Aims and Content
The number of consortial Open Access funding solutions is steadily increasing in Germany as well as internationally. Since spring 2025, members of consortial-services have been meeting online at regular intervals to exchange experiences, evaluate new market developments, and support wider adoption of these models. These digital meetings focus in particular on aspects such as standards, funding modalities, workflows for organising financial contributions, recruiting and supporting consortium members, advising editors and publishers, future planning, and opportunities for collaboration.
The focus group understands consortial Open Access funding solutions as models
- in which neither readers nor authors (nor their affiliated institutions) incur costs for publications (e.g. Article Processing Charges or Book Processing Charges),
- in which funders voluntarily and collectively commit to covering the costs of publication,
- in which publicly funded institutions or non-profit actors without commercial interests are responsible for the organisational framework, and
- which follow or closely align with the principles of Diamond Open Access.
Organisational Matters
The focus group is coordinated by Fabian Hennig, Ronja Kuhlwilm, and Sebastian Schaarschmidt.
Meetings of the focus group generally take place every three months. They are designed as working sessions for publicly funded institutions or non-profit actors without commercial interests who already operate consortial Open Access programmes or are close to launching such initiatives.
If you belong to this group, you are welcome to contact us regarding participation and to be added to the mailing list. We are also happy to answer any content-related questions about the focus group.
You can register for the mailing list of the Focus Group on Consortial Open Access Funding here. If you would like to participate actively in the group’s work, you can additionally request a user account for the group's MediaWiki. To help us assign your request correctly, please indicate that you are interested in contributing to the “Consortial Open Access Funding” focus group.