Open access funding: limited fee absorption as of December 2021
An extended regulation regarding the absorption of open-access fees on the part of the ETH Library has been in force since February 2021. This will be subject to a limit from the closing of the accounts in December 2021 onwards.
As communicated in February 2021, the ETH Library has been funding all articles that were submitted after 1 January 2021 via open access to a publisher for publication in a scientific journal and that were written by members of ETH Zurich as corresponding authors. So far, it has been possible to apply for the payment of the corresponding fees (Article Processing Charges – APC) without any restrictions. Now, funding will be restricted from the end of the year as part of the ETH Zurich-wide cost-cutting measures.
Articles in purely open-access journals will continue to be funded. This applies to individual articles and to articles published via one of the existing agreements with open-access publishers. The option of publishing articles open access via one of the existing Read and Publish agreements also remains unchanged. However, expenses for what are known as hybrid APCs (individual open-access articles in subscription journals) will only be covered until the closing of the accounts in 2021. Funding applications submitted after that date will not be considered.
It is our hope that this restriction can be at least partially mitigated by new Read and Publish agreements.
Please refer to our website for more information on this topic:
You can direct any questions you may have to the E-Publishing office via email to