Publication Fund
What is the Publication Fund?
The Publication Fund of Bielefeld University supports the publication of open access monographs, edited volumes, contributions to edited volumes and articles in open access journals. Only publications by researchers who are working at Bielefeld University at the time the manuscript is submitted are financially supported. They must appear as “submitting author” or “corresponding author”.
Funding Criteria
The article in question appears in a journal whose articles are fully available in "Open Access". Such journals are usually listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. The oa.finder tool can help you find a suitable open access journal.
The journal/publisher applies recognised, strict quality assurance procedures ("peer review procedure") in the respective subject.
The monograph or edited volume is published completely in Open Access.
Exception DEAL: Within the DEAL consortium there are separate agreements with the publishers Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier. Please follow the linked instructions when submitting to Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier journals.
Funding Amount
The maximum funding amount for an Open Access article or collective work contribution is €2,000 (incl. VAT).
The maximum funding amount for an Open Access monograph/volume is €4,500 (incl. VAT).
Funding is provided by Bielefeld University and the German Research Foundation (DFG).
The authors themselves decide which CC license they grant. A CC BY license is recommended.
Changes from 2025: no more application procedure
From 2025, applications will no longer need to be submitted for funding. The Publication Fund will automatically pay the invoices for eligible publications received by the university
Open Access Articles and Contributions to an Edited Volume
If an invoice is fully eligible for funding, the authors will be notified of the funding by email.
If an invoice is only partially eligible for funding, the costs will be shared between the publication fund and the authors (‘cost splitting’). Any costs exceeding €2,000 must be covered by the authors themselves. In this case, the University Library will contact the authors to enquire about the university cost centre. The University Library will handle the invoice processing.
Invoice Requirements
In order for the invoice to be processed, the following information must be provided by the authors to the journal/publisher when submitting the publication:
The standard form required by law is the X-invoice. If the publisher is able to issue an X-invoice, it must meet the following requirements:
- X-invoices are sent to: eingang@erechnung.nrw
- The invoice recipient is Bielefeld University, not the University Library, so the address must be as follows:
Bielefeld University
Faculty name
Name of the submitting author
P.O. Box 10 02 91
33502 Bielefeld - The following information must also be provided:
- the routing ID 05711-06001-79
- the publisher's VAT ID
- the university's VAT ID (DE 811307718)
- Name of the submitting author
- Title of the publication
If the publisher is unable to issue X-invoices, a PDF invoice can be sent instead, which must meet the following requirements:
- Invoices in PDF format are sent to: invoice@uni-bielefeld.de
- The invoice recipient is Bielefeld University, not the University Library, so the address must be as follows:
Bielefeld University
Faculty name
Name of the submitting author
P.O. Box 10 02 91
33502 Bielefeld - The following information must also be provided:
- The publisher's VAT ID
- The university's VAT ID (DE 811307718)
- Name of the submitting author
- Title of the publication
Open Access Monographs or Edited Volumes
The invoicing procedure for monographs and anthologies differs from that for article publications. If the funding criteria are met, the Publication Fund will transfer the maximum funding amount of €4,500 only after the work has been published and the invoice has been paid by the author or editor to their account or cost centre.
Please contact oa.ub@uni-bielefeld.de for funding processing for monographs and edited volumes.
Please note: The new process is currently in a test phase. Further adjustments to the process may be made, so please continue to refer to the information on this website in future.
If you have any questions, please use the contact forms linked on this page. These forms enable the Publication Fund support team to thoroughly prepare for your enquiry.
Documentation
All funded publications are archived by Bielefeld University Library in the institutional repository PUB - Publications at Bielefeld University. In order to render transparent the price development of fee-based open access publishing, Bielefeld University’s Publication Fund participates in the OpenAPC initiative.
Contact
Team Expenditure Monitoring and Open Access
E-mail: oa.ub@uni-bielefeld.de
If possible, please use the contact forms linked above!