In 2025, the financial support to open access given by the EUR library is divided into two separate funds: the Erasmus Open Access Book Fund, and the Erasmus Diamond Open Access Fund.
OA book fund
With the Erasmus Open Access Book Fund 2025, we aim to stimulate the open access publication of scientific monographs and edited collections.
For the open access publication of scientific monographs and edited collections, the publisher charges publication fees, known as the Book Processing Charges (BPCs). If the BPCs are not covered by the grant provider or another funding source, you can apply to the Erasmus Open Access Fund 2025.
Conditions of the Erasmus Open Access Book Fund:
- The maximum reimbursement is €8,000 (incl. VAT) per book. If the BPCs of a monograph are lower than €8,000, the Library will cover 100% of the charges. If the BPCs exceed the maximum amount, the remaining costs can be matched through other subsidy providers. See, for instance, the information provided by NWO on their webpage.
- The amount reimbursed for edited volumes is proportional to the number of EUR editors involved (e.g. if there are four co-editors, of which one is from the EUR, we will fund 25% of the BPC up to a maximum of €8,000).
Author(s) and/or editor(s) must be affiliated with the EUR (with the exception of Erasmus MC).
NB. The first point of contact for BPC financing should be the author's external funder (e.g., NWO or ERC). Therefore, authors are highly advised to include a budget for open access expenditures in their grant proposals and/or utilize other available funding schemes (e.g. NWO’s OA Book Fund). Authors are encouraged to apply if money for open access is not included in the grant budget or if the grant has already expired. If the external funder's financing is inadequate, authors can apply for the OA Book Fund to pay for the remaining costs of the BPC. The Library will evaluate each request individually to determine its eligibility.
- The publication must be published under a Creative Commons license, preferably a CC-BY license.
- Author/Editor has an ORCID iD.
- It concerns: (A) a scientific monograph that has undergone peer review by the publisher. A scientific monograph is defined here as a long academic work on a single research topic, written by one, or sometimes two, authors; (B) edited volumes in which at least one editor is affiliated with the EUR.
- The following are excluded from reimbursement: educational books (textbooks), conference collections (conference proceedings), dissertations, critical (text) editions and translations.
Do you meet the aforementioned conditions? In that case, submit an application for reimbursement of the costs before the start of publication. All applications will be thoroughly assessed, and requests for funding will be considered insofar as there is sufficient budget available. You can submit your application to openaccess@eur-nl.libanswers.com.
Diamond OA fund
Diamond open access journals are defined as journals that make all articles and related content available for free immediately without charging authors and readers. This publishing model differs from Gold open access journals, whose content is freely available to read, but they charge authors or their institutions an article processing charge (APC) to publish. Since diamond open access journals do not rely on APCs or readers’ subscriptions, such publishers often require funding from external sources such as academic institutions, government grants, or philanthropists. Diamond open access initiatives often have difficulty securing funding and the importance of this open access model is still underestimated in existing open access strategies.
Given this reason, the Library has instituted a stimulus fund to assist diamond open access publishing initiatives run by EUR researchers. The Erasmus Diamond Open Access Fund is intended as a support structure to improve and develop existing initiatives (professionalizing an existing journal, subscribing to a platform etc.) or to start up a new one (creating a new journal or flipping an existing journal to diamond open access).
Conditions of the Erasmus Diamond Open Access Fund:
The Library is making available a total of €20,000 to be awarded over the course of 2025. Eligible initiatives can apply for a one-off stimulus. The maximum contribution that can be requested is €5,000 per application. Initiatives can apply for the fund only once. This fund is not intended as an instrument for structural funding of diamond open access initiatives. All applications will be evaluated by the Open Access and Publication Support Team based on the following conditions:
- Eligible initiatives must have a strong connection with the EUR. For example, the journal or platform is founded or managed by one or more EUR researchers.
- The researchers involved in the initiative need to have an ORCID iD.
- The application needs to be complemented and strengthened by a thorough financial and business plan and a clear proposal related to the professional services necessary to keep the initiative up and running for the medium-to-long term.
In addition, initiatives that secure funding from the Erasmus Diamond Open Access Fund should strive for the following conditions to be met:
- Indexing in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
- The initiative should make it possible to publish under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).
- CC BY should be preferably offered as the default license.
- Issuing Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to all (future) publications.
Do you meet the aforementioned conditions? In that case, submit an application to the Library’s Open Access and Publication Support Team. All applications will be thoroughly assessed, and requests for funding will be considered insofar as there is sufficient budget available. You can submit your application to openaccess@eur-nl.libanswers.com.