Two Years On: A Conversation with DFG on Supporting Open Access Books
Silke Davison
Thu 01 May 2025
It has been two years since OAPEN launched a dedicated collection of DFG-funded open access books. Part of this collection is supported by the DFG Open Access Publication Funding programme. To mark this occasion, OAPEN’s Funder Relations Manager, Laura Bandura-Morgan, interviewed Michael Geuenich, Programme Officer, Scientific Library Services and Information Systems, and Dr. Angela Holzer, Programme Director. Scientific Library Services and Information Systems, of the Deutsche Foreschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
Thank you for accepting our invitation for this interview.
1. To begin with, could you tell us a bit more about this funding programme?
The “Open Access Publication Funding” programme is designed to grant a fixed allowance for the publication of research results via open access. Only research institutions, not individuals, may apply for this allowance – the institutions in turn can use the allowance to endow their Open Access publication funds to enable their researchers to publish their research results. This includes the publication of journal articles as well as open access books (monographs, edited volumes).
This funding programme highlights that open access plays a pivotal role in improving scientific communication and that its costs should be seen in relation to this aim. The aim of this funding programme is to create structural adjustment in financial flows, thus enabling the transformation of open access and improving transparency regarding the costs for open access publication of research results.
The funding of open access publication costs thus is firstly directed towards those research institutions that require it due to the transformation towards publication-based accounting. The provision of funds should secondly result in the formation and development of adequate structures at the institutions receiving funding, to enable them as far as possible to identify the costs of publications in an automated and standardised manner. Therefore, the programme aims to support institutions with the introduction and development of such structures by subsidising researchers’ fees for open access publications.
Open access transformation ultimately requires structural adaptations to the entire system for financing the costs of scholarly publishing. The third aim of the programme is therefore to create a transition to open access funding in which research funders assume financial responsibility for the publications arising from the research they fund.For all OA books funded under the funding programme, quality assurance is ensured by the requirement that the funded books meet the quality standards of AG Universitätsverlage (Association of University Presses in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol, https://ag-univerlage.de/?page_id=2563).
2. What has been DFG’s experience with it so far, and does it meet the expectations of the researchers it is designed to support?
Since the start of the programme in 2021, the DFG has approved funding for open access publications with a volume of 109.3 million euros. The success of the programme can be seen not least in the fact that the programme was ‘overbooked’ in all application years, i.e. a large number of successful proposals were approved, meaning that across-the-board cuts had to be made to the approved funds per publication.
Approximately 4% (4.5 million euros) of the 109.3 million have been approved for the funding of Open Access monographs resulting from DFG projects.
We and the funded libraries have observed that the funding has definitely resulted in a stronger boost in the area of monographs and has created more awareness also among researchers in the Humanities for the importance of Open Access.
We are also noticing an interesting development in the publication of books. The number of books actually funded remains still below the number applied for. One of the possible reasons for this is that the specific publication processes for books follow a different timescale. The publication of a monograph or an edited volume requires more time than the publication of journal articles, and therefore the development takes longer and the funds cannot be used immediately.
3. Why did you choose to partner with OAPEN to host your funded OA books?
With regard to the books funded through the Open Access Publication Funding Programme, it seemed important to us to have a central place, a single point of contact for all books resulting from this funding. OAPEN is a reliable and community-oriented partner that has been doing valuable work for many years, and which itself emerged from a EU co-funded project. The close links with the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) also ensure the visibility of the funded open access monographs.
The current situation in science politics shows that ‘lots of copies keep stuff safe’; the decision to also deposit the monographs in the OAPEN Library as a repository therefore proved to be the right one. In addition, we have also included in the collection all publications that have been submitted by publishers cooperating with OAPEN and bear a reference to the DFG in the funding acknowledgement. This provides a valuable overview of a selection of the Open Access monographs funded by the DFG via research projects.
Of course, not all Open Access monographs resulting from DFG funding or DFG-funded projects are included in the collection yet. Those publications that were not funded through the “Open Access Publication Funding” programme or that have not been published by one of the publishers cooperating with OAPEN are not included. We would therefore like to see more scientific publishers seeking cooperation with OAPEN so that the OAPEN quality standards can be guaranteed for these publishers.
Since the launch of this programme in 2021, DFG has initiated several other initiatives related to funding open access books. One recent example is the National Service Point for Diamond Open Access (SeDOA), which is set to officially begin on May 1st.
4. Could you elaborate on the key objectives of SeDOA, especially those that are related to OA books?
(e.g. What initial steps will be taken to realize the project’s goals? How will the project support Diamond Open Access book publishing?)
SeDOA is the consortium of 15 institutions that won the ‘Fresh Momentum for Open Access’ call for proposals, which the DFG organised in 2024. The objective of this call was to boost the performance capacity of Diamond Open Access infrastructures located at publicly organised institutions in Germany or operated by non-commercial and non-profit actors in Germany.
SeDOA will act as a central hub for Diamond Open Access services – it will match journals, book series or individual publication projects with appropriate Diamond Open Access publishing services.
The work of SeDOA will not only focus on journals, but will also explicitly look at books. The participating institutions will contribute their expertise in scholar-led open access publishing for books. The consortium includes the University Library of Heidelberg with its Heidelberg University Publishing, the Technical University of Berlin with its university press (as part of Berlin Universities Publishing) and ZB MED in Cologne. Further institutions associated through AG Universitätsverlage contribute the expertise of many years of experience in support and development of services for OA Books. Furthermore, Bielefeld University Library was involved in the EU Horizon Europe project “PALOMERA” that sought to to accelerate the open access transformation of books by aligning OA book policies.
Besides other tasks SeDOA will offer workflow-related basic services like layout, writing environments, editorial software, hosting etc. and will also provide support for transitioning publications into the non-commercial open sector.
5. Do you anticipate that SeDOA will lead to any changes or adaptations in the existing Infrastructures for Scholarly Publishing programme—particularly in terms of financial support for open source publishing platforms, digital preservation services, or infrastructure development for books?
With the approval for SeDOA, the existing funding programme “Infrastructures for Scholarly Publishing” was also adapted. Since the end of last year, applicants have been required to first use the services of SeDOA if, for example, they are planning to establish a new Diamond Open Access publication.
Because SeDOA offers workflow-related basic services, it is now possible for editors of Diamond OA journals not to have to submit a specific funding application (with an uncertain outcome) for many works, but to use the services of SeDOA instead.
We expect that the balance will change for those applications in the funding programme that relate to the publication of papers: Basic services will be covered by SeDOA, but the further development of platforms, tools and business models will move more into the focus of funding.
At best, SeDOA and the projects funded in “Infrastructures for Scholarly Publishing” will complement each other, so that SeDOA can also help to disseminate the knowledge and progress gained in the projects to the entire Diamond Open Access community in Germany.
Lastly, how do you see funding for OA books developing in the future?
Open access books have a different speed of open access transition than journal articles or conference papers. This can be observed particularly in scientific disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences, which still publish monographs more than other disciplines. For subject areas like art history or architecture, for example, there are challenges that other areas do not face in the same way – for example, the (often impossible) open access licensing of image material. The removal of such barriers could potentially be a topic for the Policy Forum for Open Access Books that will take place the first time in May.