According to the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) regulations (Funding Regulations, General Implementation Regulations for the Funding Regulations, Regulations on the Funding of Open Access Publications), funding of research projects by the SNSF is subject to research results being made openly accessible to the public and published under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY license. More specifically, the SNSF distinguishes between scientific articles and all other publications (books, book chapters, monographs, etc.), requiring the former to be immediately made available publicly, while all other publications to be made available publicly after a period of 12 months at the latest. At least the Author’s Accepted Manuscript version (pre-print) should be made available without any restrictions, in digital forms and free of charge (Implementation Regulations, clause 11.12 para. 2). Moreover, researchers should always take into account open access costs when applying for grants.
As the SNSF requires immediate open access publications for scientific articles, the second publishing right (art. 382 para. 3 CO) as described above, is not enough and can thus not be applied. The SNSF thus goes much further than what the law states. The same is true for all publishing contracts that foresee an embargo period.
To avoid conflicts, researchers should always include the following statement when submitting their manuscript to the publisher, to make it aware of the SNSF requirements: “This research was funded in whole or in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, a CC BY public copyright license is applied to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.” (Clause 11.13 para. 3 of the Implementation Regulations).