Support and eligibility conditions

The gold road for OA publishing refers to the initial publication of scientific works as articles, books or book contributions in genuine OA publications. While publication fees are sometimes required for these publications, there are a number of renowned academic journals that do not charge fees.

In instances in which the publication costs cannot be covered by third-party funding, the University Library offers financial support to ZHAW researchers in achieving gold OA publishing through a publication fund, if publication costs cannot be covered by third-party funding. In order to receive financial support for publishing, the submitted publication must comply with the ZHAW Guidelines on funding open access publications.

The optional release of content in closed-access journals (so-called hybrid open access) is possible free of charge within the framework of existing Read and Publish agreements.

If the above options do not meet your needs, consider a free secondary publication in the ZHAW digitalcollection (Green Open Access).

Open Access publication fund

Where the costs cannot be covered by third-party funds, ZHAW publishers can apply to have any article (APC) and book processing charges (BPC) covered by the University Library's OA publication fund.

Authors are asked to complete the application form for the OA publication fund (ZHAW login required - in German) before submitting to the publisher. You will receive a decision in a timely manner as to whether the publication fees can be covered by the fund. Applications are processed in the order in which they are received. The date of receipt is the primary consideration should the fund be exhausted ahead of schedule.

Always include your ZHAW e-mail address and the ZHAW as your affiliation when submitting publications for which you wish to receive funding. Ideally, you will be within range of the ZHAW IP during the submission process, as this will allow many publishers (including BioMed Central, Frontiers, PLoS, MDPI, SAGE or SpringerOpen) to assign your submission to automated workflows for invoice processing.

Read and Publish

These contract models combine electronic access to all of a publisher's journals with the option of publishing open access there at no additional cost. Quotas were negotiated for this. Publication fees are paid in full by the university library if the central budget provided for this has not yet been exhausted. An overview of the details of the agreements can be found in the ZHAW Self Service Portal with the title "FAQ Read and Publish Agreements " (KI 3231, ZHAW login required). Agreements exist with the following publishers:

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• American Chemical Society (ACS)
• Elsevier (until 31.12.2023)
• Cambridge University Press
• Institute of Physics (IOP)
• John Benjamins
• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
• Sage
• Springer Nature
• Taylor&Francis
• Wiley