Campus Fryslân boosts its commitment to open access publishing

Open access means free, immediate and permanent access to academic publications. The University of Groningen (UG) and the Faculty Campus Fryslân are firm believers that academic literature should not be locked behind publisher paywalls and are fully committed to open access publishing.

At the institutional level, the UG supports open access publishing in various ways, including:

• The UG institutional open access agreements allow affiliated corresponding authors to publish peer-reviewed articles in thousands of journals for free (100% discount) or with significant discounts on the Article Processing Charges (APCs).
• Short publications by UG authors are automatically made available through the institutional repository (Pure) six months after their first publication in a journal or edited book. This is possible thanks to the legal backing of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (also known as Taverne amendment).
• The UG has an open access book fund. UG- and UMCG-affiliated authors can apply for funding the publication of their monograph or edited volume.
• The UG supports several diamond open access initiatives and recently launched a stimulus fund to support diamond open access initiatives by UG researchers. The fund can be used to expand and improve existing initiatives (e.g. professionalizing or scaling-up a scholar-led journal, etc.) or to create new ones (e.g. setting up a new journal or flipping an existing journal to diamond open access).

Additional support for open access at Campus Fryslan

In addition to these UG instruments, Campus Fryslan has established a faculty-specific open access fund to further encourage its researchers to publish open access. The fund is specifically dedicated to supporting the publication of peer-reviewed articles in open access journals that are not covered by the UG agreements (gold open access journals). More information about the eligibility criteria and the fund regulations can be found on Campus Fryslân’s intranet.