The German Research Foundation ( ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2019, the DFG had a funding budget of €3.3 billion. Function The DFG supports research in science, engineering, and the humanities through a variety of grant programmes, research prizes, and by funding infrastructure. The self-governed organization is based in Bonn and financed by the German states and the federal government of Germany. As of 2017, the organization consists of approximately 100 research universities and other research institutions. The DFG endows various research prizes, including the Leibniz Prize. The Polish-German science award Copernicus is offered jointly with the Foundation for Polish Science. According to a 2017 article in The Guardian, the DFG has announced it will publish its research in online open-access journals. Background In 1937, the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (NG) ("Emergency Association of German Science") was renamed the Deutsche Gemeinschaft zur Erhaltung und Förderung der Forschung ("German Foundation for the Preservation and Promotion of Research"), for short known as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Even before the election of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi party) to power in 1933, projects funded by the NG had worked diligently on Nazi-aligned research, especially German ethnographic research in Eastern Europe that would lay the foundations for the Hitlerite "Lebensraum" and extermination policies; during the National Socialist period, the NG leadership showed itself ready and willing to adapt to the "new era" by gearing its funding practices towards issues related to German rearmament and autarky, essentially aligning its goals with the those of the new regime. By the end of World War II in Germany, in 1945, the DFG was no longer active. In 1949, after formation of the Federal Republic, it was re-founded as the NG and again from 1951 as the DFG. Structure The legal status of the DFG is that of an association under private law. As such, the DFG can only act through its statutory bodies, in particular through its executive board and the General Assembly. The DFG is a member of the International Council for Science and has numerous counterparts around the globe such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Science Foundation (USA) and the Royal Society (UK). The DFG has several representative offices in Asia, North America and