Policy Positions

As early as 2012, the European Commission issued a Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information, in which it called on Member States to implement clear and binding open access policies. According to the recommendation, it should be mandatory to provide open access to publications resulting from publicly funded research, preferably immediately but no later than 6 months after the date of publication in the case of the natural sciences and 12 months in the case of the humanities and social sciences. Although European Commission recommendations are not binding, the majority of the 27 EU Member States (inter alia Belgium, Greece, Italy, Croatia, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Czech Republic, Hungary) and three non-member States (Norway, Serbia, and Switzerland) have by now adopted open access and open science strategies. In the area of research funding, the European Commission requires funding recipients to provide open access to research publications resulting from funded projects (see also Horizon Europe).

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At federal level in Germany, the amendment of the Copyright Act (UrhG) in 2013 created the legal framework for green open access by implementing an inalienable secondary publication right (Pflüger, 2016, p. 14). In 2016, the then German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; renamed the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space, BMFTR, in May 2025) published a strategy for open access in Germany, which was updated in 2018. The aim of the updated strategy is to further establish open access as the standard for scholarly publishing and to close the gap between the scientific community’s desire for more open access publications and current publishing practice (Federal Ministry of Education and Research, 2018, p. 7). According to the strategy, various ways of providing open access should be allowed in principle, and academic freedom should remain untouched. Furthermore, publications resulting from publicly funded research should be openly accessible, and established quality assurance procedures should be ensured.

Whereas the transposition into concrete policies is the responsibility of the individual federal states, the BMBF, in its capacity as a funding agency, set guidelines: Research projects funded by the BMBF – or its successor, the BMFTR – are expected to publish their results and their research data in open access. Besides scientific and scholarly institutions and libraries, funding recipients also include private sector actors, such as publishers and other service providers, that are establishing themselves in the open access landscape.

Because of the sovereignty of the federal states in the area of education and higher education policy, the adoption and implementation of open access and open science policies in Germany takes place mainly at federal state level (Kindling et al., 2022). These federal state policies are thus central elements of the open access transformation in the Federal Republic of Germany (Kindling et al., 2021).

Some states, for example Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg , and Schleswig-Holstein have state strategies, which in some cases define concrete objectives. These objectives include, for example, an open access quota for journal articles, as well as open access officers and open access policies at all institutions (Berlin); the monitoring of open access publication figures (Thuringia); the adoption of a clear position on open access by university managers (Brandenburg); and a uniform technical infrastructure (Hamburg).

Some federal state governments support open access through other instruments of higher education governance. For example, support for open access is mentioned in the science plan (Bremen), in the higher education development plan (Saxony), or in the digital strategy (Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony-Anhalt, Hesse) of the respective federal states.

Other federal state governments support the scientific institutions in their states through targeted measures, for example openaccess.nrw in North Rhine-Westphalia; through an open access publication fund (Thuringia, Lower Saxony); through open access networking units (Berlin, Brandenburg); or by funding openness as a cross-sectional topic (Bremen).

Although other federal states have not yet adopted an explicit science policy position, many institutions already have well-established open access service offerings (e.g. Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Bavaria, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Rhineland-Palatinate) (Kindling et al., 2021).The Bundesländer-Atlas (Kindling et al., 2021), the oa.atlas federal state dossiers (2024), and the Open4DE Landscape-Report (Bärwolf et al. 2023) also provide an overview of current and past open access and open science activities of the German federal states.

In Austria, various open access initiatives emerged at a national level at an early stage (see the History of the Open Access Movement). For example, in 2014, in cooperation with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ), as one of the first national library consortia worldwide to do so, concluded an open access agreement with a publisher (see Mayer 2022, p. 47). The FWF had already introduced its own open access policy in 2004, with a strong recommendation to publish works open access. 

In 2012, Open Access Network Austria (OANA; since 2022: OSA – Open Science Austria) was founded as a joint national networking initiative on the part of the FWF and Universities Austria (uniko). OANA subsequently drew up a number of recommendations, inter alia for a national open access strategy (2016) and a national open science strategy (2020). Following the publication of the 2016 recommendations paper, many research institutions published open access policies. The 2020 recommendations served as a basis for the national Open Science Policy Austria, which was adopted in 2022.

A secondary publication right was incorporated into law in 2015 (see also Legal Issues in Austria).

In 2019, the national  funding initiative “Digital and Social Transformation in Higher Education” of the then Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research enabled the launch of several digitalization projects with a focus on open access, for example AT2OA2.

In its Government Programme 2020–2024, the Austrian Federal Government gave a clear commitment to open access and actively supported Plan S for the implementation of open access. The current Government Programme 2025–2029 does not focus explicitly on open access or open science. 

According to the strategic vision of the Swiss Higher Education Policy Coordination 2025–2028 (Gesamtschweizerische Hochschulpolitischen Koordination 2025–2028), 100% of scholarly publications from Swiss universities will be made available in open access. In particular, swissuniversities, the umbrella organisation of universities in Switzerland, plays the role of a superordinate actor for the promotion of open access. As a funding institution, swissuniversities supports various open access projects.

The Swiss National Open Access Strategy published in 2017 was updated in 2024. In the updated strategy, swissuniversities and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) set the framework conditions for the country’s open access transformation. The Open Science Delegation coordinates cooperation between the stakeholders.

Besides this national strategy, the Swiss Library Network for Education and Research (SLiNER) published National Open Access Policy Guidelines in 2019, which serve as recommendations for the institutional open access policies of Swiss universities. In 2023, 86% of universities in Switzerland had an open access policy (see swissuniversities, 2023). 

Eleven partner institutions are collaborating to create a national diamond open access consortium (CoDOA) to enable the long-term and sustainable funding of diamond open access journals. The groundwork for enshrining a secondary publication right in law is currently in progress.