.

Starting 2012-11-01 the following rules apply to the publication fund:

• Applications for funding support can be made for all open access journals that live up to certain quality criteria
• The fund will cover only 50% of the article publishing cost.

Everything submitted before 2012-11-01 to journals covered by the earlier publishing fund rules will be covered by 100% of the article publishing cost.

Why this change?

The usage of the fund has been growing rapidly. To give more researchers an opportunity to benefit we have chosen to reduce the part covered by the fund. Today many major funders demanding open access, also approves that part of the grant is used for publication costs and in some cases also offer the possibility to apply for specific publication funding. It is reasonable that these funding sources should also be used. Funding agencies demanding open access  .

General terms

• The fund only supports publishing in journals that are fully open access. Publishing in “hybrid” journals, where only some articles are freely available is not supported. Hybrid journals give the option to buy open access to individual articles but the journal as a whole requires subscription to be read.
• Corresponding author must be affiliated to Lund University and have an active LUCAT-id.
• The journal must live up to certain quality criteria. . In general a journal must live up to OASPAs code of conduct to be considered for publication cost funding support.
• The fund will cover 50% of the article publishing cost
  The fund is using the “first come, first served” principle.
• When the fund run out of money, no support is given until new funding is obtained.
• If the fund run out of money before new funding is secured all submitted articles that have received an OK from the fund will be supported even if the fund has stopped accepting new requests.

How to get support from the publication fund

1. When the article is published by a publisher where we have a membership. The memberships give discounts and/or simplified administration of the publication fees.

• PLoS Journals (New window)
• BioMed Central Journals (New window)
• SpringerOpen (New window)
• Co-Action Publishing (New window)
• Hereditas (New window) *
• Sage Open (New window)

*Regarding Hereditas we cover the publication fee, not the submission fee.

• When you submit an article you indicate that you as a corresponding author are affiliated with Lund University.
• When the article is accepted we pay 100% of the publishing cost and then invoice you for 50% through LUPIN.

2. OA-journals where Lund University doesn’t have a membership

• Fill out this form (new window) and submit to the University Library.
• You will get a reply if 50% of the publication cost is covered or not
• When you submit an article (or when it is accepted) use the following address for the invoice. Lund University  c/o Open Access Key, Publisher Services, Fitzwilliam Hall, Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2, Ireland. Or by e-mail to: inbox@remove-this-part.openaccesskey.com
  Open Access Key’s VAT number: IE 9800305L
• When the article is accepted we pay 100% of the publishing cost and then invoice you for 50% through LUPIN.

Finding open access journals

Beware of grey-zone publishers

There are a number of publishers where their seriousness is in doubt. For articles submitted to journals from these publishers, we will not cover the publishing costs. We keep a list o f such publishers and give some general advice about things to look for when considering an unknown publisher or journal.

If you publish in a subscription journal and your funder demands open access.

One alternative is to self-archive the article in LUP if the publisher allows self-archiving. Most funders approve of this alternative. Read more about self-archiving here.