No, the funding body specifies that all work has to be published as open-access. So if you publish without open access, you are getting yourself into trouble with the funding bodies which is a bad idea.
I'm struggling to understand what happened from your comments.
So your funding source requires publishing as open access. (This is generally good imo, but details matter and challenges may remain.) But when you tried to publish in your selected journal the university objected... to what exactly? Allocating funds from the grant to pay for the publishing fee? Or did they have to pay out of pocket?
A funding body grants you money and demands open-access. They often state very clearly that costs for publications (submission or publication fees, open access fees etc) cannot be paid from grant money. Thus, you need another source. The first address is your institute / department / faculty / university. If they decline to pay the open access fee, you are in trouble.
That’s actually common practice in a lot of fields.
> A funding body grants you money and demands open-access. They often state very clearly that costs for publications (submission or publication fees, open access fees etc) cannot be paid from grant money.
I don't believe you. Show me one source for this, and from a decently sized funding body if it's such common practice.
> They often state very clearly that costs for publications (submission or publication fees, open access fees etc) cannot be paid from grant money.
I think you've been misinformed. At least in the US, EU, Canada, and Australia, that's just not true. Public or private funders are telling grant writers to put open access publication costs in their budget or have other funds to pay for them. I only speak English, I'm so unsure of other non-EU countries. But this took just a few minutes of searching to find each agency's official policy or advice to grantwriters on this:
US NSF: "The proposal budget may request funds for the costs of documenting, preparing, publishing or otherwise making available to others the findings and products of the work conducted under the grant. This generally includes the following types of activities: reports, reprints, page charges or other journal costs" [1]
US NIH: "NIH continues its practice of allowing publication costs, including author fees, to be reimbursed from NIH awards." [2]
EU ERC: "publishing costs (including open access fees) and costs associated to research data management may be eligible costs that can be charged against ERC grants, provided they are incurred during the duration of the project and the specific eligibility conditions of the applicable Model Grant Agreement are fulfilled" [3]
All Canadian government research funding: "Some journals may require researchers to pay article processing charges (APCs) to make articles freely available. Costs associated with open access publishing are considered by the Agencies to be eligible grant expenses" [4]
Australia National Health and Medical Research Council "over the grant lifetime, funds can be used to support costs associated with publications and open access such as article processing charges, which are the result of the research activity and which are in accordance with the DRC Principles." [5]
Gates Foundation: "The Foundation Will Pay Necessary Fees. The foundation shall pay reasonable fees required by a publisher or repository to effect immediate, open access to the accepted article. This includes article processing charges and other publisher fees. " [6]
Howard Hughes Medical Institute: "May use their HHMI budget to pay publication fees charged by open access journals" [7]
Sure I get all that but you are literally never in any situation going to use your own money to pay for open-access fees. If you actually did that, sure, let me know lol.
So your funding source requires publishing as open access. (This is generally good imo, but details matter and challenges may remain.) But when you tried to publish in your selected journal the university objected... to what exactly? Allocating funds from the grant to pay for the publishing fee? Or did they have to pay out of pocket?