Funding of Open Access Publishing / 2025-2027 /Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT)

• Applicant: Clara Bruns
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491192957

As a member of the Leibniz Association, the Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) is committed to open access. Since the beginning of fiscal year 2022, various measures in support of open access publishing have been implemented. This includes centralized processing of open access related invoices and coordination of expense allocation to budgetary accounts. Internal guidelines, including quality control measures, and workflows for institutional financing, have been established. Scientists frequently contact the librarian regarding options for institutional financing and the library page within the ZMT intranet provides internal information resources pertaining to open access publishing. In the frame of this project, ZMT plans to use the Information Budget model to track and analyze past and current expenses, integrating traditional library expenditures with costs pertaining to open access. This will support the transition towards greater institutional backing for open access publishing. The benefits of increasing centralized funding for all open access publication costs can be analyzed using the Information Budget model. The functions of an internal SQL based database will be extended to support a pre-approval process for publication expenditures as needed, in addition to metadata tracking and reporting. The librarian, the Head of Accounting and the IT Application Developer will collaborate in this project to support the infrastructure and flexibility as needed to ensure ZMT’s sustained financial support for open access publishing.

• DFG Programme: Science Communication, Research Data, eResearch (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)