The open access commitment (principle)
SNSF grantees are in principle required to publish the results of their research in Open Access publications. The SNSF finances a Gold-Road publication in a journal that is 100% Open Access, as an OA book or an OA book chapter. But articles may also be published following the Green Road, no later than six months after publication by a publisher. On this path, books or book chapters need to be made freely accessible no later than 12 months after their initial publication by the publisher. The SNSF does not financially support publishing according to the hybrid model. If researchers decide to follow this path and finance the publication with third-party funds, this would also fulfil the open access requirement.
As the SNSF has significantly expanded its Gold Open Access funding and simplified the application process for publication grants via the OA platform (mySNF), it now no longer grants any exemptions from the OA commitment for articles. If books or book chapters should incur disproportionately high costs for image rights, the commitment may be waived on request.
OA monitoring by the SNSF
Evidence of compliance with the OA requirement must be provided in the scientific reporting.
Researchers have to list in mySNF the publications produced under SNSF grants and indicate whether they are open access. These data enable the SNSF to assess the researcher’s open access status. Besides analysing the data provided by the grantee in mySNF, the SNSF checks individual projects for current publications produced under an SNSF grant. In this context, it uses data from Crossref, Dimensions and Unpaywall, among others. Researchers will be informed about the OA status of the publications identified in this manner and will be able to correct and update the data. The OA status of projects will be published in the P3 database.
