Statement of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft(DFG, German Research Foundation) on
European Council Conclusions on“High-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy andequitable scholarly publishing”

On 23 May 2023, the Council of the European Union adopted Council Conclusions on “Highquality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing”.
The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) welcomes theCouncil Conclusions and supports the landmark recommendations they put forward for theacademic publication system.
In particular, the DFG underpins the propositions that scholarly publication channels► should continue to evolve as high-quality, openly accessible, sustainably funded digital
infrastructures for research;► should be organised in such a way that they protect the principles of the freedom ofresearch, contribute to research integrity and quality, and ensure the highest possible
accessibility and re-usability of research results;► must apply the highest standards to the quality assurance of publications, the trustworthiness of processes and the reliability and reproducibility of content;► should make even more effective use of the innovative possibilities of digital publishing.
The varying practices in terms of publication formats and the multilingualism of communicationin science and the humanities should be preserved. From the DFG’s point of view and against
the background of the differing publication practices in individual disciplines, it may makesense to support different open access policies and open science practices geared towards
the various (international) research communities.
According to the Council Conclusions, the financing of publication infrastructures should becommensurate with the costs of the services they provide, it should be transparent and sustainable, and ideally not be provided by individual authors or readers, since this leads to inequalities in terms of access to publication and reception opportunities. The DFG currently supports open access by providing a limited subsidy for open access fees, attempting to avoid

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cost increases in open access similar to those in the subscription system. Its funding programme “Open Access Publication Funding” aims to improve cost transparency and the availability of data related to publishing. In the DFG’s view, the data situation needs to be improvedat the international level. This alone will not prevent further cost increases, however. Suchincreases are not sustainable in view of shrinking budgets, even with open access. Under nocircumstances should a situation arise in which the availability of funds determines participation in academic discourse.
For this reason, the DFG welcomes the fact that the Council Conclusions focus on the supportof open access infrastructures located at research organisations that operate without publication fees payable by authors and are not operated for profit. The DFG signed the international“Action Plan on Diamond Open Access” in 2022. The DFG funds non-profit publication infrastructures at research institutions through its funding programme “Infrastructures for ScholarlyPublishing”, providing an impetus for the establishment and expansion of such infrastructures.
New solutions are needed here for cooperative and sustainable funding in the long term, e.g.
with the participation of research institutions and scholarly societies.
The Council Conclusions also recommend participation in Open Research Europe as a publication platform supported by research institutions. The DFG is currently involved in the EOSC
through its membership in the EOSC Association. It is important to strengthen the acceptanceof these pan-European infrastructures within the academic community, thereby increasing theiruse. The only way this can be achieved is by involving researchers and their institutions. The
establishment of the National Research Data Infrastructure in Germany has already provensuccessful in establishing infrastructures based on science-led governance.
The central function of scholarly publishing is the exchange of scientific and scholarly
knowledge. The DFG supports strengthening of the debate on aspects of peer review and therecognition of reviewer activities in the publication sector in accordance with the Council Conclusions and is also in favour of improving guidance for institutions, not least with a view toavoiding unethical publication behaviour. From the DFG’s point of view1 , the concept of quality
assessment should be defined more broadly so as to include practices such as post-publication peer review and open peer review. Quality assurance remains the task of the researchcommunities.

1

www.dfg.de/en/service/press/press_releases/2022/press_release_no_15

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Furthermore, the Council Conclusions call for a cultural shift in the assessment of research
performance. The DFG is actively involved in the international Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) and, based on its open science positioning2, is committed to thecreation of framework conditions for open publishing appropriate to science and scholarship,with the inclusion of research data and software. From the DFG’s point of view, the central
benchmark for research assessment remains the quality of a research endeavour. Since
March 2023, the DFG has included in its assessments an even greater variety of personal
backgrounds, career paths, publication formats and results. The DFG regards it as a priority
to ensure that subject-specific procedures are appropriately represented.
Finally, research information systems should also be employed based on open infrastructuresand in a way that preserves the sovereignty of research institutions, since sensitive data links
can arise here, too, and dependencies on commercial providers are to be avoided.3 In addition,
researchers, policymakers and the private sector must engage in dialogue to address both theopportunities and challenges for academic publishing in dealing with artificial intelligence andlarge language models, and ethical guidelines must be defined.

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
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Telefon: + 49 228 885-1 ∙ Telefax: + 49 228 885-2777 ∙ postmaster@dfg.de ∙ www.dfg.de

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8224868

2
3

www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/announcements_proposals/2022/info_wissenschaft_22_79
www.dfg.de/download/pdf/foerderung/programme/lis/datentracking_papier_en.pdf