German Research Foundation Funding for University Author Funds

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) announced (Google translation) on October 13 that it would offer funding to universities to support OA author funds.

The main idea behind the funding programme is that universities can apply for DFG-funding which the university then can spend in order to finance publications in true open access journals by researchers of the university. The reason that only the university as an institution (and not the individual researchers) can apply is that only institutions will be able to create sustainable structures for covering article processing charges. It will be important, though, that the structures universities are going to establish are a proper service to their researchers.