*guest post by Maciej Maryl, Klaudia Grabowska, Barbara Jędraszko, Michał Starczewski Open Business Model of Indirect Institutional Benefits Enhancing Accessibility and Sustainability of  “Teksty Drugie” Design and Implementation of a Sustainable Open-Access Business Model for Polish Journals in the Humanities This blog post presents conclusions drawn from the process of converting a journal to open access, carried out at the Publishing House of the Institute of Literary Research ...

Supporting Open Access journal editors and publishers in Serbia and participating in the Western Balkan Working Group on Open Science SCIndeks is the central hub of the integrated system of quality-controlled scientific publishing in Serbia. The SCIndeks team developed guides and templates to help editorial boards of Serbian Open Access journals to comply with the "new" DOAJ inclusion criteria on publication policy and licensing. New functionalities in editor services were implemented and SCInde...

The Alternative Funding Mechanism for APC-free Open Access journals and platforms is a parallel workline being implemented under the EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot as a means to provide a balance to the standard workflow for funding Article and Book Processing Charges for publications arising from finished FP7 projects. This alt-funding mechanism aims to support the technical strengthening of such APC-free OA journals as a means to make them more reliable and better quality venues for publi...

With just five months to go for this EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot, this is a new progress report based on the figures collected as of Nov 30th. At this point, this funding initiative has already funded 700 Open Access post-grant publications arising from 534 completed FP7 projects.The dataset for the APC payments made thus far that was recently shared with OpenAPC provides revealing graphic snapshots for the project and allows its current results to be compared to those arising from initi...

Over 350 researchers attended “Open Science in Horizon 2020”: the Serbia OpenAIRE National Workshop hosted by the University of Belgrade on November 8, 2016.   The event was opened by the Vice Rector of the University of Belgrade and the Deputy Minister of Science. The presentations covered the following topics: "OpenAIRE as a European infrastructure supporting Open Science", "OpenAIRE2020 in Serbia: an overview and successes" and a new Erasmus+ project  "BE-OPEN (Boosting Engagem...

Implementing the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot at Universidad Politécnica de MadridGuest post by Estefanía Muñoz, European R&D Programmes Coordinator. European Projects Office. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.The Polytechnic University in Madrid/Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) is the largest Spanish technological university. More than 2,400 researchers carry out their activity at the UPM, grouped in 204 Research Groups, 19 Research Centers or Institutes and 55 Laboratories. UPM ...

Little over five months away from its conclusion, the EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot has shared an up-to-date dataset for the APC payments it has made thus far with the OpenAPC initiative run at Universität Bielefeld. The OpenAPC project started in June 2014 as a tool funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) to collect standardized inputs for APC payments from different stakeholders – mainly institutions at the time – arising from the Gold Open Access funding initiative implemented by...

Implementing the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot at Radboud University/Radboud University Medical CentreGuest post by Dirk van Gorp, Open Access Officer and Research Information Specialist at Radboud University LibraryRadboud University/Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc) is one of the leading universities in the Netherlands. Our more than 5000 researchers produce a combined scientific output of almost 7000 publications per year. Radboud University has been at the forefront of the Op...

As mentioned in previous posts, the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot has now started implementing pre-payment agreements with a number of publishers: BioMed Central, Copernicus, Wiley and BMJ.This requires a new set of workflows to be tested. So far we have usually been receiving funding requests for accepted manuscripts in fully Open Access journals via the OpenAIRE system. This is of course still the standard and recommended procedure to apply for funding. But from the beginning of June, we ar...

15 months into the project, this FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot has already funded well over 500 Open Access publications arising from finished FP7 projects. The 7th progress report shows its evolution with data as of Aug 31st, 2016.As stated in the previous report, the start of the implementation of the pre-payment agreements with publishers has had a significant impact on the initiative. Some of the areas where the influence is felt are: Nearly 40% of the funding requests processed in the la...

Implementing the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot at the University of MilanGuest post by Paola Galimberti, Responsible for Open Access & Scholarly Communication at Università degli Studi di MilanoThe University of Milan is a research-intensive multidisciplinary university. It’s currently the only member of LERU in Italy. The staff includes over 2000 researchers and professors and more than 1970 PhD-students and post-docs. Our researchers produce circa 8000 publications on a yearly basis – i...

Following the call for proposals issued early May to fund APC-free Open Access journals and platforms under the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot, 17 bids were received before the June 30th deadline. Once these bids have been assessed by the Pilot team in collaboration with the OpenAIRE technical colleagues, the following 11 bids have been selected for funding:Internet Policy Review – Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (Germany). €16KAnnals of Geophysics – Istituto Nazional...

After funding over 400 Open Access publications during its first year of operation, the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot is now moving onto the pre-payment agreement implementation stage. OpenAIRE has recently signed agreements and deposited a pre-paid fund with a number of publishers – BioMed Central, BMJ, Copernicus and Wiley – in order to be able to fund eligible manuscripts upon acceptance. This means a much simpler workflow for authors, since no invoice will be required anymore to receive t...

The FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot has recently completed its first year of operation since its launch on May 30th 2015. This sixth progress report looks into the results for the period. Most figures shown in the report are however dated June 15th, as this marks an important milestone for the project: as of mid-June, the pre-payment agreements that OpenAIRE has signed with publishers like Copernicus, BioMed Central and Wiley are starting to be implemented. This means a new set of additional wo...

This is the 5th bi-monthly progress report for the EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot. Ten months into the project, the number of approved funding requests has already reached 300, which already makes this Gold Open Access funding initiative one of the largest of its kind. The average APC fee paid for the 283 approved requests for journals articles (which currently make up 95% of the total funded publications) is €1,432. This is nearly the same value that was collected for the previous report, ...

Guest post by Leo Waaijers and Saskia de Vries (QOAM)The FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot is part of the EC OpenAIRE project, giving the Pilot roots in the library world. As a funding initiative for Open Access publications, however, the Pilot has a high stake in a well functioning publishing market with authors as typical customers. This turns this Pilot into a catalyser for library-author interaction.The role of libraries in supporting researchers to make appropriate publication choices in an ...

The publisher engagement plans for the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot involve signing pre-payment agreements with publishers as a means of improving the dissemination of this funding initiative towards eligible researchers and projects. Moreover, pre-payment agreements will very much simplify the invoicing workflows, making the funding of APC payments much quicker and easier for authors.Following these plans, OpenAIRE has signed a first contract for a pre-payment agreement with Ubiquity Press ...

Eight months into the initiative, this is the 4th progress report for the EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot, with figures as of Jan 31st, 2016. The report is a complement to the live reporting module whose release was announced a week ago and provides a snapshot of the progress of this funding initiative with up-to-date figures on average APCs and funding request distribution by document types, countries, publishers and journals.The progress report series and the live reporting module in the s...

One of the main aims of this EC FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot is to openly share information on the figures associated to the gradual increase in its uptake. We have so far done this via periodic reporting (see the most recent one here, with comprehensive figures as of Nov 30th, 2015). In the meantime, our technical team at the Athena Research Centre in Athens have been working on the statistics module that would allow relevant data for this funding initiative such as the total number of appr...

As a result of a growing interest from UK researchers and academic support staff on how to apply for the FP7 Post-Grant OA Pilot funding, a first 'national webinar' on this European Commission funding initiative was held on 19 January. The webinar was targeted to UK-based researchers, project coordinators, research administrators and librarians and sought to: Introduce the pilot, the eligibility requirements and the pilot results so far; Explain how the central funding service can be used; Addre...