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What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access in Mathematics In contrast to their peers in many natural science or technical disciplines, mathematicians still draw on older literature when investigating current research questions. Open access in mathematics is therefore not restricted to current research results but also includes older literature. Retrodigitisation and open access to this digital content thus play an important role in this discipline. Another difference between mathematics and most natural science disciplines is the acceptance of literature that has not undergone scientific quality control. For example, in 2006, Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for a series of three papers proving the Poincaré conjecture, which he had published only on the preprint server arXiv . Because these papers were published open access, Perelman’s proof could be checked by various groups, even without undergoing classical peer review . Mathematicians are highly critical of rising journal prices. Thus, it is not surprising that in this field in particular, researchers often call for, and also participate in, boycotts of scholarly publishers (e.g. The Cost of Knowledge ). Open Access Journals As of November 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 815 entries under Mathematics . Article processing charges (APCs) are often viewed critically. For this reason, open access mathematics journals often use business models without APCs. Many of these journals are published directly by scientific institutions or professional associations. Examples include: Journal de l'École Polytechnique – Mathématiques Documenta Mathematica Because, as mentioned above, older literature is of great importance in mathematics, older journal volumes are often made freely available online even if the current volumes are closed access and thus subject to a fee. In these cases, the moving- wall model is often used: for a certain period of time (e.g. the first five years after publication) access is fee-based; after expiry of this embargo period , access is free. When publishing works in open access journals, care should be taken – also in mathematics – to avoid predatory publishing . What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of November 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 95 titles under “ Mathematics “ and 207 titles under “ Mathematics & science “ , while OAPEN listed around 70 titles under “ Mathematics “ . Most books in mathematics are published with publishers that have traditional business models, and open access books are still a peripheral phenomenon. Disciplinary Repositories The most important repository in mathematics is arXiv , a preprint server for physics, mathematics, and related disciplines (see our Physics page). As arXiv grew in importance, the once-longstanding practice whereby authors published their preprints on their institutions’ websites was abandoned. Many repositories in mathematics no longer publish any new preprints (one exception: the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics’ MPIM Preprint series ). Mathematics research data can be conveniently deposited in Zenodo or in disciplinary repositories, which can be found, for example in the Registry of Research Data Repositories, re3data . In addition, there are a number of open access repositories with retrodigitised mathematics literature, the most important of which are: Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum (GDZ) : contains, among other things, the Collection Mathematica , in which the Göttingen State and University Library’s entire historical mathematics collection up to and including the year 1900 is made accessible. NUMDAM : is located at the Université Grenoble Alpes and contains many French and Italian journals. Although access is free, embargo periods vary from journal to journal. The University of Michigan Historical Mathematics Collection: contains monographs published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Historical Math Monographs (Cornell University Library) Project Euclid (Cornell University): hosts e-journals, many of which are open access. The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) provides an overview of these and other repositories. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here, Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Useful Offerings The information platform zbMATH OPEN (formerly known as Zentralblatt MATH) has been open access since 2021. Open and reusable interfaces ensure the networking and sharing of scientific information. The goal is to establish the platform as a crucial hub in an open global mathematics library. The European Digital Mathematics Library ( EuDML ) is another open access research tool. Furthermore, within the framework of the Committee on Electronic Information and Communication (CEIC) of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) , efforts are being made to develop a World Digital Mathematics Library (WDML) in which the entire mathematics literature would be indexed, interlinked, and made accessible and reusable in the long term. zbMATH OPEN is a first step in this direction. To ensure the scientific quality of open access articles, the Episciences project provides a free platform on which contributions can undergo peer review. In this way, articles deposited in arXiv can undergo scientific quality control. Open Science in Mathematics Mathematical methods are also increasingly being applied successfully in interdisciplinary research and are therefore widespread. For example, mathematical models, parameters, data, and numerical algorithms are used in machine learning. Mathematical research data have thus become very complex, multifaceted, and unwieldy. The publication of these resources in open access is therefore highly beneficial for interdisciplinary research. However, especially in the area of data sciences, huge computing capacity is sometimes required (see the Mathematical Research Data Initiative, MaRDI, 2021). Traditionally, proving theorems is a central element of the publishing culture in mathematics. These proofs must be completely understandable to readers within the contribution itself. In open access publications, all content is already freely available. For a long time, there was therefore no need to provide supplementary research data. However, as digitalisation advances, automated theorem-proving procedures , visualisations, and other types of mathematical research data are increasingly emerging, and the open accessibility of these resources is becoming more and more important. Mathematical research data are very complex and diverse. The MaRDI Knowledge Graph , which is currently being developed, links many open access sources of mathematical research data. Besides the Knowledge Graph, other research data services tailored to the mathematics community can be found on the MaRDI Portal . Software developed in mathematics is often versioned and made available via Github , which has been part of Microsoft since 2018. Public GitHub repositories can be accessed without prior registration. However, to upload one’s own data, registration is necessary; the basic functions of the service are available free of charge. Many universities and research institutes offer Git instances of their own, based, for example, on the open source platform GitLab. Some journals that cover the computationally intensive areas of mathematics, for example numerics, already check the reproducibility of the code and software components of papers. One example is Computational Science and Engineering , a gold open access journal with its own Code Review Board. Efforts are being made to extend this to other areas of mathematics. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Further Reading Boege, T., Fritze, R., Görgen, C., Hanselman, J., Iglezakis, D., Kastner, L., Koprucki, T., Krause, T., Lehrenfeld, C., Polla, S., Reidelbach, M., Riedel, C., Saak, J., Schembera, B., Tabelow, K., & Weber, M. (2022). Research-data management planning in the German mathematical community [Preprint]. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.12071 Das, P. K. (2017). Anatomy of open access mathematics journals. Journal of Information and Knowledge, 53(6), 447–454. https://doi.org/10.17821/srels/2016/v53i6/98585 Hanselman, J. (2025). Guidelines for writing and reviewing mathematical software. Notices of the AMS. https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202507/noti3210/noti3210.html Taubert, N. (2021). Green open access in astronomy and mathematics: The complementarity of routines among authors and readers. Minerva, 59, 173–194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-020-09424-3 Teschke, O. (2018, December). Green, gold, platinum, nickel: On the status of open access in mathematics. EMS Newsletter. https://ems.press/content/serial-article-files/10613?nt=1 Content editor of this page: Dr Gernot Deinzer, Regensburg University Library . Last revision of content: Tabea Bacher, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (MPI MiS) , with the kind support of Britta Schneemann, MPI MiS (as of November 2025)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in Media Studies The field of media studies deals with the theory, history, and aesthetics of media and media systems. In Germany, media studies as a domain of cultural studies developed in the 1970s especially in the fertile soil of German literary studies , but it also borrowed concepts and methods from theatre studies, art history , and philosophy . While film studies is sometimes an integral part of stu­dy programmes in media studies, it is also offered as a degree programme in its own right. Media studies differs from the social-science and empirically oriented domains of journalism and communication studies, although overlaps may occur in some institutes and study programmes. In media studies, as in most disciplines in the humanities and cultural sciences, it is only in recent years that the switch to open access has begun on a broad front. One reason for this lies in the publishing culture in media sciences, where monographs and edited collections still play an important role. The reputation of the publisher is an important criterion for publishing activities in media science. By contrast, bibliometric indicators, such as the Journal Impact Factor , play only a comparatively minor role. In recent years, publishers have signifi­cantly increased their commitment to open access, with the result that nume­rous gold and green open access options are available to authors. The German Society for Media Studies’ (Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft, GfM) journal, Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (ZfM) , has been published open access with the publishing house transcript since 2017. By flipping its jour­nal to open access, the GfM sent an important signal. A further milestone was the es­tablishment in 2018 of the open access repository for media studies media/rep/ , which is located at the University of Marburg. In the same year, the GfM established the scholarly interest group (SIG) Open Media Studies and a blog of the same name. Open Access Journals As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 326 indexed journals under the subject Media . Important open access journals in the field of media studies in the German-speaking and European areas include: Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe DOAJ ffk Journal Journal for Religion, Film and Media DOAJ Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung MEDIENwissenschaft | Rezensionen Reviews mediaesthetics – Journal of Poetics of Audiovisual Images Nach dem Film Navigationen – Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften NECSUS – European Journal of Media Studies DOAJ Paidia – Zeitschrift für Computerspielforschung Research in Film and History DOAJ Spheres – Journal for Digital Cultures Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft DOAJ The film studies journal montage AV was one of the first journals to make its issues openly available online after an embargo period . Its extensive digital archive can be downloaded free of charge. After an embargo period of 12 months, the issues of the journal Digital Culture & Society are also freely available. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 932 titles under Media studies ; in the OAPEN Library, 891 titles were listed in the category of media studies . In addition, there are categories that are of relevance especially for film studies, such as Film theory & criticism, Film, TV & radio, and Films, cinema , in which a total of 612 titles were listed in DOAB and 464 titles were listed in these categories in the OAPEN Library as of March 2024. The most important German publishers that publish media studies titles in open access include De Gruyter , Springer , transcript and Schüren . The publisher meson press , which grew out of a project at the University of Lüneburg, publishes only open access books . The following series make a number of their titles available in open access: Cinepoetics – Poetologien audiovisueller Bilder Medien'Welten – Braunschweiger Schriften zur Medienkultur Medien – Wissen – Bildung Zürcher Filmstudien In 2021, within the framework of a project on the open access transition , which was funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) , the publishing house transcript established the Open Library Medienwissenschaft in collaboration with the specialised information service for media, film and communication studies adlr.link . Disciplinary Repositories The most important repository for German-language media studies is media/rep/ , which was established in 2018. The repository collects media stu­dies publications and makes them available in open access. Its holdings include journal articles, contributions to edited collections, monographs, and series, as well as complete journal archives , for example montage AV , AugenBlick , Naviga­tionen , die Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft , Digital Culture & Society , VIEW , and NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies . Besides publications in text form, media/rep/ archives videos; from the end of 2021 on, it will also archive audio files. Furthermore, many publications in the field of media studies are also self-archived in the Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find legal information on Open Access here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings The specialised information service for media, film and communication studies adlr.link at Leipzig University Library operates the central search portal of the discipline; open access resources are specially labelled. The Open-Media-Studies-Blog offers a public forum for topical debates on open science, open access, openness, and access in media studies and beyond. Open Access in Media Studies is a curated website that aims to inform about and promote open access publishing in media studies. MediArXiv is a community-led digital archive for media, film, and communi­cation research. It offers media studies scholars a platform to upload their working papers, preprints , post-prints , and published manuscripts. The blog filmwissenschaft.umsonst collects and comments on German-language open access publications from the areas of media, film, and television studies. Film Studies For Free is a blog that comments on and links to open access resources from the field of film and media studies. The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now also provide open access content of relevance to media studies. Open Science in Media Studies The German Society for Media Studies’ (GfM) scholarly interest group (SIG) Open Media Studies , which was established in 2018, aims to raise media studies scholars’ awareness of all aspects of open science and to make work processes more transparent. From 2022 onwards, the open access repository for media studies media/rep/ , in collaboration with NFDI4Culture , will accept also media studies research data. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Further Reading Kammerer, D. (2020, December 14). Nicht nur suchen und finden, sondern entdecken und erforschen. Dietmar Kammerer über das Open-Access-Repositorium media/rep/ als Werkzeug medienwissenschaftlicher Forschung. Open-Media-Studies-Blog Der Zeitschrift Für Medienwissenschaft . https://zfmedienwissenschaft.de/online/open-media-studies-blog/nicht%20nur%20suchen%20und%20finden Content editors of this page: Dr Dietmar Kammerer, Philipps-Universität Marburg / NFDI4Culture , and Andreas Kirchner , University of Konstanz/open-access.network. Last revision of content: Dr Kai Matuszkiewicz, Philipps-Universität Marburg (as of Juli 2024)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic Studies Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic Studies – also known as sciences relating to the MENA region (the Middle East and North Africa), and formerly known as Oriental studies – comprise a range of disciplines with a philological, cultural studies, religious studies, and area studies orientation (e.g., Arabic studies, Islamic studies, Iranian studies, Turkology). These disciplines, together with other "small disciplines", belong to the subject group "Non-European Language, Literature and Cultural Studies". At individual universities there are also departments that focus on the politics, economies or societies of the MENA region. While inter- and transdisciplinary work is a key feature of many disciplinary cultures, the orientation of the respective disciplines varies depending on their location and facilities. This variety is reflected in a heterogeneous publishing landscape. As is the norm for humanities and social science disciplines, works are published predominantly in journals and books with either a thematic, regional or chronological orientation. In addition, there are more generalist periodicals of national and international scholarly societies (e.g., the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft ZDMG , which has a retro-digitised issue archive and has been published as a hybrid open access journal through Verlag Harrassowitz since 2016). Key scholarly societies include the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG), the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, the European Association for Modern Arabic Literature (EURAMAL), the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS), the Societas Iranologica Europaea (SIE), the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vorderer Orient (DAVO), the Deutsche Orient-Stiftung, the Deutsche Vereinigung für Religionswissenschaft e.V. (DVWR) and die Royal Asiatic Society. In the sciences relating to the MENA region, the publishing culture is still shaped by print publishing and publishing with a publisher. In the case of electronic publications, the file format PDF is often preferred in order to model the appearance of the print publication (also in terms of page numbering and layout). Furthermore, as in other humanities and social sciences disciplines, scientific reputation is established via publication venues and editorships. Scholars often publish with renowned publishers with a rich tradition, even if their offerings do not include an open access option – or if they do, it is not affordable Open Access Journals To date, there are only a few established fully open access journals in Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic Studies. They include, for example Acta Orientalia , the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies , and Aethiopica . These journals are often edited by scholars at research institutes. However, it should be noted that in the Middle East and in Asia there is a wide range of mostly university-based open access journals that are also listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) . In addition, open access journals that use the open source software Open Journal Systems (OJS) have a much greater linguistic diversity than, for example, the articles listed in the subscription database Scopus (see Khanna et al. 2022, Fig. 6). Nowadays, the hegemony of the English language is also called into question from a bibliodiversity perspective. For sciences relating to the MENA region, this challenge is an important aspect of the decolonisation of knowledge and science (see Berger 2021). The decolonisation of open access also plays a role in this regard, as open science and some of the business models applied lead to new global hierarchies and inequalities (see Piron 2018). Scholars from the German-speaking area still publish mainly in journals in which only isolated contributions or volumes are available in open access. Apart from the relevant scholarly journals, many articles relating to the MENA region are published in journals with a different thematic focus (e.g., the Middle Ages, philosophy, medicine, law, sociology, or politics.). What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books In the case of monographs and edited volumes, the share of open access publications is higher than in the case of journal articles. As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 556 publications under “Middle East”, of which the largest shares were published by Taylor & Francis (47 in total) and MDPI – Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (22 in total). Open access books are published primarily with established publishers. However, the publishers have successfully established models for the open access publication of series and individual volumes. One reason why open access is more widespread in the case of monographs and conference proceedings may be that researchers are increasingly required to make the results of publicly funded research and conferences available in open access. The team behind the blog Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR) provides information on freely accessible material about the MENA region, including information about newly published open access books. Manuscripts and Cultural Data As a major part of research is text based, methods of the digital humanities are of particular importance for sciences related to the MENA region. Digitised copies of text-based sources can be supplemented with technical or contextual metadata and published under an open licence. The opening of research is taking place inter alia through the digitisation of manuscripts and periodicals, for example Jara'id: A Chronology of Arabic Periodicals (1800-1929) . Thus, materials that are stored at great physical distances from each other can be brought together in different ways and published under an open licence, thereby enabling them to be reused. Important networks include the Islamicate Digital Humanities Network (IDHN) and the Open Islamicate Texts Initiative (OpenITI) . Disciplinary Repositories With MENAdoc , the Specialised Information Service (FID) Middle East-, North Africa- and Islamic Studies offers the entire disciplinary range of an open access repository. MENAdoc offers green open access to edited volumes, monographs and individual articles. In some instances, entire series are made freely accessible in cooperation with institutions and publishers (e.g., with the Orient-Institut Istanbul and the Orient-Institut Beirut). In some cases, monographic series are published in diamond open access in MENAdoc, for example the MECAM Papers series and the series Diskussionspapiere — Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Geographie im Vorderen Orient (Discussion Papers – Economics, Society and Geography in the Middle East). Depending on the focus of the publications, research results are made available to the public in various disciplinary repositories, for example media studies, sociology, etc. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Useful Offerings Arabic Collections Online (ACO) is a publicly available digital library of public-domain Arabic-language content. Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library (AMEEL) is a web-based portal and a digital collection of information for the study of the Middle East, including its history, culture, development, and present situation. The Digital Assets Repository (DAR) is a system developed at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Library of Alexandria, to create and maintain the Library's digital collections, which include digitised books in the public domain. The Hindawi Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation based in England, which publishes freely accessible Arabic-language books and translations without an open access licence. The Qatar Digital Library is a growing archive that covers the modern history and culture of the Gulf and wider region. Its holdings include archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs, and much more, complete with context-related explanations and links, both in English and in Arabic. The objects may be used and reused free of charge. Efforts are being made to digitally archive Master's theses and dissertations and to make them available to the public, inter alia via the Egyptian Universities Libraries Consortium . Qalamos offers direct access to metadata and digitised copies of Oriental manuscript collections in Germany. Its mission is "to provide the metadata and digitised copies of Oriental holdings of all German memory institutions". A further offering is the online database of the Museum für Islamische Kunst (Museum for Islamic Art) in Berlin, which provides information on objects and works. It is part of the online portal "Islamic·Art", which provides further open access materials. Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers is an open access collection sponsored by the Center for Research Libraries. Literatur Berger, M. (2021). Bibliodiversity at the Centre: Decolonizing Open Access. Development and Change 52(2), 383–404. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12634 . Khanna, S., Ball, J., Alperin, J. P., & Willinsky, J. (2022). Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process. Quantitative Science Studies 3(4), 912–30. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00228 . Piron, F. (2018). Postcolonial Open Access. In U. Herb & J. Schöpfel (Eds.), Open divide: critical studies on open access . Library Juice Press. https://corpus.ulaval.ca/entities/publication/2f42da75-af39-46b1-8ce1-f48ff76c059e Weiterführende Literatur Augustin, L. M. (2016, 01st September). Open Access publishing in and about the Middle East and North Africa: prospects and challenges. TRANSREGIONAL ACADEMIES . https://academies.hypotheses.org/1954 . Cross, C., Romanov, M., & Miller, M. T. (2023, 11th July). About Islamicate Digital Humanities . http://islamicate-dh.github.io/about/ . Hanafi, S., & Rigas, A. (2015). Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise . Taylor & Francis Ltd. Content editors of this page: Josef Peter Jeschke, Specialised Information Service Middle East, North Africa and Islamic Studies (FID Nahost) , and Maike Neufend, Open Research Office Berlin (OROB) (Last updated: September 2023)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access in Musicology In musicology, as in many other disciplines in the humanities, the primacy of print publications or closed access digital publications is only slowly declining in favour of open access . One contributory factor is the structure of the discipline: musicology is located not only at universities but also, and in particular, at colleges of music and independent research institutes, not all of which have their own infrastructure such as institutional repositories . A stronger orientation towards open access in musicology is being driven among others by the official society of German-language music theory, the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH) , and the German Musicological Society (GfM) (e.g., by the GMTH journal ZGMTH and GfM publications ) as well as by individual musicological scholars. Open Access Journals As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 89 entries under Music and books on music , of which only a few were in German or located in Germany. Only in recent years has the number of genuinely open access journals in musicology begun to grow. These journals are not usually published via a publishing house, but rather are often made available via the respective editors’ own platforms (e.g., in the case of the journals ZGMTH and ACT ). Since 2018, the Specialised Information Service for Musicology (Fachinforma­tionsdienst Musikwissenschaft) also offers a hosting service for open access journals under the label musiconn.publish . Important German-language open access journals in musicology include: Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie DOAJ troja – Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik ACT. Zeitschrift für Musik und Performance Musik & Ästhetik Some journals – in consultation with the rights holders – make their content freely available online upon expiry of an embargo period ("moving wall"). In Germany, these journals include Bach-Jahrbuch Schütz-Jahrbuch Forum Musikbibliothek What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 1,495 titles under the search term music , most of which were from the English-speaking area. OAPEN listed 156 titles under music . Again, most of these were in English. In the German-speaking area, open access books in the field of musicology are mainly to be found as hybrid offerings provided by the relevant publishers, for example, Schott , transcript , or Allitera . Besides these publishing house offe­rings, musicological books are made available in open access via repositories such as musiconn.publish . Disciplinary Repositories Since 2018, musiconn.publish has acted as a disciplinary repository of musico­logical literature for Germany. The repository serves to make musicological literature freely available to the public online, to index it, and to archive it on a long-term basis. This service is part of the Specialised Information Service for Musicology (Fachinformationsdienst Musikwissenschaft), which is funded by the German Research Foundation ( DFG ) and jointly maintained and operated by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library, BSB) in Munich and the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (Library of the State of Saxony and the Technische Universität Dresden, SLUB) in Dresden . It is available to all interested authors in the field of musicology and holds open access articles and books. A number of publishers (e.g., Georg Olms Verlag) avail of the possibility to pro­vide green open access to the works they publish by self-archiving them in the repository What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Content editor of this page: Dr Andrea Hammes, SLUB Dresden (Last updated: December 2021)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access in Philosophy In the German-speaking area, the development of open access in philosophy is characterised by remarkable diversity – both substantively and institutionally. Different philosophical schools of thought each have their own publication cultures, forms of communication, and reputation economies. One constitutive element of the engagement with open access in philosophy is philosophical reflection itself. Here, both epistemological and ethical dimensions play a role: Questions regarding the accessibility and availability of knowledge, scientific justice, and responsibility towards the public are negotiated. And last but not least, the societal and epistemological implications of digitalisation processes are discussed. Developments such as data tracking or the use of artificial intelligence in research raise fundamental questions that are reflected on a substantive level in the discipline. Further discussion points are the evaluation systems and metrics in scholarly publishing. In philosophy, there are critics of the Journal Impact Factor – its relevance for the culture of the discipline has been fundamentally called into question. Despite these debates, there is little systematic, empirical evidence to date regarding the concrete implementation and spread of open access in German-speaking philosophy. An initial overview of the situation can be provided by analysing the positions of relevant stakeholders. The professional societies in German-speaking philosophy, for example the German Society for Philosophy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie, DGPhil ), the German Society for Analytic Philosophy (Gesellschaft für analytische Philosophie, GAP) , the German Society for Phenomenological Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für phänomenologische Forschung, DGPF ), and the German Society of Aesthetics (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ästhetik, DGÄ ), have not yet taken a definitive stance on the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (UNESCO, 2021), the position papers of the European Union, or reform papers on research evaluation (see Policy Positions ). The GAP linked Nicola Mößner and Klaus Erlach’s position paper on scientific publishing and the evaluation of scientific expertise ( Mößner & Erlach, 2024 ), describing it as “a starting point for further discussion” ( Announcement 28.02.2024 ). Regarding the colour spectrum of open access models – especially the trend towards diamond open access – it remains to be seen what positions German-speaking philosophy will take in the long term. Open Access Journals in Philosophy As of May 2026, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 413 entries in the philosophical subcategories of the category Philosophy, Psychology, Religion . In scholarly communication in philosophy in the German-speaking area to date, journals play an important but less dominant role than in the anglophone world. Furthermore, the importance of journals depends strongly on the respective philosophical discipline. In Germany, many long-established journals still use the subscription model. Examples include the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie , Philosophisches Jahrbuch , ​the ​ Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung , and ​ the ​ Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie . Many of these journals have close ties to large scholarly publishers, which has so far hampered a complete transformation to open access. Cooperations between philosophical societies and publishers also contribute to this structure. The journal Information Philosophie , which ceased publication in 2022, is now accessible free of charge on the PhilPortal . Nevertheless, in recent years there has been a growing number of newly established philosophy journals that are open access from the start. Examples include the journals Philosophy & Digitality and Philosophy of AI as well as the interdisciplinary journal HannahArendt.net . The Specialised Information Service for Philosophy ( FID Philosophie ) supports such initiatives with its own hosting service for existing open access journals or open access journals that are in the process of being established . Besides the technical infrastructure, it provides advice and support with long-term visibility and indexing in relevant directories. Further support services, for example editorial training or help in developing open access strategies, are currently being developed. The German Society for Philosophy (DGPhil) provides a good overview of existing open access journals in philosophy. The linked overviews are based on automated data queries to the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Note, however, that newly established journals are included in the DOAJ at the earliest after one year and that not all open access journals have been indexed to date in the DOAJ or the EZB. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access Books Monographs remain a core medium of scholarly communication in philosophy – especially in the German-speaking area. Results of the PALOMERA project underscore the special importance of the book market for open access transformation in the humanities. Even though there is still room for improvement in terms of the implementation status, there are a number of committed initiatives that aim to initiate a sustainable open access transformation in philosophy (see Mößner & Erlach, 2024 ). Most publishers in philosophy have not yet embarked on the transformation. The publisher Transcript offers a number of open access titles that have been transformed to open access either by the authors themselves or by consortia. In cooperation with the Specialised Information Service for Philosophy (FID Philosophie), the publishers Karl Alber, Transcript, and Logos have transformed a number of titles to open access. Open access books can also be found in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the Open Research Library . Disciplinary Repositories At present, there is no disciplinary repository in German-speaking philosophy. The most frequently used repositories are PhilArchive and the repositories of the respective libraries. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) can be used to search the repositories; PhilArchive is also integrated in the PhilPortal search. Zenodo and GitHub are also used, especially on the threshold of the digital humanities. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find legal information on Open Access here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brinken, H. (2020). Finanzierung von Open-Access-Artikeln, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/49536 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Science in Philosophy The question of how to handle research data has now arrived in philosophy, where it is the subject of lively debate . Within the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) cosmos, the consortia Text+ , NFDI4memory , and NFDI4culture are particularly relevant. For example, Text+ is currently building a Registry for (digital) editions , which is already integrated in PhilFinder . Text+ also provides lexical resources and text collections. Another important point of contact is the DGPhil working group Philosophie der Digitalität , in which diverse projects on the topic are discussed. For example, PhiWiki , a semantic wiki software application for philosophy scholars, has its origins in this working group. Other Offerings With B!son (Bibliometrisches und Semantisches Open Access Recommender Netzwerk) , TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library and the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) provide a tool that helps authors to find suitable open access journals for their manuscripts by entering textual data (e.g. manuscript title and abstract). Retrodigitised works also a play major role in philosophy. However, a unified directory of such works is still lacking. Open access digital editions can be found in the Registry of the NFDI consortium Text+. The editions are also linked under the corresponding authors in the Specialised Information Service for Philosophy’s search tool PhilFinder . Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. References Mößner, N., & Erlach, K. (2024). Elektronisches Publizieren und Bewertung wissenschaftlicher Expertise. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10948472 UNESCO. (2021). UNESCO recommendation on open science. https://doi.org/10.54677/MNMH8546 ​​​​​Content editors of this page: Dr Malte Dreyer, University of Göttingen , and Eric Eggert, University of Cologne/Specialised Information Service for Philosophy (Last updated: May 2026)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in Physics Open access has been an integral part of the publication and information structure in physics for a long time now. The publication of preprints plays a major role in this discipline. The main reason for this publication culture is that researchers have a great interest in making scientific articles available directly and without delays due to publication processes. Thus, the repository arXiv was created as early as 1991. The process of making all scholarly journals or articles in high energy physics open access has already been implemented within the framework of the project SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) (see Open Access Journals ). CERN points the way for open access in physics worldwide. It has assumed a leading role in all major open access initiatives, for example in the funding of SCOAP³ , the operation of the interdisciplinary repository Zenodo in collaboration with the European Commission, and the development of the repository software Invenio . In Germany, the Max Planck Society , DESY, the centre for research on particle acceleration at the Helmholtz Association , and TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library are particularly engaged in the area of the long-term funding of open access business models in physics. These institutions also act as SCOAP³ National Contact Points and participate in the funding of the disciplinary repository arXiv . Via the national project SCOAP³-DH , TIB organises the participation of German higher education institutions (HEIs) in SCOAP³, and in the network arXiv-DH , it organises the funding of the German HEIs’ contribution to arXiv. Open Access Journals As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 647 entries under the keyword physics . As early as 1999, the Institute of Physics, together with the Deutsche Physika­lische Gesellschaft, started the New Journal of Physics , one of the first gold open access journals. SciPost is an independent, not-for-profit platform for scholarly diamond open access publications, especially in the natural sciences such as physics and chemistry. It is operated by the Amsterdam-based SciPost Foundation . Scholarly articles published by SciPost are fully open access – with no costs for authors or readers. Funding is provided through a consortial support model whereby universities, libraries, and research organisations, among others, make voluntary contributions. The peer-review procedure is open and transparent. All reviews, authors’ replies, and discussions are publicly available. The scientific community actively takes on the roles of reviewers, commentators, and editors. SciPost is a not-for-profit entity. It does not levy article processing charges (APCs) , but rather is financed by institutional grants (“sponsorships”), for example from universities, libraries and library consortia, research organisations, funding agencies, foundations, and governmental bodies. The aim is to create a sustainable, just, and accessible scholarly publishing system – free from commercial interests. Conclusion: SciPost stands for transparency, scientific self-responsibility, and fairness. It is considered a pioneering model in the area of open science. Overall, the publication output of open access journals in physics is low compared with that of subscription journals in this field. This is due to the fact that green open access – for the most part the self-archiving of preprints before publication in a journal – predominates. Against this background, the international project SCOAP³ was initiated in the field of high energy physics with the aim of publishing peer-reviewed journal articles under a Creative Commons licence . SCOAP³ is a global consortium of libraries, library consortia, research funding organisations, and research per­forming organisations. It collaboratively implements the process of converting scholarly journals in the field of high energy physics to open access. All articles (in gold or hybrid open access journals) are funded by the consortium. The average APCs are significantly lower than those of comparable transformation processes , and no costs arise for the authors. The goal of the project is to replace article processing charges with fair market prices. An overview of participating journals with the respective percentages of articles funded by SCOAP³ and the absolute number of articles funded to date (updated daily) can be found on the SCOAP³ Journals web page. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed around 739 titles under the subject physics ; 86 titles were listed by the OAPEN Library . In physics, most books are published with traditional publishers; open access books are still a peripheral phenomenon. Disciplinary Repositories As mentioned above, preprints have a very long tradition in physics. As from the 1960s, a culture of making preprints available developed and became estab­lished, especially in the field of high energy physics. Against this background, Paul Ginsparg founded the electronic repository arXiv at Los Alamos National Laboratory on 14 August 1991. This represents a key milestone in the history of open access . To this day, arXiv, which has been operated by Cornell Tech since 2020, is a model for disciplinary repositories. To ensure the long-term and sustainable operation of the repository, arXiv is funded for the most part by Cornell University , the Simons Foundation , and institutional members . Besides preprints, preliminary results and discussion papers are published on arXiv that are not published elsewhere for the time being. Before submitting their first preprints to arXiv, authors are usually required to obtain an endorsement – that is, established authors in the relevant field must endorse their submissions. Authors affiliated with a known academic institution or research facility can be exempted from this requirement. ArXiv stands out as a disciplinary repository with simple functionalities and – compared with peer review – reduced quality assurance mechanisms. In physics, many publishers enable manuscripts deposited in arXiv to be directly submitted to their journals. For example, the publication portal SciPost directly accepts arXiv records as submissions; manuscripts do not have to be uploaded. An overview of relvant repositories is provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital database for publications and preprints in the field of high energy physics. It is a collaborative project of CERN, DESY, Fermilab, and other partners. Besides standard information on the publications, for example bibliographic details and links to full texts, the metadata records also include references and citations. INSPIRE-HEP thus enables the generation of author profile pages with citation analyses. Moreover, INSPIRE-HEP provides information on HEP institutions, experiments, and conferences. Important sources of information, for example arXiv.org or the NASA Astrophysical Data System are also integrated. Open Science in Physics In physics, there are many different open science initiatives, first and foremost CERN’s Open Data Portal , where two terabytes of data on experiments at CERN are freely available and reusable . Moreover, there are numerous repositories with physics data, all of which are listed in the Registry of Research Data Repositories, re3data.org . In addition, program code is often published open source on special project pages of the participating working groups. Infrastructural institutions are rarely involved. Examples of open source programs in theoretical solid state physics are ABINIT and QUANTUM ESPRESSO . open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Further Reading Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (2021). DPG-Positionspapier zur Zukunft des wissenschaftlichen Publikationswesens . http://bit.ly/31UElmw Ginsparg, P. (2021). Lessons from arXiv’s 30 years of information sharing. Nat Rev Phys 3 , 602–603. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00360-z Tautz, D., Holzer, A., Schmidt, K. M., Buchner, J., Grötschel, M., & Jurburg, S. (2025). Ein neues Verfahren zur direkten Finanzierung und Evaluation wissenschaftlicher Zeitschriften. Diskussion Nr. 38 . Halle (Saale): Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina. Content editor of this page: Dr. Gernot Deinzer , Regensburg University Library, and Prof. Dr. Dieter Weiß, Regensburg University (Last updated: July 2025)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in Political Science Political science is characterised by overlaps with other disciplines, for example sociology , history , law and administrative science , and philosophy . Depending on the sub-discipline, it is influenced by developments in the culture of neighbouring disciplines and adopts their methods. Whereas the humanities-oriented fields of political science, such as political theory, continue to have a strong affinity for book publishing, and open access has therefore not yet become very firmly established there, a more dynamic development towards open access can be observed in the sub-disciplines with a social science and international focus, where journal articles are the dominant form of distribution of research results. The American Political Science Association (APSA) , which is the most important political science association in the world, has been operating APSA Preprints , an open access publication platform for political science preprints, since 2019. In 2024, the largest political science association in Germany, the German Political Science Association (GPSA) , published a statement on open access and open science (in German), in which it underscored the importance of diamond open access in cooperation with independent publishers or non-profit-oriented research infrastructures as an important prerequisite for the success of the open access transformation. Of the major German-language political science journals, the Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft and the Politische Vierteljahresschrift , for example, are available for the most part in open access (to date only as hybrid journals ) as part of the DEAL agreement with Springer Nature. Other key German-language political science journals, such as the Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen and the Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen , have also been published only as hybrid open access to date – that is, they offer authors the option of "buying the freedom" of individual articles (i.e., making them open access) by paying an article processing charge (APC) . A special role is played by the think tanks in the area of application-oriented political science. Think tanks are public or private institutions that analyse foreign policy processes. They focus mainly on concrete options for action for policy makers, while also aiming to influence the political public at large. Many current publications from the leading think tanks, such as Clingendael in the Netherlands, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and the Center for Applied Policy Research in Germany, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden, are for the most part freely accessible, albeit not completely open access. They are well publicised and can be downloaded easily from the respective websites. On the other hand, the problem with this type of grey literature is its findability at the usual search venues and the long-term digital availability of its content. Open Access Journals As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals listed 644 indexed journals under the keyword “ political science” . Purely open access journals (i.e., all articles are available in open access) of relevance to political science are: Africa Spectrum doaj Central European Journal of International & Security Studies doaj Health and Human Rights doaj (Gebühren werden nur in Rechnung gestellt, wenn diese durch die Einrichtung der Autorin oder des Autors übernommen werden können) Journal of Deliberative Democracy doaj Journal of Political Ecology doaj Leviathan. Berliner Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft Neue Politische Literatur. Berichte aus Geschichts- und Politikwissenschaft Open Gender Journal doaj Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft doaj Perspectives on Terrorism doaj Political Philosophy Redescritptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory Revue Internationale de Politique de Développement doaj Totalitarianism and Democrary. An International Journal for the Study of Dictatorship and Liberty (Totalitarismus und Demokratie. Zeitschrift für internationale Diktatur- und Freiheitsforschung) Zeitschrift diskurs ZRex – Zeitschrift für Rechtsextremismusforschung doaj Global Studies Quarterly doaj Policy and Society doaj Political Research Exchange doaj Research & Politics doaj In most cases, new journals from the major international academic publishers appear in open access. Because they have been in existence for only a short time, these young journals have been able to build up only low or average bibliometric indices, compared with the established core journals in this field. Among the 10 political science journals with the highest Journal Impact Factors in 2022, according to the Journal Citation Report (JCR), there are no purely open access journals. Of relevance in this context is the development of alternative metrics ( altmetrics ), which are also critically discussed in political science (Meibauer et al., 2024). New open access journals often occupy regional niches or are in new sub-disciplines and therefore have a more limited scope per se. The situation of German-language political science journals should be viewed independently of this. The fact that the internal market for German-language journals is small, increases the economic risk of open access transformations or start-ups for the publishers operating there – unless there is institutional funding (as, for example, in the case of Africa Spectrum or of Totalitarismus und Demokratie , where the transformation to open access is supported by the Specialized Information Service for Political Science – Pollux). Some of these journals (e.g., Perspectives on Terrorism ) have been able to establish themselves beside renowned journals from international scholarly publishers. In addition, in the area of journals, optional article-level open access in hybrid journals is increasingly being availed of across disciplines through the publish & read licences (e.g., DEAL). This relates also to internationally important publishers for political science, such as Sage und Taylor & Francis. In the Web of Science, the share of gold open access among the political science articles published between 2020 and 2023 was almost one third, and the trend is rising. The increasing share of open access among journal articles is also apparent in a study by Breuning and Aykol (2024), who also showed that having research funding at one's disposal is decisive for the question of whether or not works can be published in open What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of August 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 3,033 titles under the search term " political science ", and the OAPEN Library listed around 8,602 titles under the search term "political science" . In the case of political science monographs and edited volumes, open access is becoming increasingly widespread. At Taylor & Francis/Routledge, for example, the share of open access books in the section “Politics & International Relations” recently stood at just over 8%. At Springer Nature/Palgrave, a sample of titles in the collection "Political Science and International Studies" for the most recent publication years yielded an open access share of 9.4%. At Nomos Publishing, one of the leading academic publishers for political science in the German-speaking area, the share of open access works among new political science titles between 2020 and May 2024 was 12.6%. By now, all major publishers (including German publishers) offer an open access option, with the result that, at the publishers of relevance to political science, more and more books are available in open access. The publication costs are financed (possibly pro rata) from project funding and through institutional sources such as publication funds or crowdfunding, as is the case with the transcript Open Library Politikwissenschaft , which is supported by the Specialized Information Service Political Science – Pollux (Hanneken et al., 2020). Disciplinary Repositories Important repositories include: SSOAR - Social Science Open Access Repository : The largest full-text server for the social sciences, SSOAR is operated by GESIS Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften . SSRN – Social Science Research Network : a preprint server with research publications from the social and life sciences, the humanities, and economics and business studies. The PSN (Political Science Network) in SSRN holds over 240,000 papers by around 190,000 authors. SocArXiv : This social science document server holds working papers, preprints, and self-archived published papers. APSA Preprints : the political science preprint server of the American Political Science Association (APSA) . An overview of relevant repositories is provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now also provide open access content relevant to political science. Open Science in Political Science The visibility of and access to political science research data will gain in importance in future, for example, for the secondary analysis of research results or for meta-analyses. Two social science research data repositories, one of which covers quantitative methods and the other qualitative methods, shall be mentioned here: Archiving BASIS : a social science and economics research data repository for quantitative primary and secondary data Qualidata Network : a search portal for qualitative social science research data open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Breuning, M., Akyol, S. (2024). Who publishes open access? PS: Political Science & Politics . https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096524000106 Hanneken, S., Jobmann, A. & Schönfelder, N. (2020). Die transcript OPEN Library Politikwissenschaften – Ein Modell für Open-Access-eBooks in den Geistes- & Sozialwissenschaften. Informationspraxis , 6 (2). https://doi.org/10.11588/ip.2020.1.66637 Meibauer, G., Phull, K., Alejandro, A., & Ciflikli, G. (2024). Alternative metrics, traditional problems? Assessing gender dynamics in the altmetrics of political science. European Political Science , 23 (2), 179–198. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-023-00431-y Further Reading Czolkoß-Hettwer, M. (2025). Zwischen Hoffnung und Ernüchterung: Open Access in der Politikwissenschaft. DVPW Blog (Deutsche Vereinigung für Politikwissenschaft). https://www.dvpw.de/blog/zwischen-hoffnung-und-ernuechterung-open-access-in-der-politikwissenschaft-ein-beitrag-von-michael-czolkoss-hettwer Czolkoß-Hettwer, M., Lein, P. & Mayr, P. (2024). Probleme und Potenziale der Forschungsinfrastrukturförderung in Deutschland am Beispiel des Fachinformationsdienstes Politikwissenschaft. Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft , 34 (1), 101–122. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41358-024-00371-z König, T. (2020). Converting to Open Access. The Austrian Journal of Political Science (OZP) as a case study. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft , 49 (3), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.15203/ozp.3184.vol49iss3 Papillon, M., O’Neill, B., Bourque, M., Marland, A. & White, G. (2019). Open access and academic journals in Canada: A political science perspective. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique , 52 (4), 903–922. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423919000799 Taubert, N., Sterzik, L. & Bruns, A. (2024). Mapping the German Diamond Open Access journal landscape. Minerva , 62 (2), 193–227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-023-09519-7 Vauteck, B. (2008). Open Access als alternative Publikationsform für die deutsche Politikwissenschaft. Argumente und Strategien (Berliner Handreichungen zur Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft; 232 ). https://doi.org/10.18452/18209 Content editors of this page: Michael Czolkoß-Hettwer und Regina Pfeifenberger, Specialized Information Service Political Science (FID Pollux) (Last updated: October 2025)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in Psychology In line with the general trend, open access has also gained ground and further established itself in psychology, albeit via various routes. In Germany, the largest professional association in psychology, the German Psychological Society (DGPs) , expressed its support for open access very early on. For example, as far back as September 2004, the general assembly of the DGPs endorsed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities , which the DGPs formally signed in 2017. In addition, the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) in particular is committed to open access in psychology. In 2012, it launched PsychOpen GOLD , an open access publishing platform for psychology on which 14 open access psychology journals are currently provided. A distinctive feature of the journals published by PsychOpen GOLD is that they use a diamond open access business model. Thus, all content is made freely accessible to readers worldwide at no charge to authors or editors. Furthermore, one of PsychOpen GOLD’s primary goals is to strengthen open science practices in psychology and enhance the international visibility of European psychological research. Besides PsychOpen GOLD, the ZPID offers free access to a range of other information products for psychology (see the "Open Science" section below). By contrast, the internationally influential American Psychological Association (APA) , the largest psychological association in the world, was for a long time quite unreceptive to open access. For example, in September 2007, the then President of the APA, Sharon Stephens Brehm, warned that the existing system of scientific publishing should be changed only with caution ( Stephens Brehm, 2007 ). This reticence about open access is presumably due not least to the fact that, as a commercial publisher, the APA publishes around 90 scholarly journals of psychology. However, all APA subscription-based journals now offer a hybrid open access option whereby authors can make individual contributions freely accessible by paying an article processing charge ( APC ). However, this does not mean that these contributions can be published under an open content licence, for example a Creative Commons (CC) licence . The APA has concluded open access agreements (also known as “read and publish agreements”) with several organizations worldwide. Authors affiliated to institutions participating in these agreements do not have to pay APCs. In addition, all APA journal authors have the option of self-archiving a copy of their author accepted manuscript (AAM) in a repository ( green open access ) and of making it publicly available under an open content licence. In psychology, scholarly literature can be found largely in journals. By contrast, books or conference proceedings play a lesser role. Open access to scholarly books in psychology is still in its infancy. Purely open access journals are still the exception in psychology. In September 2025, a search conducted in OpenAlex for sources with the keyword “psychology” in the title yielded 1,046 journals, of which 26.2% (274) were classified as open access and 11.7% (122) met the narrower criteria for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). In an earlier study based on a sample of Web of Science articles published between 2009 and 2015, Piwowar et al. (2017, 2018) found that 4.7% of the articles in psychology were published in purely open access journals ( gold open access ). However, as many journals in psychology offer authors at least an open access option ( hybrid model ), the share of actually freely available psychology journal articles is probably higher. This is also indicated by a study conducted by Hardwicke et al. (2022) , who examined transparency measures in the psychology literature and found an open access rate of 65% for the N = 250 articles included in a random sample of psychology articles published between 2014 and 2017. Open Access Journals As of August 2025, the aforementioned Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) itself listed 1,838 entries under the keyword Psychology. Many of the purely open access journals can traditionally be found on scholarly, non-commercial platforms of professional associations, research institutions, universities, or specialised information centres. However, as author-funded business models are growing in popularity, purely open access journals are increasingly being provided by traditional scholarly publishers and new commercial open access publishers. Important open access journals in psychology include: Advances in Cognitive Psychology DOAJ Collabra Psychology DOAJ Europe's Journal of Psychology DOAJ Frontiers in Psychology DOAJ Judgement and Decision Making DOAJ Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience DOAJ Some of the above-mentioned journals have been published open access for many years now and do not levy any article processing charges (APCs) (Europe's Journal of Psychology, Judgement and Decision Making). Among the open access journals that do charge their authors a fee to have their research articles published, this fee ranges from a few hundred (e.g. Advances in Cognitive Psychology) to several thousand euros/dollars (e.g. Frontiers in Psychology ) and is payable before publication. Frontiers in Psychology is an example of a mega-journal that is published by a commercial open access publisher and publishes several thousand articles per year. As of August 2025, the most important psychology publisher in the German-speaking area, Hogref e , had four purely open access journals in its portfolio (European Journal of Psychology Open, Sports Psychiatry, Psychological Test Adaptation and Development, Rorschachiana). For all the other journals in its portfolio, it offers authors the option of publishing their articles open access against payment of an APC ( hybrid model ). Hogrefe has concluded transformative agreements with institutions in Germany and Switzerland, whereby open access publication charges are consortially funded. Authors affiliated to participating research institutions can thus publish open access without having to pay individual APCs. In addition to these traditional journals, other types of publication are also gaining in importance. They include, for example, the Peer Community in (PCI) platforms, which offer free peer-reviews of preprints and registered reports for a wide range of disciplines. Registered reports are an alternative publishing format to the classical journal article. Before a study is conducted, a “Stage 1 manuscript” comprising research questions, theoretical background, hypotheses (if applicable), methods, and any necessary preliminary data is submitted to a journal or to PCI Registered Reports (PCI RR) , where it undergoes peer-review. If successful, authors receive “in-principle acceptance” and thus have the assurance that their study will be published irrespective of the results. After in-principle acceptance, the authors conduct the study and complete the manuscript by adding the Results and Discussion sections (Stage 2 manuscript). PCI RR has agreements with various journals (so-called “PCI-friendly journals) whereby articles reviewed and accepted in principle at PCI RR can be published after undergoing a shortened peer-review (PCI-friendly journals) or without having to undergo peer-review at all (in Peer Community Journal ). Registered reports are not published solely in open access, but both modes are often combined. PCI RR and PCI Psychology play an increasingly important role in psychology. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of August 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books listed 738 titles under Psychology , and the online library of open access books OAPEN listed 21,855 titles under Psychology . As scholarly literature in psychology is largely found in journals, books and conference proceedings play a minor role. Nonetheless, the number of open access books has been increasing steadily in recent years. Disciplinary Repositories Important disciplinary repositories in psychology include: PsychArchives – one of the few open access repositories worldwide that specialise in psychology. In addition to the actual manuscripts, it also contains in many cases supplementary material (e.g. data and code). PsyArXiv – contains preprints from psychology Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR) – contains documents from the social sciences, some of which are also assigned to psychology. Green open access – that is, the self archiving of preprints and post-prints – is now widespread in psychology and is permitted by many publishers. An overview of relevant repositories is also provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Open-Access- Literatur finden [Finding Open Access Literature] (available only in German) oa.helpdesk If you have any questions about open access, we will be happy to help you. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you which journals, among tens of thousands, are gold open access, whether they levy article processing charges (APCs), and how high these charges are. In addition, you can view the funding modalities of your own journal. Other Useful Offerings As yet, there are no databases and search engines that index only open access documents from psychology. However, with PsychPorta there is a large, freely accessible psychological reference database that also provides links to full texts and allows users to filter search results specifically by open access content. PsychPorta comprises records of journal articles, books and book chapters, intervention programmes, research data , and psychodiagnostic test instruments from all areas of psychology. Open Science in Psychology Ever since Ioannidis (2005) questioned the validity of most published research findings, and in view of the large number of failed attempts to replicate previously significant effects (e.g. Open Science Collaboration, 2015 ), vehement discussions on the reliability of published research findings have been taking place in many scholarly disciplines under the heading “replication crisis”. According to the criticism of scientific practice, the low reproducibility could be an indication of a high rate of false-positive results. Potential causes of this (e.g. p -hacking or HARKing) are often subsumed under the rubric "questionable research practices". In reaction to this, there has been an increase in the importance of open science (e.g. Munafò et al., 2017 ), an umbrella term for a wide variety of practices aimed at making the research process more transparent and thus more reproducible. Open science also aims to make research accessible to more people. Important open science practices in psychology include, for example, the preregistration of studies (i.e. the recording and publication of research plans before the beginning of a study/the data analysis in order to transparently specify a priori what is planned), open material, and open data (i.e. the sharing of research materials and data in order to make findings transparent and reusable). As there are diverse and changing positions on open science within psychology, the extent of the spread of its constituent elements varies ( Spinath, 2021 ). There are various offerings in psychology that are in the spirit of the open science idea: RDC at ZPID – The Research Data Centre (RDC) at ZPID makes psychological research data available for reuse. Provided by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) , and accredited by the German Data Forum (RatSWD) , it documents, archives, and publishes research data from all areas of psychology; it is currently the only research data centre specialising in psychology. Open Science Framework – The Center for Open Science , which operates the Open Science Framework (OSF) , a platform for sharing documents, data, scripts, etc., is one of the most committed advocates of open access, also in psychology. Although this initiative is transdisciplinary, it has a strong psychological foundation. Open Test Archive – This archive, which is also provided by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) , makes open access test instruments available for research and teaching. PsychAuthors – This freely accessible database contains profiles and publication lists of authors in psychology from the German-speaking area. Link Collection of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) – practical resources for research and teaching on the topic of open science In addition, there are numerous open science initiatives at the psychological institutes and faculties of various universities in Germany. Most of these initiatives have come together in the Netzwerk der Open-Science-Initiativen in Deutschland (NOSI) . open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Hardwicke, T. E., Thibault, R. T., Kosie, J. E., Wallach, J. D., Kidwell, M. C., & Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2021). Estimating the prevalence of transparency and reproducibility-related research practices in psychology (2014–2017). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(1), 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620979806 Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLOS Medicine, 2 (8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 Munafò, M. R., Nosek, B. A., Bishop, D. V. M., Button, K. S., Chambers, C. D., Percie du Sert, N., Simonsohn, U., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Ware, J. J., & Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2017). A manifesto for reproducible science. Nature Human Behaviour , 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0021 Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349 (6251). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716 Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2017). Data from: The state of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles . Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1041791 Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ , 6. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375 Spinath, B. (2021). Zur Lage der Psychologie. Psychologische Rundschau, 72 (1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1026/0033-3042/a000521 Stephens Brehm, S. (2007). Open access: A thorny debate. Monitor on Psychology, 38 (8). https://www.apa.org/monitor/sep07/pc Content editors of this page: Dr Katarina Blask, Dr Lisa Spitzer and Dr Gerrit Fröhlich, Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) (Last updated: September 2025)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find arguments and reservations here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in Religious Studies In Germany, religious studies is one of the small disciplines , and is considered an independent humanities and cultural studies discipline distinct from the theologies. In other countries, for example in Britain and North America, the (institutional) separation of religious studies and the theologies is to some extent less pronounced. Research in religious studies takes place in a professionally and methodologically broad, heterogeneous environment. Overlaps exist inter alia with the ethnological disciplines , with sociology , philosophy , historical studies and classical studies , and also with various area studies disciplines (e.g. African Studies ) and the theologies. In religious studies, as in other humanities disciplines, great importance continues to be attached to print books in general, as well to the publication of contributions in edited collections and conference proceedings. However, in dialogue with the religious studies community, an increasing openness towards the reception and production of open access publications is apparent. Reservations towards open access relate inter alia to fears of compromised quality and additional effort and costs (e.g. when converting journals to open access), as well as to concerns with regard to higher publication costs for authors. To date, neither the German Association for the study of Religion (Deutsche Vereinigung für Religionswissenschaft, DVRW) , nor the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) nor the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) has taken a clear position on open access. The DVRW’s journal, Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft , is still published in closed access. By contrast, associations for the study of religion in some other European countries (inter alia the Czech Association for the Study of Religions and the British Association for the Study of Religions ) have been successfully publishing open access journals for some years now. In the English-language literature, the topic of open access in religious studies has been reflected on in several contributions – both from the perspective of the editors of individual scholarly journals ( Drees, 2015; Drees, 2017; Wildman et al., 2019; Petersen, 2021 ) and from the perspective of individual scholars ( Clasquin-Johnson, 2008; Cavallin, 2013 ). An added value of open access is seen especially in the fact that it can also make scientific participation easier for financially insecure institutions and researchers worldwide, who are unable to access expensive licensed resources. For authors, on the other hand, open access may also become a hurdle if, for example, they cannot afford the sometimes-considerable publication fees charged by the publishers (Frank et al., 2023). Open Access Journals As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 131 entries under the subject Religions. Mythology. Rationalism . A closer look at this list reveals that journals relating to a specific religion, or journals with a theological focus, are also assigned to this subject area. If one extends the search query to include journals that are listed under individual religions (Islam, Judaism, Buddhism), one achieves a more extensive result (451 entries) . Here, the challenge intimated in the previous section becomes clear: on the one hand, in the international context, the discipline of religious studies cannot be clearly distinguished from the theologies; on the other hand, overlaps exist with numerous other humanities and cultural studies disciplines, as well as with the social sciences. Important open access religious studies journals include: Approaching Religion* , DOAJ Journal of Global Buddhism* , DOAJ Temenos: Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion* , DOAJ International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage* , DOAJ Japanese Journal of Religious Studies *, DOAJ Journal for Religion, Film and Media *, DOAJ Entangled Religions *, DOAJ Religion and Society: Advances in Research *, DOAJ Secularism and Nonreligion , DOAJ Debates do NER *, DOAJ Zygon * (Journals with an asterisk do not levy article processing charges [APCs]) The journals listed above reflect the disciplinary and geographical spread of open access endeavours. From an international perspective, there is therefore a very great diversity of open access journals with content of relevance to religious studies – often on very specific topics. Most of these journals are published at universities and do not charge authors any publication fees. Thus, in the religious studies community the diamond open access model is more widespread than the gold open access model. In addition, there is still a large body of subscription-based journals, including, in particular, the “renowned” journals in the discipline. Some of these journals offer authors the option to make their articles open access for a fee. Mention should also be made of the Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft , the only publication to date for early-stage researchers in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). It, too, is published open access. A large number of open access journals in the field of religious studies have not yet been listed in the DOAJ. They include inter alia: Religio: Revue pro religionistiku , the Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions , the Marburg Journal of Religion and REVER: Revista de Estudos da Religião . What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 142 titles under the subject Religion: general , and the online library of open access books OAPEN listed 149 titles under Religion: general . In religious studies, the publication of books in open access has only recently gained in importance. Some publishers, for example transcript and DeGruyter , offer this option, and it has already been availed of (in addition to the print version) for many religious studies titles. The greatest challenge in this regard is considered to be the financing of the publication fees (book processing charges, BPCs), which is most likely possible within the framework of a project. Disciplin­ary Reposi­tories Both in the German-speaking area and internationally, there is currently only one disciplinary repository for religious studies . It is managed by the Specialised Information Service (FID) for the Study of Religion at Tübingen University Library. The repository can be searched and the archived content accessed via the bibliography of the study of religion RelBib, the portal of the FID for the Study of Religion (see self-archived works in RelBib ). In addition, the FID for the Study of Religion offers authors from the German-speaking area (DACH) individual support to provide green open access to their works (within the framework of a comprehensive self-archiving service ). As a low-threshold alternative, an internationally oriented self-archiving form with the possibility to upload is offered via RelBib. Depending on the field of research, other disciplinary repositories may be of relevance for authors in religious studies, for example the Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR) . Repositories with an area studies focus, for example the FID4SA-Repository for South Asian studies or MENAdoc for Middle East and Islamic studies, can also be availed of. In addition, the thematically focused repository Science and Religion Dialogue Prints (SciRePrints) is provided at the University of Latvia. SciRePrints is specifically intended for the self-archiving of publications and preprints about – or pertinent to – the dialogue between science and religion. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings With RelBib , the FID for the Study of Religion at Tübingen University Library operates an international online bibliography for the study of religion that can be used free of charge. RelBib collaborates very closely with the international bibliography for theology and religious studies Index Theologicus (IxTheo) . In RelBib, monographs, journals, journal articles and edited collections, websites, blogs, research data, and many other resources are indexed. As new titles and updates are regularly imported, RelBib offers the most up-to-date specialised information. A steadily growing number of journals of relevance to religious studies are continuously analysed at article level. As RelBib’s focus is on providing open access content, priority is given to titles with immediate and open access to full texts. Search results can be narrowed to freely accessible titles by applying the open access filter. In addition, there is also a full-text search option in RelBib. With the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform RelBib Open Journals , the FID for the Study of Religion promotes the conversion of journals or series to open access or the founding of new open access journals and series. In addition to the publishing system, the FID provides advice on these topics to interested parties beforehand and supports editors in founding new open access journals or series or in migrating existing journals or series to open access. It also offers hands-on support with technical queries. Blogs RelBib Newsfeedaggregator : the latest contributions from international blogs and podcasts of relevance to religious studies Platforms Mapping Religionswissenschaft : a project for thematic exchanges in religious studies Netzwerk un-sichtbar : a project for the transfer of religious studies knowledge to the public Databases Database of Religious History (DRH) : a collaborative open access encyclopaedia of religious cultural history The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) : a large collection of freely available statistical data from religion-related population surveys Further open access religious studies content is made available on the platforms Project Muse (as of July 2024, 293 titles: monographs in the research area “religion”) and JSTOR (as of July 2024, 34,915 titles: essays from journals and edited volumes on the subject of “religion”. Open Science in Religious Studies To date, open science endeavours have been neither very pronounced nor centrally coordinated in the small discipline of religious studies. Nonetheless, initial activities are apparent, especially in the area of open data. In 2019, with support from the DVRW, the FID for the Study of Religion conducted a survey on research data in the discipline ( FID for the studies of Religion & DVRW, 2020 ), the results of which also received attention in the religious studies community ( Koch, 2020 ). The central indexing of research data of relevance to religious studies was one of the desiderata that emerged from the survey. As a result, the targeted search for research data was introduced in RelBib. CERES (the Center for Religious Studies) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum is involved as a participating institution in the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) Consortium for the Historically Oriented Humanities, 4memory . One example of a digital humanities project for the digitisation of religious objects is DiGA – Digitization of Gandharan Artefacts , which is located at CERES. The provision and archiving of the image and object data are carried out in collaboration with the Specialized Information Service (FID) for South Asia . Comparable developments are also to be expected in the future in the other areas of open science (e.g. Hermann, 2021 ). open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Cavallin, C. (2013). Religious studies and the knowledge society: Open access as contributing to an open society. In F. Sardella, & R. Sain (Eds.), The sociology of religion in India (pp. 105–113). Abhijeet Publications. Clasquin-Johnson, M. (2008). Finding, using and creating open-access religious studies academic material on the Internet. Journal for the Study of Religion, 21 (2). https://doi.org/10.4314/jsr.v21i2.65741 Drees, W. B. (2017). Green open access for interesting contributions. Zygon, 52 (1), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12329 Drees, W. B. (2015). Publishing in a changing world. Zygon 50 (3), 559–568. https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12199 FID for the Study of Religion & DVRW (2020). Umfrage zum Thema Forschungsdaten in der Religionswissenschaft. https://relbib.de/Content/survey_results#content Frank, J., Foster, R., & Pagliari, C. (2023). Open access publishing – Noble intention, flawed reality, Social Science & Medicine, 317 , Article 115592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115592 Hermann, A. (Ed.). (2021). Experimente mit digitaler Lehre: Überlegungen und Modelle jenseits einer Defizitperspektive . Universitäts- u. Landesbibliothek Bonn. https://doi.org/10.48565/bonndoc-3 Koch, A. (2020). Religionswissenschaft und digital humanities. Verkündigung und Forschung , 65 (2), 152–158. https://doi.org/10.14315/vf-2020-650211 Petersen, A. C. (2021). Open access, the humanities, and contemplation through science. Zygon, 56 (3), 541–546. https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12736 Wildman, W. J., Bulbulia, J., Schjødt, U., & Sosis, R. (2019). Is the Open Access movement about to get real? Religion, Brain & Behavior , 9 (2), 105–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2019.159507 Content editor of this page: Mareike Heinritz, Specialised Information Service for the Study of Religion (FID Religionswissenschaft) / Tübingen University Library (Last updated: October 2024)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in Linguistics Find an introduction here. Open Access in Romance Studies Although access to digital publications is highly valued in Romance studies, open access is rather underrepresented there compared with other disciplines. Romance studies has a heterogeneous publication culture in which established models of publication and dissemination of research results play a central role. Printed journals continue to occupy a special place, and, besides journals, edited collections are an important form of publication. Publishers and independent journals as well as researchers and associations are increasingly breaking new ground in the form of open access publications and initiatives – to date, mainly in the journals area, but increasingly also in the area of monographs and edited collections. The topic of open access is becoming increasingly important in the publication culture in Romance studies, not least because of the positions and requirements of research funders. Small publishers are responsible for a substantial part of the publication output in Romance studies, and many of them now offer open access options. The information offerings and networking activities of the Specialised Information Service for Romance Studies ( FID Romanistik ) are also worthy of mention. Impetus has been forthcoming from the community through journal startups and a position paper on open access and research data ( Schöch et al., 2017 ) produced by the Digital Romance Studies Working Group ( AG Digitale Romanistik ) of the German Association of Romance Philologists ( Deutscher Romanistikverband) . The topic is also gaining traction, especially among mid-level academics, through workshops organised by the German Association of Romance Philologists and through inter-disciplinary discussions and further education programmes at graduate schools. Best-practice examples and reports of concrete experiences were presented at a workshop in 2017 in which publishers, editors, and researchers participated ( Hornung & Trapp, 2018 ). A survey of German-speaking Romance philologists ( Hornung et al., 2017 ) conducted in 2016 by the Specialised Information Service for Romance Studies ( FID Romanistik ) provided insights into the question of how open access is perceived in the discipline and what factors influence researchers when it comes to deciding whether to publish open or closed access . The survey found that the reputation of the publisher, the series, the journal, and the editors were decisive factors. Although respondents valued the high degree of dissemination and the findability of open access publications, these factors were not decisive. The survey results suggest that Impact Factors, which are of central importance in other disciplines, play hardly any role in Romance studies. A more recent survey conducted by the Specialised Information Service for Romance Studies (Schepers, 2024) suggests that awareness of open access has increased. Respondents formulated specific concerns and problems, such as the funding of open access monographs or possibilities of self-archiving works published with a publisher, while also pointing to a need for information about – and to barriers to – open access publishing. Open Access Journals As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals listed 66 entries under Romanic languages and 176 entries under French literature - Italian literature - Spanish literature - Portuguese literature . Important open access journals include: apropos [Perspektiven auf die Romania] Estudios Culturales Hispánicos (University of Regensburg) HeLix – Dossiers zur romanischen Literaturwissenschaft Horizonte – Neue Serie • Nuova Serie Romanische Studien Versants – Revista suiza de literaturas románicas (University of Bern) Zeitschrift für Katalanistik – Revista d’Estudis Catalans (German Association of Catalan Philologists) Other journals from neighbouring and superordinate fields, such as general linguistics , comparative literary studies, and the digital humanities, that are also of relevance to Romance studies include: Glossa: a journal of general linguistics HiN – Alexander von Humboldt im Netz Iberoamericana. América Latina - España - Portugal iMex. México Interdisciplinario/Interdisciplinary Mexico Miradas – Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte der Amérikas und der iberischen Halbinsel PhiN – Philologie im Netz Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics Textpraxis. Digitales Journal für Philologie Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht ZfdG - Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften Also worthy of mention are review journals such as fabula.org for Franco-Romance studies. Bibliodiversity is also apparent among open access publications that are more firmly anchored in the field of Romance studies outside Germany, especially among Latin American offerings provided by the platforms sciELO , Redalyc , AmeliCA , and Latindex ( Müller, 2020 ). Among the German-language offerings there are also early pioneer projects, in particular PhiN – Philologie im Netz , which was launched as a purely open access journal in 1997. The number of open access journals is increasing due, especially, to new periodicals such as apropos [Perspektiven auf die Romania] . By contrast, transformations of existing periodicals in Romance studies in the German-speaking area are still rare. However, the Zeitschrift für Katalanistik has a certain exemplary character because all issues are hybrid in the sense that they are made available in print for a fee and online in open access, and all older volumes dating back to the very first volume in 1988 have been retrodigitised. A similar repositioning can be seen in the case of Versants . The journal Horizonte - Neue Serie • Nuova Serie was newly founded as an independent open access publication after the discontinuation of its subscription-based predecessor, Horizonte . The founding of the open access journal Glossa in 2016 was spectacular in that it emerged from a conflict between the editorial board of the journal Lingua and the publisher Elsevier. Whereas authors in other disciplines often have to pay article processing charges (APCs) to have their works published open access, that funding model is – with a few exceptions – not common in Romance studies, where publishing is usually free of charge for authors ( diamond open access ), because many purely open access journals are run by institutes or by the editors themselves. Exceptions are hybrid journals of the major publishers in which individual articles are published open access against payment of a fee. Also of relevance is the possibility to self-archive the contributions in a repository after an embargo period of 12 months. In the case of promptus – Würzburger Beiträge zur Romanistik , for example, this is implemented by the editors. In Romance studies, it is relatively common for journals to be hosted either in-house or by local libraries, some of which are supra-regionally active. For example, the journal apropos [Perspektiven auf die Romania] is hosted by Hamburg University Press using the free software Open Journal Systems (OJS) . The French platform OpenEdition Journals hosts numerous other journals of relevance to Romance studies from various countries. Also worthy of mention are the publication service of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin, the hosting offerings of many local university libraries, and the Open Library of Humanities . What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 171 entries under the search term Romance languages and 193 entries under Romance literature ; in addition, there are the titles in the individual Romance disciplines, for example Catalan language (45 entries as of April 2024). The online library and publication platform OAPEN listed 804 titles under Romance languages and 121 titles under Romance literature as of April 2024. Overall, offerings in the area of monographic OA publications in Romance studies tend to be isolated and heterogeneous. However, the presence of the format is increasing. Yet, none of the above-mentioned platforms fully cover the broad spectrum. Examples in the area of freely available monographs and collections, which are usually published open access and in print at the same time ( "dual publishing "), include: the supplements to the journal Romanische Studien ; the series Imágenes de la diversidad funcional. Literatura, artes escénicas, visuales y virtuales , which has been published with Peter Lang since 2018; the series Aula , which has been published by de Gruyter since 2020; the offerings of the hybrid-publishing university presses , which developed open access models at an early stage; the French platform OpenEdition Books the series Open Romance Linguistics published by Language Science Press; the humanities publication series published by Open Humanities Press and Open Book Publishers ; individual titles published by diverse publishers with a Romance programme, including AVM, de Gruyter, Peter Lang, transcript and Vervuert. The panorama of these publications is extremely heterogeneous. It largely comprises new titles. In addition, there are titles that are made freely available after a certain period of time or that appear in open access as a new edition or a translation, as in the case of Joachim Küpper’s classic work Discursive "Renovatio" in Lope de Vega and Calderón . With Knowledge Unlatched , there have also been some – albeit unsuccessful – initial initiatives to "unlatch" commercial publications in partnership with several specialised publishers. As the DFG has declared open access the priority publication mode for the projects it funds, and other research funders have already made the provision of open access mandatory, a strengthening of the open access monograph in Romance studies is to be expected. However, the additional costs for free access to a monograph that arise at most traditional publishers are an obstacle to this. Extensive funding programmes do not exist at present. In individual cases, the costs may be covered by the monograph funds that have been established at many scientific institutions, by the DFG, or by foundations. In the case of third-party-funded projects, the easiest way is to include applications for the reimbursement of open access costs in the project proposal. University presses can play a complementary role, as can the offerings of non-conventional publishers listed in the overview. Disciplinary Repositories Since 2025, the Specialised Information Service for Romance Studies (FID Romanistik) has been providing a repository for Romance studies in the form of a Romance studies collection. Although technically part of the Repositorium.Hamburg , it is available for use by the Romance studies community as a whole. All articles in this collection are also listed in the search portal of the Specialised Information Service for Romance Studies. There are other repositories for sub-disciplines of Romance studies and for neighbouring disciplines – for example, Archivum Medii Aevi Digitale for medieval studies, AfricArXiv for African studies, CompaRe for general and comparative literary studies, and the Linguistik-Repository for general and comparative linguistics. LA Referencia , a network of open access repositories in Latin America, is illustrative of the distinctive repository landscape in that region. Portugal’s scholarly repositories are aggregated by RCAAP . Also of relevance are the HAL Open Science Archive , which is authoritative for the humanities and social sciences in France; the internationally established universal repository zenodo.org ; and the platforms of the local libraries. The content of the aforementioned repositories is, in part, searchable via regional and supra-regional search engines. The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine ( BASE ) can also be expediently used for searches with a specifically open access focus. An overview of relevant repositories is provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Useful Offerings There are other useful offerings both with a specifically Romance studies orientation and with a transdisciplinary orientation. The local libraries offer their publication and advisory services to researchers at the respective institutions. Graduate schools are also increasingly arranging advisory and training offerings. The Specialised Information Service for Romance Studies ( FID Romanistik ) offers a discipline-specific information and advisory service . Via the project website, basic information is presented on open access, especially on legal issues. When doing so, concrete application scenarios from publishing practice in Romance studies are discussed – for example, regarding open access publishing and self-archiving, the role of translations, and publishers and repositories in different countries. Personal advice is also offered. The Romanistik-Blog features information on current topics, legal issues, funding conditions, as well as specific offerings and projects. The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now also provide open access content relevant to Romance studies. Open Science in Romance Studies The free accessibility and reusability of primary texts, images, and research data; the machine readability of texts; and procedures such as text and data mining are also subjects of increasing discussion. Platforms with a corresponding agenda from the Romance-language countries include, for example Gallica (France), the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (Spain), and the Biblioteca Italiana (Italy). A recent example relating to the reusability of images is a decision by the Biblioteca Nacional de España that resulted in images from its holdings being made available free of charge since March 2020 for use in scholarly publications. Of note in the area of research data is the consortium Text+ from the context of the Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (National Research Data Infrastructure; NFDI), which is developing an infrastructure for language- and text-based data and is initially focusing on digital collections, lexical resources, and editions. Also of relevance to Romance studies are general humanities projects such as CLARIAH-DE and its predecessor projects CLARIN and DARIAH-DE , including the research data repositories DARIAH-DE Repository and the TextGrid Repository . An initiative specific to Romance studies is the directory of research data on the information platform romanistik.de . The Specialised Information Service for Romance Studies (FID Romanistik) provides an information and support service . The series of blog posts published since 2020 by the Digital Romance Studies Working Group (AG Digitale Romanistik ) places a special focus on the sustainable handling of research data in accordance with the FAIR principles. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Hornung, C., von Deylen, W., Tannous, I., & Wonke-Stehle, J. (2017, February 9). Auswertung der Umfrage des FID Romanistik zu Open Access in der Romanistik. Romanistik-Blog - Das Blog des Fachinformationsdienstes. https://blog.fid-romanistik.de/2017/02/09/auswertung-der-umfrage-des-fid-romanistik-zu-open-access-in-der-romanistik/ Hornung, C., & Trapp, M. (2018). Open Access-Publizieren in der Romanistik: Standortbestimmung und Perspektiven. Romanistik-Blog - Das Blog des Fachinformationsdienstes. https://blog.fid-romanistik.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/OA-Workshop-Protokoll-SUBHH-11-2017.pdf Müller, C. (2020). Elektronisches Publizieren und Open Access: Die Perspektive Lateinamerikas. B. i. t. Online, 23 (4), 374–380. https://www.b-i-t-online.de/heft/2020-04-fachbeitrag-mueller.pdf Schepers, L. (2024). Umfrageergebnisse: Romanistisches Publizieren in frühen Karrierephasen. Romanistik-Blog – Das Blog des Fachinformationsdienstes. blog.fid-romanistik.de/2024/05/30/umfrageergebnisse-romanistisches-publizieren-in-fruehen-karrierephasen/ Schöch, C., Rißler-Pipka, N., Mühlschlegel, U., Gerstenberg, A., & Ehrlicher, H. (2017). Open Access und Forschungsdaten. Ein Positionspapier der AG Digitale Romanistik. In Mitteilungsheft Frühjahr 2017 (pp. 50–59). Deutscher Romanistenverband. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3834226 Further Reading Agnetta, M. (2019). Wie closed darf open access sein? / Eine Momentaufnahme der Publikationskultur in der deutschen Romanistik. Digitalkulturen/Cultures Numériques. Herausforderungen Und Interdisziplinäre Forschungsperspektiven/Enjeux et Perspectives Interdisciplinaire , 16, 33–50. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839442159-002 [ Open Access Preprint at Romanistik-Blog ] Graf, D., Fadeeva, Y., & Falkenstein-Feldhoff, K. (Eds.). (2020). Bücher im Open Access: Ein Zukunftsmodell für die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften? Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/72237 Hornung, C (2022). Open Access in der Romanistik – Coffee Lecture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBRLDzIeLLc Nonnenmacher, K. (2015). Die Zeitschrift als Idee. Einladung an Leser und Autoren. Romanische Studien, 1 , 5–24. https://www.romanischestudien.de/index.php/rst/issue/view/1 Schöch, C. (2020). Was heißt und zu welchem Ende publiziert man im Open Access? Open Access Week 2020, Universitätsbibliothek Trier. https://christofs.github.io/publ/#/ | Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RQy4wtYls0 Söllner, K., & Mittermaier, B. (2017). Praxishandbuch Open Access . de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110494068 Bearbeitung der Inhalte der Seite: Christoph Hornung (Stand: Juni 2024)....