Funder Policies and Requirements

1 REQUIREMENTS OF SLOVENIAN FUNDERS

The requirements of Slovenian funders in the field of open access publishing are based on national legislation governing scientific research activities. The Scientific Research and Innovation Activities Act (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 186/21, 40/23, and 102/24) stipulates in Article 41 that, in the case of research co-financed with public funds in the amount of at least 50%, the funder must require and the research-performing organisation must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications, research data, and other research results. This means that scientific articles and scientific monographs must also be made available in open access.

Decree on the Implementation of Scientific Research Work in Accordance with the Principles of Open Science (Uradni list RS, št. 59/23 in 39/25) v 3. členu določa, da morajo izvajalci takoj, ko je to izvedljivo, najpozneje pa ob objavi znanstvene publikacije zagotovijo odprti dostop do znanstvene publikacije skupaj s pripadajočimi raziskovalnimi podatki in drugimi rezultati raziskav. Odprti dostop se izvede na naslednji način:

• a machine-readable digital version of the published scientific publication (VoR, Version of Record) or the final peer-reviewed manuscript (AAM, Author Accepted Manuscript), accepted for publication, is deposited in a trusted repository for scientific publications;
• immediate open access is provided to the scientific publication stored in the repository.

The first indent of Article 9 of the Decree defines the eligible costs of scientific research activity in accordance with the principles of open science for research co-financed with public funds in the amount of at least 50%. These include the costs of open access to scientific publications published in academic journals, on publishing platforms, or in the form of monographs that are fully open access (gold and diamond open access). Gold open access costs are typically paid individually by researchers, but are covered by funders or research organisations (for example, by covering the cost of open access vouchers, hereinafter APCs, with funds obtained through research funding calls or through dedicated public calls for APC reimbursement). In diamond open access, researchers do not incur any publication costs.

The costs of publishing open access scientific articles in subscription-based journals (the so-called hybrid model of scholarly publishing) are not considered eligible costs.

Uredba v 15. členu določa tudi prehodno upravičenost stroškov odprtega dostopa v naročniških revijah (hibridni model) znanstvenega založništva. Financerji znanstvenoraziskovalne dejavnosti iz javnih virov lahko ne glede na tretji odstavek 9. člena te uredbe najdlje do 30. junija 2029 sofinancirajo odprti dostop do člankov v naročniških revijah, in sicer v naslednjih primerih:

• within the framework of transformative agreements that allow both access to journals and open access publishing in those journals (in these cases, the open access costs are covered by the purchasing consortium);
• if the public research organisation is not a member of the consortium for transformative agreements;
• if the APC vouchers obtained through transformative agreements are depleted;
• if the subscription-based journals are not part of transformative agreements (for example, when a transformative agreement with the publisher has not been concluded due to an insufficient number of publications, when the publisher does not offer transformative agreements within its business models and thus an agreement is not possible, or when Slovenian consortia do not have a signed agreement with the selected publisher of subscription-based journals for access).

The Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation has published explanations of the substantive provisions of the Decree, which are available at this link.

2 REQUIREMENTS OF FUNDERS IN THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH AREA

2.1 REQUIREMENTS OF THE HORIZON EUROPE PROGRAMME

Beneficiaries must ensure open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications (scientific articles, scientific monographs, or other substantial publications) related to their results. In particular, they must ensure:

• a machine-readable digital version of the published version of the scientific publication (VoR, Version of Record) or the final peer-reviewed manuscript (AAM, Author Accepted Manuscript), accepted for publication, which must be deposited in a trusted repository for scientific publications. Publication in gold or diamond open access (journal, publishing platform, or monograph) alone is not sufficient—copies of the publications must also be deposited in a repository, as this is verified by funders;
• immediate open access is provided to the scientific publication stored in the repository;
• for the open access publication of scientific monographs or other substantial publications, an open licence that restricts further commercial use or derivative works (e.g. CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND) may be used.

Funding recipients may publish articles in any way that ensures compliance with the obligation of immediate open access:

• in gold open access journals or journals that are fully open without a subscription for reading,
• on open access publishing platforms (e.g. Open Research Europe),
• in hybrid journals, which are only partially open (only those articles for which authors pay an APC).

Payment of APCs for open access publications in hybrid journals is not an eligible cost under the grant agreement. Such publications are possible within the framework of transformative agreements that allow both access to journals and open access publishing in those journals (in these cases, the open access costs are covered by the purchasing consortium).

2.2 COALITION S POLICY

Plan S is an international initiative for open access publishing, established in 2018. The consortium of funding agencies, scientific foundations, and research organisations that support Plan S is called cOAlition S.

cOAlition S currently brings together the European Commission, 21 national funding agencies from Africa, Australia, Europe, and Canada, as well as seven international and charitable organisations (Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the World Health Organization, WHO – Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, and the Wellcome Trust). In Slovenia, the member of cOAlition S is the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS). Many organisations that have not formally joined the initiative still share similar values and impose comparable requirements on their funding recipients. The policy of cOAlition S is fully or partially used by many funders as the basis for their own requirements.

1. Authors or their institutions retain copyright to their publications. In line with the Berlin Declaration, all publications must be published under an open licence, preferably CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution). You can read more about licences compliant with Plan S on our data licensing page.

2. Funders will develop robust criteria and requirements that must be met by high-quality open access journals, open access platforms, and open access repositories.

3. Where such journals or platforms do not yet exist, funders will coordinate efforts to create incentives for their establishment and support. Funders will also provide support for the necessary open access infrastructure.

4. Where necessary, open access fees will be covered by funders or institutions, not by researchers. All researchers must have the opportunity to publish their work in open access.

5. Funders support a diversity of business models for open access journals and platforms. Open access fees must be proportionate to the publishing service provided and transparent, so that the market and funders can standardise them and, if necessary, set an upper limit (cap) on fee payments.

6. Funders, governments, universities, research organisations, libraries, academies, and professional societies are encouraged to align their strategies, policies, and practices in the interest of transparency.

7. The above principles apply to all types of scientific publications. However, it is understood that open access for monographs and book chapters will require a special, separate, and longer process.

8. Funders do not support the hybrid publishing model. However, they may partially fund it during a transitional period with a clearly defined timeline, and only as part of transformative agreements.

9. Funders will monitor compliance with the rules and will apply sanctions to funding recipients who fail to comply.

10. Funders commit to assessing the intrinsic scientific merit of the research work when making funding decisions. The place of publication, impact factor (and other publication-level metrics), or publishers will no longer be taken into consideration.