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The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is Switzerland's leading provider of scientific research funding. With its federal mandate, it supports basic research in all disciplines, from philosophy and biology to nanoscience and medicine.

The SNSF (also co-signatory of the Berlin Declaration in 2006) requires grantees to provide open access to research results obtained with the help of SNSF grants (Article 44 Funding Regulations). As of 1 October 2013, researchers receiving SNSF funding can cover the costs of publishing articles in pure OA journals via the project budget. As of October 2018, APCs and BCPCs can be requested from a central OA fund (currently with no cap).
As of July 2014, the SNSF is expanding its OA policy to include monographs and editions. This corresponds to the rules applying to the publication of journal articles.
As of October 2017, the SNSF introduced an Open Research Data policy in its project funding scheme. Researchers have to include a data management plan (DMP) in their funding application and the SNSF expects that data generated by funded projects will be publicly accessible in digital databases provided there are no legal, ethical, copyright or other issues.
Among other public research funders of Switzerland, the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW) supports the implementation of Open Access. The SAGW calls upon its member societies to obtain the necessary rights for their authors from the publishers. Several SAGW-sponsored journals are freely available.

The SNSF supports the principles of "Plan S". However, due to its own Open Access (OA-2020) policy, the SNSF is currently not in a position to sign "Plan S". According to an SNSF spokesman, this circumstance will be re-evaluated in 2020.

funder policy