Open Science support fund

The Université de Lorraine provides substantial financial support for initiatives promoting open science through two complementary mechanisms: a fund to support open science platforms and infrastructures, and a scheme to support Diamant journals (at no cost to either readers or authors).

The development of this support fund was made possible by the reallocation of funds freed up by UL’s withdrawal from the Wiley journal package, and by financial support from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research as part of the University’s COMP.

The total amount for 2025 is 145,000 €, or 7% of the university’s budget for subscriptions to scientific documentary resources (journals, databases, Elsevier included).

Since 2018, the Université de Lorraine has chosen to financially support a number of international and national initiatives that play a critical role in opening up science. These include infrastructures, platforms (particularly platforms for disseminating open scientific journals) and networks.

The selection criteria are as follows:

• Governance centered on scientific communities;
• Importance in the ecosystem of national and international open-access scientific communication;
• Link with the Université de Lorraine (publishing authors, usage…);
• Open-access dissemination of all scientific content, data or metadata (absence of mobile barriers, refusal of so-called hybrid journals);
• Absence of payment by authors (refusal of APCs).

Several of these supports are channeled through the Couperin consortium and are part of the SCOSS international initiative. In 2025, €105,000 will be earmarked to support these infrastructures.es.