Funding for Open Access publications

At MDU we encourage you as an employee of ours to publish journal articles or book chapters Open Access. You can apply for grants to cover the publication fee. The University Library has several agreements with prepaid publication fees. When an agreement is missing for a specific publication, you can search for funding from the University Library.

Requirements and criteria for applying for grants

• You must be an employee or a doctoral student at Mälardalen University, or you must have been when the research was performed.
• You must be a "corresponding author" of the article or book chapter.
• Your affiliation to MDU must be made clear in the article or the book chapter.
• You can only get funding for accepted publications. There is no possibility to reserve funding in connection with submission of manuscript.
• The article or book chapter must be peer reviewed and should also be published with a Creative Commons licence or similar.
• The invoice must not have been paid.
• Other costs than OA is not reimbursed in connection with the publication.
• As a rule the publication fee must be covered by your external research grants. When you as a researcher are applying for external funding from a research financier, funding for the publication fee must always be included if this is a cost approved by the financier.

Criteria for OA journals

• In the first instance the grant applies to publication in purely OA journals. Check preferably with the DOAJ - Directory of Open Journals External link..
• Publication in hybrid journals is also accepted. In the first instance check with the “Norwegian list External link, opens in new window.”.
• Other OA or hybrid journals may in exceptional cases be accepted after consultation with the library.

Criteria for OA book chapters

• The publisher must be a member of OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) or be searchable in DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books). Exceptions may be made after a review by the administrator. If necessary, decisions will be made in consultation with the Library Director.
• The affiliation to MDU must be stated if possible at the chapter level in the book.

Application for funding for OA publication

To apply for a grant, go to the page aboutOpen Access publishing on the Internal portal External link, opens in new window..

Agreements with prepaid publication fees and

discounted publication fees

See the page on the Internal portal for all agreements and instructions how to submit. External link, opens in new window.

What can the University Library help you with?

• Follow MDU’s guidelines for scientific publishing.
• Tell you what publishers we have agreements with.
• Inform you about the om OA fund at MDU.
• Inform you and answer questions about dubious journals.