Are you publishing an APC-free OA journal on a shoestring? OpenAIRE would like to offer you a funding opportunity for APC-free OA journals under the the EC FP7 Post-Grant OA Pilot and EC Gold Open Access Pilot!

Open Access (OA) is a global trend, with policies and practices rapidly being adopted around the world.

“As Open Access becomes a more and more familiar concept, we must focus on the small steps everyone can take to make openness in research a reality” (SPARC).

“Clearly, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to implementing open access. Some organizations are promoting a large-scale shift from subscriptions to open access via article processing charges (APC’s)… There are numerous high quality and economically viable journals that do not rely on APC” (Joint COAR-UNESCO Statement on Open Access).

“The identification of Gold Open Access with the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs) is a widespread misunderstanding that has often led this alternative route for OA implementation to be dismissed as commercial publisher-friendly and prone to double dipping. However, Gold OA means publishing in any Open Access journal, and it’s a well-known fact that over two thirds of the OA journals hosted in the DOAJ charge no APCs to their authors” “Not Just APCs”: the FP7 Post-Grant OA Pilot’s alternative APC-equivalent funding mechanism

A call for proposals from OpenAIRE aims to allow these journals and/or platforms and publishers to apply for funding for improving their technical publishing workflows along a number of suggested lines.

In particular, if you're publishing APC-free OA journals with very little resources, you might be able to receive funding for it from OpenAIRE under:

• the EC FP7 Post-Grant OA Pilot;
• under the EC Gold Open Access Pilot.

Requirements for eligibility

In order to be eligible for funding, APC-free OA  journals must have published (or accepted for publication) eligible articles arising from finished FP7 projects during the last year. 

Bids to OpenAIRE should be sent no later than the 30th of June 2016!

The policy that will govern the funding assignation under this alternative funding mechanism is provided here in PDF format.
Bidders are requested to provide information on:

• their journal/platform,
• the technical improvements they wish to carry out and
• the budget they need for the purpose.

A maximum of €200,000 will be awarded to up to 12 bids to perform:

• technical improvements on APC-free OA journals such as becoming OpenAIRE compatible, 
• systematically collecting funding information in the article metadata or
• implementing ORCID. 

Bid assessment will be done during the month of July 2016.

The selected proposals will be announced in early August 2016 and will have until the 30th of April 2017 to carry out the proposed improvements. 

Source:

OpenAIRE call for proposals to fund APC-free OA journals and platforms

View also:

Open Access - Explained in Video

The OpenAIRE2020 FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot: Implementing a European-wide funding initiative for Open Access publishing costs

FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot is developed in the context of the OpenAIRE2020 project

View H2020 compliancy of ROARMAP policies (to check whether your OA policy is aligned with Horizon2020 OA mandate)

Deposit and publish in OA (OpenAIRE online resource)