The APC fund of the University of Lille
As part of its Roadmap for Open Science, which was adopted by the Research Commission on 27 May 2021 and validated by the Board of Governors on 10 June 2021, the University of Lille defines its policy for encouraging researchers to adopt virtuous publication practices.
To this end, it has set up a fund and a structure to manage and monitor APCs (Article processing charges) paid by the University.
The aim is threefold:
- To offer financial and operational support to authors and laboratories.
- To implement a tool for monitoring and steering the expenditures incurred by the University of Lille with publishers, as part of the national negotiations conducted by the Couperin consortium.
- Using the eligibility criteria that have been put in place, endeavour to limit the excesses of the author-pays model in scientific publishing (price rises, proliferation of ‘grey zone’ journals).
Setting up the support fund does not constitute an encouragement from the University of Lille to publish in journals that require the payment of APCs, but is instead intended to provide a framework for discussion with the academic community in order to support changes in practices.
Call for Support 2025 - Publication costs (APCs)
The University of Lille's APC fund was created in 2022 and will be renewed in 2025, for an amount of €40,000. The fund is not intended to cover all of the university's APC expenditures: other sources of funding are possible (credits from a research project or from the research laboratory).
Management of the APC fund is entrusted to a single operator, the University libraries (Service Commun de Documentation, or SCD), which administers and monitors the fund.
Author
First author or corresponding author of the article in question.
Employee or student at the University of Lille at the time of the request.
Research organisations define their APC payment policy according to their own procedures and guidelines.
Journal
Full open access journals (periodicals with an ISSN) listed in the DOAJ (https://doaj.org/).
Requests related to scientific journals that are not listed but meet the full open access criteria will be subject to a specific analysis. In particular, full open access scientific journals that are too recent to be listed in the DOAJ (journals launched less than a year ago) will be eligible.
Publisher
Limitation on the number of eligible requests with the same publisher to one per year for each applicant.
Type of publication
Articles published in an eligible journal, excluding special issues or similar.
Books and book chapters are excluded.
Amount
€2,500 maximum per article.
Articles whose APCs exceed this amount must be paid for by the laboratory.
Funded project
Ineligibility of articles published as part of a funded project that already has a dedicated publication budget.
No scientific evaluation criteria (quality or relevance of the article) are applied when the request is examined: this is the responsibility of the review committee and the journal's evaluation bodies.
- Requests must be submitted using the online form for applying for APC funding.
- Applications must be made once the article has been accepted by a full open access journal. Proof of acceptance of the article and the amount of the APC must be provided.
- Prior to submission, applicants may request assistance from the University libraries to verify the eligibility of a title. Verification of eligibility does not imply a commitment to fund the article should the APC fund be used up between the time of submission and acceptance of the article by the journal.
- Once the request has been accepted, the University libraries will pay the invoice directly to the publisher.
- Funded articles must be deposited in LillOA or in HAL.
- The data associated with the articles must be deposited in a certified thematic repository or in the Lillodata institutional repository.
Calendar
- Opening of the fund: beginning of March 2025
- Closing of the fund: when the available funds have been used up