Funding Criteria

What do we fund? 

Each eligible author may receive the following support:

  • Support for up to three articles per author per calendar year; further requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis
  • Support of up to $3,000 per article (or equivalent in local currency); any amount over $3,000 will be the responsibility of the author

Who can apply? 

  • The application must be made by the corresponding author of the article, who must be affiliated with a Qatari institution at the time of submission. An official email belonging to the Qatari institution needs to be used for the application. 
  • The fund is open to students, faculty, researchers and staff from any institution of higher education or non-profit research institute within Qatar. The article must be submitted while the author’s Qatari affiliation is current.
  • Applicants are encouraged to exhaust other funding sources that can be used to pay for open access fees before applying to the fund. If an alternate funding source is available that permits payment of submission fees (e.g. departmental grants or research awards), this source should be used before applying to the fund. If the external fund only pays for part of the author’s fees, an application may be made for the remaining balance.

What are the conditions for funding?

All authors must also meet the following criteria:

  • Confirm that alternative sources of funding have been exhausted.
  • Include their Qatari institutional affiliation in the published article.
  • Agree to add the following acknowledgment statement “The publication of this article was funded by Qatar National Library”, once the Library accepts the funding application
  • Agree to send the Library a copy of the article once it is published online.

What are the conditions for pre-booking?

We are piloting a new process of pre-booking, in which authors can receive confirmation for funding before the publisher has accepted their article, subject to the following conditions:  

  • Authors may submit a funding request to the Library before submitting it to the journal or after submission.  
  • Authors should select the “Pre-booking” option in the application form and indicate the editorial status of their article.  
  • Authors have 30 calendar days to submit to the publisher and provide the Library with an email notification that the paper has been submitted along with a manuscript ID number. This is applicable in case authors have not submitted the article to the publisher but have a pre-booking approval from the Library.
  • The approval process of the request remains the same and will be based on the same existing criteria.  
  • The author must submit an invoice in the same calendar year as request approval. The deadline for all invoices should be 1 December of the current calendar year.  
  • Authors may only have one active pre-booking request at any given time. Authors can still use the regular OAF route and benefit from any other agreement.  
  • The pre-booking request will be part of the total author cap (e.g., if authors can only have three articles per year, the pre-booking request will be part of the total limit of three articles).  
  • Authors are obliged to inform the Library of any editorial status changes to their articles: when the article has been submitted, enters the peer review stage, if the publisher rejects the article and/or when the publisher has accepted the article.  
  • If the publisher has rejected the article, the pre-booked amount is forfeited by the author. Authors may not transfer the pre-booked amount to another journal with the same publisher or another publisher. Authors are required to submit a pre-booking application again for new submissions.

What publications do we fund?

  • Eligible articles are required to have passed peer review and have been approved for publication. Applications must be accompanied by the notification of the acceptance of the article. 
  • Articles will be funded if they are included in a journal that is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association or adheres to its code of conduct. 
  • The Library can consider applications for open access books or book chapters, on a case-by-case basis, depending on the availability of funding. Please contact us at [email protected] for more details.
  • Articles published in well-known journals or articles published in Arabic open access journals that are not yet listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals may be considered on a case-by-case basis. However, the Library reserves the right to refuse a request. 
  • This fund covers author processing charges (also referred to as author fees) for articles that have been accepted to open access journals. The fund does not cover additional charges such as submission fees, page charges, or color figure charges.
  • This fund shall only cover articles published with a CC BY 4.0 license.

What publications are excluded?

  • Articles published in hybrid journals, which are subscription-based publications for which authors can pay a fee to make their individual articles open access. The Library can cover APCs for some hybrid journals included in its publisher agreements.

  • Journals with embargoes limiting open access content for a specific time period after publication.

  • Journals which require researchers to sign over copyright to their work.

Please contact our open access team for more details.