HTW Berlin offers its members various options for funding or facilitating the financing of Gold Open Access publications. In this section, the main funding options as well as alternative forms of funding from external institutions are explained.

Research fund

For publications in pure Open Access journals, funding can be applied for from the research fund to cover publication fees. Further information about the research fund and the application and billing procedure can be found on the page Internal Funding. Those interested can contact the Vice President for Research, Transfer & Science Communications at: vp.forschung@htw-berlin.de.

Transformative agreements

HTW Berlin also participates in DEAL agreements with the publishers Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier. As a result, members of the university receive up to 20% discount on publication fees for publishing in Gold Open Access journals. 

With a few exceptions, these contracts cover almost all journals published by these three publishers. A detailed list of the included journals and further information can be found under this link.

Third-party funding

Open access publications can also be financed by third-party organisations. As a rule, funding institutions for research projects cover the publication fees for projects they finance or offer publication funds for open access contributions.

• Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, en. German Research Association): DFG supports publications in Open Access by providing publishing funds and grants. Flat-rate publication grants to finance open access articles can be applied for when submitting a research project proposal to the DFG. The DFG also provides funding for the publication of books in Open Access that do not originate from DFG-funded projects. For more information, visit the DFG's Open Access website.

• Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF, en. Federal Ministry of Education and Research): with the definition of its Open Access strategy in September 2016, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research introduced an Open Access clause for all projects it funds. This clause stipulates that open access is a funding condition and enables publication fees to be financed as part of BMBF projects. In addition, a post-grant fund was introduced to cover the publication fees for finalised BMBF projects.

• EU funding: as part of the European Union's research funding programme, the European Commission and the European Research Council have set themselves the goal of disseminating the research results they fund as widely as possible by publishing them in open access. A prime example are publications resulting from the Horizon Europe research programme, in which the HTW participates. They must be made freely accessible in accordance with the programme guidelines and the EU's Open Science Policy.
• Other funding opportunities: finally, funding opportunities are also often offered by foundations or similar organisations. To find these, you can use foundation directories such as those of the German Foundation Centre or the Association of German Foundations. Keywords for online searching can be e.g. publication grant, publication subsidy, publication funding.

More information and contacts for third-party funding at HTW Berlin can be found on the Intranet.

Transformative agreements

The signing of the DEAL agreements with Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier also extends to the publication of articles in hybrid journals.

The publish-and-read model associated with these agreements covers both access to a wide range of subscription journals from these three publishers as well as the publishing costs of open access articles in hybrid journals.