NWO’s Incentive Fund for Open Access to end on 1 January 2018

On 1 January 2018, NWO will terminate its Incentive Fund for Open Access Publications and Conferences. The main reason for this decision is that the opportunities for authors to make publications open access without paying extra for it have been increased.

NWO introduced the Incentive Fund in 2010 to finance open access publications and activities that bring attention to open access during academic conferences. Since it was introduced many years ago, the Incentive Fund has proved to be a useful way of promoting open access publishing. NWO believes that the academic world is now sufficiently aware of open access publishing and its importance.

Increased open access opportunities

Currently there are many more opportunities for authors to make their publications available via open access channels without having to pay for publication costs. In part, this has been achieved through open access agreements between Dutch universities and publishers. In addition, there are a growing number of open access journals and platforms that do not charge publication costs. Finally, there is the green route, which authors can use to deposit their articles in a (university) repository at no cost.

NWO strongly advocates open access and open science

NWO continues to strongly advocate open access and open science. NWO works closely with many parties in this area in order to achieve the objectives set out in the National Plan Open Science. A common goal is to make it possible for all researchers in the Netherlands to publish open access by 2020.

NWO will meet all of its prior financial commitments made to the fund.