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Open Access Arguments and Reservations

Intro The advantages of open access Source: Strauß, H. & Becklas Dorow, C. (2026). 10 reasons for open access, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/72493 ( CC BY 4.0 ) The key takeaways from this article are 1 There are numerous arguments in favour of open access. 2 However, there are also doubts and reservations. 3 Many reservations can be dispelled with good counter-arguments. Arguments for Open Access Faster and Cost-Free Access to Scholarly Information Information published open access is immediately accessible to, and easily findable online by, all researchers, students, and professionals, and by the interested public worldwide. Open access contributions are often published more quickly than in the conventional publishing system. Open access works are available to everyone, irrespective of financial resources and research location, because, unlike closed access works, they may be used free of charge. Therefore, open access can contribute to reducing the digital divide in research. Fair Use of Taxpayers’ Money, Research Funders’ Guidelines Many research funding organisations have incorporated open access provisions into their funding guidelines. The grant agreements stipulate that scientific publications that result from funded projects must be made available to the public in open access and must be reusable . In this way, it is ensured that results from research projects that are publicly funded with taxpayers’ money can also be used by the public. Open Access to Results of Publicly Funded Research Through open access , the results of publicly funded research are freely available online and reusable . Hence, research performing organisations do not have to buy them (back) from publishers. Greater Visibility and Citation Frequency of Publications Open access contributions have much greater visibility than contribu­tions that are not freely available online. Their cost-free availability worldwide leads to increased use, which in turn leads to higher citation frequency. A number of empirical studies have shown that open access publications enjoy a sometimes considerable citation advantage com­pared with closed access publications ( Piwowar et al., 2018; Langham-Putrow et al., 2021 ). Other, older studies on the open access citation advantage can be found in an overview provided by SPARC Europe. The main advantages of open access are often described with the terms visibility and impact . Visibility refers to the probability that a publication will be noticed and disseminated; impact refers to the long-term reception of the publication and the incorporation of the results into further research work and scholarly debate. Together, visibility and impact contribute to the reputation of authors and their institutions. Promotion of International and Inter-Disciplinary Cooperation Open access publications promote the global networking of research activities. Moreover, the free availability and reusability of open access content worldwide enables people in poorer countries to access and use relevant scientific information. Open access publishers that are funded through publication fees often waive these charges in the case of researchers from poorer countries. The timely international publication of research findings promotes cooperation among researchers and accelerates the research process. Moreover, authors of open access publications receive immediate feedback from their peers worldwide. Authors Retain the Right to Exploit their Works Open access publications enjoy the same copyright protections as other publications. In publishing agreements, authors grant the publishers only a non-exclusive right of use. Thus, they retain the right to exploit their works themselves. Moreover, open licences such as Creative Commons licences enable authors to specify further rights of use themselves, to share their content under internationally standardised terms and conditions, and to keep further publication options open. Compared with transferring all exploi­tation rights to the publisher, which is the norm in conventional publi­shing agreements, open access thus has clear advantages for authors. Long-Term Availability of the Documents When documents are self-archived in repositories , their long-term preservation is assured. This is not the case when they are made available on the author’s personal website. Long-term access to the text is guaranteed technically by assigning a persistent identifier (e.g. DOI, URN) that is independent of the concrete storage location of the document. As yet, many scholarly authors do not archive their works reliably and on a long-term basis. As a consequence, the results are lost to their research institutions, and responsibility for their long-term preservation lies solely with the publishers. However, parallel storage in open access repositories helps to ensure long-term accessibility. Because of the usage licences under which they are made available, genuinely open access publications can also be archived by third parties without separate permission. This is a further safeguard against loss. Promotion of Research Efficiency Repositories such as arXiv make research findings available as preprints before peer review and formal publication. In this way, research results enter into circulation more quickly and can be discussed and assessed. Swan (2010) attributed the high citation figures of open access publications to, among other things, their rapid availability. She termed this phenomenon the early advantage . Improvement of the Information Supply and a Way Out of the Serials Crisis Open access supports the information supply technically because the possibility of direct online access means that procurement effort and time losses are avoided. On the other hand, in view of the growing share of freely accessible publications, it is becoming increasingly easier to quickly obtain comprehensive information on the current state of research. Since the mid-1990s, rising costs of subscriptions to closed access journals have placed a burden on library budgets. This has led to an undersupply of scholarly journals – the so-called serials crisis . As a result, many journals are no longer available from libraries. Because open access aims to make scholarly knowledge freely available and reusable worldwide, such supply gaps do not occur in the case of open access publications. Advantages in Networked, IT-Supported Work Environments Because of their restricted accessibility and reusability, closed access publications are not well suited to the demands of digital science, which relies on networking, the enrichment of information, automated analy­ses, and text and data mining. By contrast, open access enables barrier-free access to information within networked research environments and workflows, and it is therefore an important infrastructural prerequisite for digital science. Establishing Priority When authors publish a work, they announce a research result, identify themselves with it, and vouch for the content and the scholarly quality of the publication. The publication date is of essential importance in terms of documenting scientific priority, for example in the case of a discovery or an invention ( Werner, 2010 ). Preprints, in particular, offer various advantages when it comes to establishing priority. Authors can save time by making a preprint version of the work available in an open access repository. In this way, they avoid priority problems in the event of the rejection of the manuscript by a journal and the further delay that this causes. Good Findability via Search Engines and Indexing Services Because open access publications are available without access restric­tions, the full texts are also findable via search engines such as Google or Google Scholar. As a rule, they are indexed by means of metadata, abstracts, and keywords, which is why they are findable via international search engines and library catalogues immediately after publication. Thus, optimal visibility and scientific impact can be achieved. Moreover, the relevance of these publications for specific research questions can be directly examined. This also contributes to transparency in science and scholarship. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Dispelling Reservations Quality Concerns Reservation: Lack of Reputation Some authors fear that open access contributions will not receive proper recognition, which could negatively impact performance evaluation and applications for funding and could therefore be detrimental to their academic careers ( Olejniczak & Wilson, 2020 ). One possible reason given for this is that open access journals are not well established and that they lack reputation. Counter-Arguments This fear, which was articulated especially in the early days of open access publishing , is visibly waning because the reputation of scholarly journals generally increases over time. By now, the once new open access journals have published several volumes and are well established. In 2012, PLOS ONE became the first open access journal to receive the highest share of all citations (1.3% based on Web of Science data); it replaced the closed access journal Procee­dings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) at the top of the table ( Geschuhn et al., 2013 ). Moreover, quality concerns relate only to one of the two open access strategies – gold open access . In the case of green open access , the work in question has usually been published in a closed access journal and is then self-archived in a freely accessible repository. Hence, concerns on the part of the author that their reputation will suffer as a result of publishing open access are unfounded in this case. Because these reservations do not relate to open access per se, but rather to the status of relatively new journals, they are also unfounded when established closed access journals are converted to open access. Reservation: Lack of Quality Assurance Although only about a quarter of open access journals are (partially) funded through article processing charges , it is sometimes alleged that these charges corrupt quality assurance. It is argued that because journals that use this model earn money from every published article, quality assurance through rigorous peer review is less important to them than revenue from article processing charges ( Conticello, 2021 ). Open-Access-Mythencheck: "Open Access hat nicht die gleiche Qualität" Quelle: Strauß, H.; Hauss, J.; Rücknagel, J. (2023): Open-Access-Mythencheck: "Open Access hat nicht die gleiche Qualität". Open-Access-Mythencheck, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) et al., 2023. https://doi.org/10.5446/62322 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) The fact is ignored that closed access journals also use article processing charges and are therefore also subject to the same mechanisms. Moreover, studies have regularly revealed questionable quality assurance at highly renowned closed access journals. Generally speaking, there is no connection between the reputation of a journal and the underlying business model. Thus, high and low quality can be found equally among commercial and non-commercial publishers and journals, and among fee-based and cost-free offerings. Furthermore, like the editors of any other journals, the editors of open access journals are interested in high-quality contributions because high quality naturally attracts a broader range of authors and low quality is a competitive disadvantage. Hence, numerous open access journals have within a short period of time achieved Journal Impact Factors comparable to those of closed access journals ( Björk & Solomon, 2012 ). The open access movement has even contributed to the testing and establishment of new quality assurance procedures for scholarly publications, for example open peer review and altmetrics . Reservation: Repositories Do Not Have Quality Standards There are also concerns regarding the quality of the documents deposited in disciplinary and institutional repositories. The versions of articles made available in institutional and disciplinary reposi­tories are often limited to post-prints . In other words, self-archiving (green open access) constitutes additional access to a conventional publication, where the original version has already successfully undergone peer review and has been accepted for publication by a journal or a publisher, and thus the quality of the contribution can be considered assured. Occasionally, uncertainties may also arise regarding the authenticity of documents made available in reposito­ries – for example, uncertainty as to whether a document actually has already been formally published with a publisher, or as to how it should be cited. The latter question is easily answered: When citing the work, the bibliographic details of the publisher’s version are used and are supplemented with a link to the open access version. The quality of preprints and working papers is subject to discussion within the discipline and to self-regulation mechanisms in the scientific community. Final theses, for example post-doctoral and doctoral dissertations, usually meet high quality standards. Findability Issues Reservation: Inferior Findability of Open Access Publications Authors of open access content want to be sure that their works are findable and readable, and that they will remain substantively unchanged in the long term. Counter-Arguments Repository operators and the editors of open access journals take account of these requirements. To ensure findability, the documents themselves are not only stored securely and in the long term, they are also linked to searchable metadata. In repositories, the request and retrieval of metadata is ensured via an OAI-PMH interface. As a rule, both open access journals and open access repositories make standardised metadata available, so that the findability of open access publications is at least as good as that of closed access publications. Moreover, open access publications can be self-archived in different locations. This means that open access publications are found, for example, via search engines such as Google or Google Scholar. Moreover, there is also a search engine especially for open access publications, namely, the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) , which also harvests texts from repositories. Long-Term Preservation of Documents Reservation: Open Access Publications Are Not Available in the Long Term It frequently happens that documents that are found on the Internet are no longer findable after a few weeks, months, or years. This common experience gives rise to concern about the long-term availability of the content. Counter-Arguments Closed access and open access documents are equally affected by the problem of digital volatility. To ensure the long-term availability of the documents, it is expedient for publishers, journals, or repositories to cooperate with national libraries or other providers of long-term preservation services. With regard to long-term preservation in the context of providing open access to publications that have been formally published with a publisher (green open access), it is preferable to self-archive the works in a repository rather than depositing them on a website. Compared with using a repository, making works available to the public on web­sites is not secure in the long term. If the author changes organisation, or if changes are made to the website, this usually leads to the loss of the informa­tion in the short or medium term. By contrast, repositories ensure long-term preservation of their documents, inter alia through the long-term affiliation of the repository with a research providing organisation, the assignment of persistent identifiers such as DOIs , or the conversion of documents to a format suitable for long-term preservation. The DINI Certificate for repositories also includes requirements for the long-term availability of documents. Legal Reservations Reservation: Exploitation Rights Are Difficult to Handle Some authors foresee difficulties in handling their exploitation rights when self-archiving their works in repositories. This concern relates to potentially competing exploitation rights in cases where a contribution has already been published in a journal, or where publication is intended at a later date. Moreover, authors want to retain control over the later reuse of their work by others. Counter-Arguments These and similar reservations can usually be dispelled. Information and recommendations in this regard can be found under Legal Questions . Financial Viability of the Author-Pays Model Reservation: Open Access Is More Expensive A frequently discussed criticism of gold open access is the cost. Is the author-pays model actually financially viable ( Chiodelli, 2021 )? This also raises the question of the costs that open access offerings actually involve, and how these costs compare with the costs of individual publications in the traditional publishing system. Open Access Mythos: "Open Access ist viel zu teuer" Quelle: Strauß, H.; Hauss, J.; Rücknagel, J. (2023): Open-Access-Mythencheck: "Open Access ist viel zu teuer". Open-Access-Mythencheck, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) et al., 2023. https://doi.org/10.5446/62322 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Counter-Arguments It is not possible to give an unequivocal answer here. The costs of organising peer review are probably comparable in both cases ( Grossmann & Brembs, 2021 ). However, compared with the traditional publishing system, the concrete cost structures of open access publishers are very different and very difficult to compare. Taking all economic factors into account, Houghton (2009) concluded that open access was most strongly associated with economic benefits and was therefore the most cost-effective mechanism for scholarly publishing – irrespective of whether it was gold or green. Moreover, various studies have shown that, in overall economic terms, open access can lead indirectly to savings in access costs, labour costs, and transaction costs ( Fell, 2019 ). It should be noted that many open access journals do not levy article processing charges ( platinum open access ). Moreover, these charges are often paid from institutional funds or by research funding organisations, or they are part of efforts to return control of the publication process to the scientific community ( Fair Open Access ). There is no doubt that the cost burden at individual universities and non-university research providing organisations is changing. When the financial burden is shifted from users to authors, research-intensive institutions with a high publication output have to pay more, relatively speaking, than universities and non-university research organisations whose members publish less ( Swan & Houghton, 2012 ). Reservation: Article Processing Charges Are Too High Not all researchers find it easy to pay article processing charges from their research funds or other sources. This touches on social, research, and university policy issues ( Olejniczak & Wilson, 2020 ): On the one hand, there are authors who are not affiliated with a scientific institution, and on the other hand, there are authors who belong to an institution that subsidises article processing charges. Humanities and social science disciplines are usually less well funded than the STM disciplines and cannot rely on cross-subsidisation. Authors from developing countries cannot usually afford to pay the article processing charges. Solutions for these problems are sometimes found when universities, for example with support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and its programme Open Access Publication Funding , establish publication funds from which open access publication charges incurred by their members can be paid. Agreements concluded by consortia of institutions with open access publishers to obtain discounts for authors are one way of reducing publication charges. Crowdfunding models whereby institutions or their libraries come together to jointly finance publications have also become established (see Business Models for Journals ). An overview of alternative open access models is provided by Oberländer and Dreher (2019) . Most open access publishers and journals now grant authors from developing countries special conditions and fee waivers (Lawson, 2015) . Time Expended by Researchers Reservation: Open access is time-consuming Researchers want to spend as little time as possible on self-archiving their works. In this connection, there are reservations with regard to the time that self-archiving takes. Open Access Mythos: "Open Access ist zeitaufwändig" Quelle: Strauß, H.; Hauss, J.; Rücknagel, J. (2023): Open-Access-Mythencheck: "Open Access ist zeitaufwändig". Open-Access-Mythencheck, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) et al., 2023. https://doi.org/10.5446/62325 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Counter-Arguments Anyone who, besides practically carrying out self-archiving, also engages with the technology of good archiving, will generally invest more time at first. Professionally maintained disciplinary and institutional repositories offer ways of getting around this. Libraries are increasingly responding to the justified concerns about the time that self-archiving takes by offering university members the option of delegating the task to the university repositories. References Björk, B.-C., & Solomon, D. (2012). Open access versus subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact. BMC Medicine , 10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-10-73 Chiodelli, F. (2021, January 27). Why we should stop publishing in open-access journals with article processing charges. AESOP Young Academics . https://aesop-youngacademics.net/blog/why-we-should-stop-publishing-in-open-access-journals-with-article-processing-charges Conticello, S. (2021). Open access pay-for-review option — ethical question. Nature , 590(36). https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00271-0 Fell, M. J. (2019). The economic impacts of open science: A rapid evidence assessment. Publications , 7(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7030046 Geschuhn, K., Palzenberger, M., & Schimmer, R. (2013). Open Access in Zahlen: Der Umbruch in der Wissenschaftskommunikation als Herausforderung für Bibliotheken. Zfbb - Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie , 60(5), 244–250. https://doi.org/10.3196/186429501360532 Grossmann, A., & Brembs, B. (2021). Current market rates for scholarly publishing services. F1000Research , 10(20). https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.27468.2 Houghton, J. (2009). Open access - what are the economic benefits? SSRN . https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1492578 Langham-Putrow, A., Bakker, C., & Riegelman, A. (2021). Is the open access citation advantage real? A systematic review of the citation of open access and subscription-based articles. PLOS ONE , 16(9). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253129 Lawson, S. (2015). Fee waivers for open access journals. Publications , 3(3), 155–167. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications3030155 Oberländer, A., & Dreher, L. (2019, September 30). Jenseits von APC: Überblick über alternative Open-Access-Modelle . Open-Access-Tage 2019, Hannover. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3490737 Olejniczak, A. J., & Wilson, M. J. (2020). Who’s writing open access (OA) articles? Characteristics of OA authors at Ph.D.-granting institutions in the United States. Quantitative Science Studies , 1(4), 1429–1450. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00091 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, e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375 Swan, A. (2010). The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to date. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268516/ Swan, A., & Houghton, J. (2012). Going for Gold? The costs and benefits of Gold Open Access for UK research institutions: further economic modelling. Report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group. https://repository.jisc.ac.uk/610/2/Modelling_Gold_Open_Access_for_institutions_-_final_draft3.pdf Werner, P. (2010). Berichtswelten. Zum Streit um Patente und Prioritäten in der Vitaminforschung. In K. Fuchs-Kittowski, H. Laitko, H. Parthey, & W. Umstätter (Eds.), Wissenschaft und digitale Bibliothek. Vol. 2. (pp. 195–205). http://www.wissenschaftsforschung.de/Jahrbuch1998.pdf#page=195 Further Reading Bautista-Puig, N., Lopez-Illescas, C., de Moya-Anegon, F., Guerrero-Bote, V., & Moed, H. F. (2020). Do Journals Flipping to Gold Open Access Show an OA Citation or Publication Advantage? Scientometrics, 124(3), 2551–2575. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03546-x . Dehdarirad, T., & Karlsson, K. (2021). News Media Attention in Climate Action: Latent Topics and Open Access. Scientometrics, 126 (9), 8109–8128. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04095-7 . Eger, T., Mertens, A., & Scheufen, M. (2021). Publication Cultures and the Citation Impact of Open Access. Managerial and Decision Economics, 42 (8), 1980-1998. https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.3429 . Hopf, D., Dellmann, S., Hauschke, C., & Tullney, M. (2022). Wirkungen von Open Access. Literaturstudie über empirische Arbeiten 2010-2021 . Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB). https://doi.org/10.34657/7666 Kuchma, I. (2021). Open Science Myths and Misconceptions . TWAS UNESCO webinar. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4883635 Schultz, T. (2021). All the research that’s fit to print: Open access and the news media. Quantitative Science Studies , 2 (3), 828–844. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00139...

Open Access Basics: How to Publish and What to Consider?

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Open Access Books

Intro Open Access in 60 Sekunden Quelle: Brinken, H., Hauss, J. & Rücknagel, J. (2021). Open Access in 60 Sekunden, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/50831 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) The key takeaways from this article are 1 Open access has developed into a highly dynamic field in the area of book publications in recent years. 2 As the publication landscape in the area of scholarly books is very heterogeneous, the established open access models for journals cannot simply be transferred. 3 An efficient infrastructure with various publication and funding options has now also developed in the area of open access books. A Dynamic Field Open access for books – this long-neglected topic has gained enormously in importance in recent years. Until well into the 2010s, the open access activities of research funders , libraries and authors focused mainly on the area of scholarly journals. However, the stakeholders in the scholarly publishing system have now also recognised the enormous potential of open access for books, and have initiated transformation measures ( Bargheer et al., 2017; Ferwerda et al., 2017; Stone & Marques, 2018 ). This is impressively demonstrated by the numerous studies and projects conducted at national and international level; by improved funding structures and new funding models ; and by dynamic initiatives, working groups, and discussion forums. open-access.network (2021) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Scholarly Books open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Monographs, Collections and Co. You can find a map of terms on open access and books here (in German). Book publications still play an important role, especially in the humanities and social sciences . The text-oriented disciplines favour the more extensive book format in the interests of long argument , where the theoretical approach must be comprehensively set out. Furthermore, the results of inter- and transdiscipli­nary research can be published only to a limited extent in the research report format possible in journal articles. Common types of scholarly books are monographs, edited collections, and conference proceedings. As a rule, scholarly books appear in different editions: as a digital publication, or e-book, and, in addition, as a print volume. They are published either in a series or as a single publication. Substantively and technologically, a large proportion of open access books are digital counterparts of print books. In addition to their content, they also usually contain navigation elements such as tables of contents and figures. However, providing the work in digital form enables in-depth content analysis through multiple apparatuses (footnotes, endnotes, critical editions), as well as enrichment through links to further stocks of knowledge, such as Wikipedia, specialised databases, or primary sources and digitisations. In addition, the e-book format allows the incorporation of research data, virtual research environments, and dynamic objects such as scripts, visualisations or software. What Are Open Access Books? A book is open access when access to the e-book is not restricted by licence or payment barriers, but rather it is available free of charge and re-usable in the long term immediately upon publication. Publishers of open access books can earn revenue through publication fees ( book processing charges, BPCs ) and the sale of the print edition ( dual publishing ), which is often produced using digital print-on-demand technology. Other publishers finance the basic costs of their open access segment via crowdfunding (e.g., Knowledge Unlatched, trans­formative agreements negotiated by consortia) or institutional memberships (e.g., Open Book Publishers [OBP], the Open Library of Humanities [OLH], Language Science Press). As in the case of open access journals , authors and editors of edited collections should not have to grant exclusive rights of use to the publishers or publication platforms. For licensing purposes, it is recommended to use an open Creative Commons licence , such as CC BY or CC BY-SA. Studies suggest that books published in open access gain a larger and more diverse readership ( Lucraft, 2021 ). Besides being made available in open access immediately upon publication ( gold open access ), books, too, can be self-archived in an open access repository ( green open access ; see Green and Gold ). Open Access Books in Specific Subjects Find out here how common open access books are in individual disciplines. Common Myths There are still some common myths about open access publishing. The Open Access Books Toolkit helps dispelling them. Open Access Helpdesk Our Open Access Helpdesk is happy to help with all questions open access. Serials Crisis and Monograph Crisis You Would Like to Know More About the History of Open Access? We have gathered the most important milestones for you here. The reasons why open access for books was neglected for many years date back to the beginnings of the open access movement . Sparked by the serials crisis in the 1990s, the movement emerged in the natural sciences, where book publications traditionally play at most a marginal role. It was only in the mid-2000s that the advent of a monograph crisis ( see Herb, 2015 ) precipitated by the serials crisis became the subject of increasing discussion. Rising book prices, gaps in the supply of scholarly literature in the libraries, and authors who during the publication process performed more and more tasks themselves yet still had to pay some­times high publication cost subsidies: the problems of closed access now became evident in the area of scholarly books. Open Access Books Versus Open Access Journals Against the backdrop of the monograph crisis and the increasing establishment of open access in the area of scholarly journals, calls for open access in the humanities and social sciences also became louder. However, compared with scholarly journals, the publication landscape in the area of books has a number of particularities, the most important of which will be mentioned here (see also Snijder, 2019; Open Access Books Toolkit, 2020 ): In the humanities and in parts of the social sciences, an important role is played by small and medium-sized book publishers that are highly regarded in their specialist areas. Close relationships between authors and publishers are not uncommon. Both groups have in part adopted attitudes to open access that range from wait-and-see to critical, also because the partici­pants in this setting find it harder to maintain the necessary competencies in the rapidly changing publishing landscape. For example, knowledge of the self-archiving rights of authors is sometimes lacking, and authors often have to negotiate with publishers to secure their rights to self-archive their works in a repository . In contrast to scholarly journals, print editions of books are of continuing importance despite generally declining sales figures, and are desired not least by the authors themselves. The dissemination channels and reception processes continue to be geared towards the processing of physical and fee-based objects. Not all books are alike: they range from unostentatious edited collections and conference proceedings, through elaborately designed several-hundred-page monographs, to experimental, multimedia-enriched publication projects. Submission, peer-review, and editorial processes are less standardised than in the area of journals. Especially in the German-speaking area, responsibility for quality assurance lies with editors or publishing house staff (editorial review). The costs of publishing open access books vary greatly. However, because of the larger size of the works, publishing costs are, as a rule, higher than those for articles in open access journals. Furthermore, certain book types, such as handbooks, lexica, or editions, require elaborate editorial processes that are factored in by the publishers. This does not mean, however, that open access books are less cost-efficient than open access journals. In the case of the high-priced open access journals of commercial publishers, the price per page is even several times higher than that of the overwhelming majority of book projects. All these factors make it clear that in order to develop their full potential, the models and tools developed for journals must be adapted to the specific requirements of open access books. This is true not least with a view to developing sustainable business models for small and medium-sized publishers (see also the international project Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs, COPIM ), building suitable publication infrastructures, and developing adequate funding instruments. Both the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) have recently drawn up programmes to address these challenges (BMBF: Richtlinie zur Förderung von Projekten zur Beschleunigung der Transformation zu Open Access [Directive on the Promotion of Projects to Accelerate the Transformation to Open Access] , 2020; DFG: Funding Programme: Open Access Publication Funding , from 2021 onwards). open-access.network (2021) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Journals Find an introduction here. Open Access and Research Funders Find an introduction here. Why is Open Access so Complicated with Books? The Open Access Books Toolkit explains how open access books and journals differ. Zukunftsmusik oder State of the Art – Experimentelle Formate für Bücher?" Bericht zur Erhebung" [Pipe Dream or State of the Art – Experimental Formats for Books?] The report summarises key results of a survey conducted within the framework of the project open-access.network. Services for Books Video zum Publizieren von Open-Access-Büchern Quelle: Stern, N. (2020). Publishing your book in Open Access?, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/52108 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Working Group Universitätsverlage Learn more about the members and principles of the working group on university publishers. ScholarLed Learn more about the members and principles of the ScholarLed initiative. Practical Tip Valuable information about community-led publication infrastructures for monographs – for example a report on resources, technical workflows, tools, and platforms – can be found on the website of the COPIM project. Although numerous challenges in transforming books to open access have yet to be mastered, authors already have a wide range of options when it comes to publishing an open access book. Many established publishers have incorpora­ted open access models into their portfolios, and offer gold open access publi­cations using CC licences. Publishers are often also willing to discuss the possi­bility of self-archiving a work in an open access repository after an embargo period (green open access). The fear frequently voiced by publishers that open access leads to serious shortfalls in the sales of print editions has been refuted in various studies ( Graf et al., 2020; Snijder, 2019; Collins & Milloy, 2016 ). Academic presses operated by universities or their libraries are an affordable and high-quality alternative to commercial publishers. The majority of the German-language university presses have joined together in the Arbeits­gemeinschaft der Universitätsverlage (working group of the German-language university presses). They have collaboratively produced a variety of materials on publishing books in open access, including a paper on quality standards ( AG Universitätsverlage, 2018 ) that is also helpful when examining an open access offering and choosing a publisher. And finally, as in the case of journals, there are now a number of publishing initiatives founded by scholars and scientists (e.g., the consortium ScholarLed ). These initiatives are committed to fair open access and stand out because they demonstrate a high degree of transparency with regard to their business models ( see Nordhoff, 2018; Barnes & Gatti, 2020 ). Scholarly books are now increasingly published via institutional publishing platforms ( Open Monograph Press [OMP] , PubPub , Janeway ). These platforms do not use publishing house business models, but rather are funded as a common good, which entails specific challenges. Funding Possibilities In order to relieve the financial burden on authors and editors, many institu­tions now make specific funds available for open access books. Publication funds are also being established at federal state level in Germany. The DFG funding programme Open Access Publication Funding , which was established in 2021, grants institutions an allowance of up to 5,000 euros towards the costs of the open access publication of books resulting from DFG-funded projects. The same amount can be drawn down annually for book publications via project-related publication expenses within the framework of DFG project funding. In addition, DFG publication grants can be awarded for editions of primary texts and manuscript material as well as for works of exceptional scientific importance. For some time now, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) have had dedicated programmes in place for funding open access books. Via the Open Access Monograph Bursary for early career researchers in digital humanities launched by the EU Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) in 2021, up to 7,000 euros per book can be made available. Video zur Finanzierung von Open-Access-Monographien Quelle: Brinken, H. (2020). Finanzierung von Open-Access-Monographien, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/49535 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Finding Open Access Books Practical Tip Numerous search engines specialise in open access publications and provide free access to full texts There are also special search services for finding open access books. You can find an overview in our Practical Tip for finding open access literature (in German). Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) DOAB is the central data base for open access books, searchable by subject. Open access books are indexed at many locations and are often searchable in the usual databases and search engines. The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) , which also enables a targeted search for books or book chapters, specialises in open access content. In addition, open access books can also be easily found via the popular search engines, for example, Google Scholar. An important role in relation to findability and visibility is played by the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) , the central database for open access books, which can be searched by subject, language, and publisher. The metadata of books indexed in DOAB are harvested for inclusion in diverse library catalogues. The combined online library and publication platform OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) as well as disciplinary repositories for the humanities and social sciences, such as media/rep/ and SSOAR , are suitable for searching for open access books. In addition, the discipline-specific pages on open-access.network offer an introduction. Conclusion and Outlook For decades, open access for books was systematically implemented only by a very small number of protagonists, and thus remained a peripheral phenome­non. Although these pioneers recognised the scientific potential of open access for book-friendly disciplines at an early stage, comprehensive practices, approaches, and providers were lacking. However, although there is still a need to catch up, the area of open access books is now highly dynamic: Extensive studies (e.g., in projects such as COPIM and OPERAS-P ) are being conducted, publication funds are being established or expanded, new business models are being developed, and new publishing projects are being initiated. Moreover, networks like the Open Access Books Network , ENABLE! , or the Focus Group Open Access Books are being founded; manuals are being produced and recommendations are being formulated ( see Adema, 2019; Godel et al., 2020 ); and information platforms, such as the Open Access Books Toolkit initiated by OAPEN, are being created. Further impulses for the transformation of scholarly books to open access are to be expected from the 20 projects to promote the acceleration of the transformation to open access that are being funded by the BMBF from 2021 onwards. Select Projects and Initiatives for Networking COPIM OPERAS-P Open Access Books Network ENABLE! Fokus Group "Open Access Books" Feel free to discuss developments in Open Access Books with experts. Focus Group "Open Access Monograph Funds" Feel free to discuss development in Open Access Monograph Funds with experts. References Adema, J. (2019). Towards a roadmap for open access monographs . Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3238545 Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Universitätsverlage. (2018). Qualitätsstandards für Open-Access-Monografien und -Sammelbände (Version 1). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3562239 Bargheer, M., Dogan, Z. M., Horstmann, W., Mertens, M., & Rapp, A. (2017). Unlocking the digital potential of scholarly monographs in 21st century research. LIBER Quarterly , 27 (1), 194–211. http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10174 Barnes, L. & Gatti, R. (2020, May 28). The cost of open access books: A publisher writes. Open Book Publishers. https://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/the-cost-of-open-access-books-a-publisher-writes/ Collins, E., & Milloy, C. (2016). OAPEN-UK final report: A five-year study into open access monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences (p. 94). https://oapen.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/7a65d73f1087444d80807833a320fa36.pdf Ferwerda, E., Pinter, F., & Stern, N. (2017). A landscape study on open access and monographs: Policies, funding and publishing in eight European countries . Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.815932 Godel, R., Herb, U., Hillenkötter, K., Holzer, Angela, Nordhoff, S., Schäffler, H., Siegert, O., & Arbeitsgruppe “Wissenschaftliches Publikationssystem” der Schwerpunktinitiative „Digitale Information“ der Allianz der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen. (2020). Förderung wissenschaftlicher Buchpublikationen im Open Access (Open-Access-Bücher): Standards und Richtlinien für die Gestaltung infrastruktureller Rahmenbedingungen und die Vergabe von Fördermitteln durch wissenschaftliche Einrichtungen: Handreichung der AG Wissenschaftliches Publikationssystem im Rahmen der Schwerpunktinitiative „Digitale Information“ der Allianz der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen . 13 p. https://doi.org/10.3249/ALLIANZOA.014 Graf, D., Fadeeva, Y., & Falkenstein-Feldhoff, K., (Eds.) (2020). Bücher im Open Access. Ein Zukunftsmodell für die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften? Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://www.doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/72237 Herb, U. (2015). Open Science in der Soziologie: Eine interdisziplinäre Bestandsaufnahme zur offenen Wissenschaft und eine Untersuchung ihrer Verbreitung in der Soziologie. Schriften zur Informationswissenschaft 67. Verlag Werner Hülsbusch. https://doi.org/10.22028/D291-23737 Lucraft, M. (2021, March 3). Open Access to academic books creates larger, more diverse and more equitable readerships. LSE Impact Blog . https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/03/03/open-access-to-academic-books-creates-larger-more-diverse-and-more-equitable-readerships/ Nordhoff, S. (2018). Cookbook for open access books . Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1286925 Open Access Books Toolkit (2020, October 29). The difference between an open access book and an open access journal . https://oabooks-toolkit.org/the-oabooks-landscape/1323435-oa-books-vs-oa-journals;jsessionid=08F1DF2737084E6DAD2E12BE59C55FD0 Snijder, R. (2019). The deliverance of open access books. Examining usage and dissemination . Amsterdam University Press. https://www.doi.org/10.26530/OAPEN_1004809 Stone, G., & Marques, M. (2018). Knowledge Exchange survey on open access monographs . Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1475446 Further Reading Neylon, C., Ozaygen, A., Montgomery, L., Huang, C.-K. (Karl), Pyne, R., Lucraft, M., & Emery, C. (2021). More readers in more places: The benefits of open access for scholarly books. Insights , 34 (1), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.558 Snijder, R. (2023). Measured in a context: making sense of open access book data. Insights the UKSG Journal , 36 , 20. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.627 Taylor, M. (2020). An Altmetric Attention Advantage for Open Access Books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Scientometrics , 125 (3), 2523–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03735-8 ....

Open Access Büro Berlin und Forschungs- und Kompetenz­zentrum Digitalisierung Berlin: Workshop Berlin Open GLAM - Open-Access-Praktiken in Berlins Kultureinrichtungen

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Open Access Glossary

The following glossary lists and briefly explains basic open-access-related terms used on the website open-access.network. For an overview of all terms, click on the blue button labelled ‘ALL’ in the left-hand sidebar. Altmetrics Altmetrics are bibliometric indicators that measure a scholarly publication’s im­pact. They capture the diverse reactions that a publication may receive on the Web, and have established themselves as an extended alternative to the tradi­tional bibliometric measures, such as the Journal Impact Factor. The data are generated automatically, and relate, for example, to the number of downloads and links and to mentions, discussions, and likes in social media or blogs. → Impact Factor APC APCs (article processing charges) are publication fees charged by open access journals . Only around 30 % of all open access journals charge APCs. As a rule, APCs are payable to the publisher by the author(s) or their institution/employer after the article has undergone peer review and been accepted for publication. → Peer review → Publication charges arXiv arXiv (pronounced archive ) is a document server for → preprints in the fields of physics , mathematics , computer science , and related domains. Founded in 1991 by Paul Ginsparg at Los Alamos National Laboratory to make preprints in physics freely available, it is now maintained and operated by Cornell University. BASE BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) is one of the largest search engines for academic Web documents in the world. It accesses, inter alia, texts in → repositories . The majority of documents indexed in BASE are freely available in full-text form (→ open access ). BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library. Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities By signing the Berlin Declaration to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humani­ties , research organisations and universities commit to supporting the further development of the idea of open access, for example, by encouraging resear­chers to publish their results in an open access journal or to make them avail­able in an open access repository.→ Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing → Budapest Open Access Initiative Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing stresses the need to dis­seminate the results of scientific research quickly, efficiently and according to the principles of open access. It emphasises the opportunity and the obligation to share research results, ideas and discoveries freely with the scientific com­munity and the public. → Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities → Budapest Open Access Initiative Bibliodiversity The concept of bibliodiversity, which describes the diversity of book culture, probably arose in Latin America in the 1990s. It was applied to open access in the Jussieu Call for Open science and bibliodiversity , which was drafted in 2017 by a group of French researchers and scientific publishing professionals. The Call stated that: "Open Access must be complemented by support for the diversity of those acting in scientific publishing – what we call bibliodiversity – putting an end to the dominance of a small number among us imposing their terms to scientific communities." → Scholar-led publishing BMFTR (formerly BMBF) The German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR, formerly BMBF) supports innovative research projects and ideas through targeted funding programmes. It supports → open access also as a fundamental funding principle, and wants to increase the visibility and acceptance of this principle. The funding initiatives are part of an Open Access Strategy adopted by the former BMBF in 2016. BPC BPCs (book processing charges) are publication fees that publishers charge authors for the publication of scholarly books in → open access . These charges are often borne by the institutions at which the authors are employed or by a funding agency . → Publication funds → Publication charges Budapest Open Access Initiative The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) is a coalition of international scholars and scientists. In a Declaration published in 2002, the initiative called for free and unrestricted access to, and reusability of, scholarly literature in all academic fields. → Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities → Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing → Open Access Closed Access Closed access, also known as toll access , is the opposite of → open access . It means that access to publications is possible only for a fee. cOAlition S The international consortium cOAlition S comprises a large number of national research funding organisations ; it is supported by the European Commission. The consortium developed Plan S, an initiative for the implementation of → open access to publications resulting from funded research projects. → Plan S CoARA The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment ( CoARA ) is an international initiative that is committed to reforming the assessment of research. Since its foundation in January 2022, more than 600 scientific organisations from over 40 countries have joined CoARA (as of July 2024). The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment adopted by CoARA has been signed by numerous organisations. Creative Commons licences The non-profit organisation Creative Commons has made several copyright licences, known as Creative Commons licences, freely available to the public for use. The licences are widely used and easily understandable. They also offer a high degree of flexibility by virtue of the fact that they can be assembled from four combinable licence elements: BY – Attribution: The name of the creator must be provided and where technically possible a link to the original material and the CC license. ND – No Derivatives: The work may be modified, but the modified version may not be distributed. SA – Share Alike: The work may be modified, but the modified version may be distributed only under the same licence as the original. NC –Non-Commercial: The material may be used only for non-commercial purposes. → Licence DEAL The DEAL Consortium (formerly Projekt DEAL) was initiated by the German Rectors’ Conference on behalf of the Alliance of German Science Organisations. DEAL’s aim is to conclude nationwide “Publish and Read” agreements (i.e. licence agreements with an open access component) with the largest scholarly publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley) covering their entire e-journal portfolios. An agreement was concluded for the first time with Wiley in 2019 and with Springer Nature in 2020; an agreement with Elsevier followed in 2023. → Transformation DFG The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) is the self-governing organisation for science and research in Germany and the largest national research funding agency in Europe. Its members are research-intensive universities, non-university research institutions, scientific associa­tions, and the academies of science and the humanities. The DFG promotes → open access with various national and international programmes. Diamond Open Access Many open access journals function without → article processing charges (APCs) – that is, no costs arise for authors, but rather the journal is financed from institutional funds, by funding agencies or, for example, by library consortia, in which various libraries join forces. This model, which is also known as diamond open access , is a variant of → gold open access . The term “diamond open access” is often also associated with scholar-led and non-profit-making → open access . DINI The Deutsche Initiative für Netzwerkinformation (German Initiative for Net­work Information, DINI) promotes inter alia the development of Web standards to ensure that → open access literature in → repositories is findable, archived on a long-term basis, and accessible. DINI Certificate The DINI Certificate for → Open Access Publication Services is a recognised quality seal for → repositories that makes the quality of the services provided clearly recognisable to authors, users, and funders. Repository operators can apply to DINI for certification. → DINI DOAB The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a searchable index of academic → peer-reviewed books published in → open access . It offers links to the full texts of these publications on publishers’ websites or in → repositories . DOAJ The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory of open access journals founded at Lund University. The DOAJ is provided by an independent non-profit organisation of the same name. To be included in the directory, journals must fulfil a number of criteria, for example, appropriate quality control procedures and immediate → open access without an → embargo period . DOI A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier that comprises alpha-numeric characters. This identifier refers to a dataset or a digital object that can be retrieved via these identification digits. With the help of a DOI, a text or data publication can be permanently cited. DORA The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) calls for an improvement in the ways in which the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated. The declaration has given rise to a worldwide initiative in which all scholarly disciplines and all key stakeholders are represented. DORA criticises inter alia the misuse of the Journal Impact Factor to evaluate scholarly research outputs. → Impact Factor Double Dipping The term double dipping refers to a phenomenon where publishers of subscrip­tion journals charge authors additional high fees to make individual articles available in open access. Thus, the publishers obtain revenue from two sources at the same time: from journal subscriptions and from the additional open access charges. This publication model is also known as hybrid open access: in contrast to "genuine" open access, the entire journal is not freely accessible, but rather authors pay article processing charges (APCs) to "buy" the freedom of individual articles. → Hybrid journals → Open access → Subscription Dual Publishing Dual publishing refers to the parallel publication of a digital → open access version and a fee-based print version of a work. It is frequently observed in the area of open access book publishing . Embargo Period An embargo period is a time delay after which publishers allow authors to make the full texts of their publications available to the public in a → repository (in the sense of → green open access ). The length of the embargo period is at the discretion of the respective publishers. In the case of journals, it is usually between 6 and 12 months, and sometimes even 24 months. → Self-archiving Flipping In the context of open access, flipping refers to the conversion of scholarly journals or book series from a subscription-based to an open access model. In addition, flipping can refer to the transitioning of existing open access journals to → diamond open access , where no costs arise for either readers or authors. → Open access → Subscription Fair Open Access Fair open access is a non-profit version of gold open access. It strives for full, immediate and transparent implementation of open access. At the same time, it aims to return control over the publication process to the scholarly community. These principles are supported by the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA) . → Gold open access → Scholar-led publishing FWF The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is Austria’s central funding organisation for basic research. The FWF supports → open access to scholarly publications and research data , and requires scholars and scientists to make research outputs that result from FWF-funded projects freely available on the Internet. The FWF is a member of → cOAlition S . HAL HAL (Hyper Articles en Ligne) is the central → open access repository in France. It is operated by the French research organisation Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Hybrid Journals Hybrid journals are subscription-based journals that offer their authors the option of "buying the freedom" of individual articles (i.e., making them → open access immediately on publication) by paying an article processing charge (APC). Hybrid publishing involves a risk of double dipping, whereby an article is paid for twice – through journal subscriptions and the APC → APC → Closed access → Double dipping → Mirror journal → Subscription Impact Factor The Journal Impact Factor is a numeric measure of the average number of cita­tions of the articles published in a given journal in the past two years. It is used for the purpose of bibliometric comparison and often also as an indicator for the quality of a journal and the articles that appear in it. The Impact Factor is calculated on the basis of the journals covered by the Science Citation Index ; it thus also covers open access journals . There is growing criticism of the misuse of the Impact Factor to evaluate outputs of scholarly research. → DORA Information budget The information budget of a scientific institution comprises all funds for the literature and information supply and for publication costs (adapted from: Glossary, p. 96, Recommendations of the Transformation of Academic Publishing Towards Open Access, 2022. German Science and Humanities Council .) → Open Access Monitor → Publication funds → Transformation Knowledge Unlatched The Berlin-based commercial → open access service provider Knowledge Unlatched offers possibilities for financing open access publications through a crowdfunding model. Consortial Financing The term consortial financing describes a collaborative model in which several scientific institutions – typically libraries, higher education institutions, or research funders – jointly cover the costs of open access journals, books, or infrastructures. Examples include KOALA , OLEcon , and Scoap3 . Consortial models play an important role, especially in the funding of diamond open access journals. Licence Licences are standardised agreements by means of which the rightholder grants rights of use in a work to a third party. A licensing model meets the requirements of → open access when it allows free worldwide access to, and unrestricted reuse of, a publication. The most widely used open licences in the area of science and research are the Creative Commons licences (CC licences). → Creative Commons licences Mirror Journal So-called "mirror journals" were founded by some major publishers to circumvent the exclusion of funding for OA publication fees in hybrid journals. These are OA versions of subscription journals whose subject focus and editorial boards are largely identical to those of the corresponding subscription journal. → APC → Hybrid journals → Plan S → Subscription OA2020 Open Access 2020 (OA2020) is a global alliance of science and research organisations initiated by the Max Planck Digital Library. It is committed to accelerating the transition from the current → subscription-based scholarly publishing system to → open access publishing models. The aim is to ensure that research articles are immediately available in open access as soon as they are published, and that the costs behind their dissemination are transparent, fair, and economically sustainable. → Transformation OAI-PMH The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a metadata exchange protocol for → repository interoperability. Repositories ( data providers ) expose their structured metadata via OAI-PMH. These metadata can then be harvested by service providers via OAI-PMH service requests. OER Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials that are released under an open content licence and can therefore be used, adapted, and distributed free of charge by third parties. OER may be all kinds of materials , from individual videos to entire concepts, courses, or books. Open Access There is no fixed definition of the term "open access". The least open definition is met once a work is accessible free of charge on and downloadable from the public Internet. The → Budapest Open Access Initiative defines open access as follows: "By open access to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public inter­net, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." → Gold open access → Green open access Gold Open Access Gold open access refers to the publication of scholarly works as articles in open access journals , as open access monographs , or as contributions to open access collections or conference proceedings. As a rule, these texts undergo the same quality assurance process as → closed access works, mostly in the form of → peer review or editorial review. → Open Access Green Open Access Green open access – also known as self-archiving – refers to making works published with a publisher or in a journal available to the public in a repository. It is sometimes understood to refer also to making such works available on the author’s personal website. Self-archiving can take place at the same time as the publication of the content by the publisher or at a later date, and is possible for preprints and post-prints of scholarly articles, as well as for other document types, for example, monographs, research reports, and conference procee­dings. → Open Access → Repository → Preprint → Post-print → Self-archiving Open Access Monitor The Open Access Monitor collects data on the publication output of academic institutions in Germany, analyses subscription and publication expenditure and citations, and statistically processes the data. It is operated by Forschungszen­trum Jülich. → Subscription Open Access Policy In an open access policy or open access guidelines, organisations specify their guidelines in relation to → open access . These guidelines determine the roles, rights and obligations of various actors within the institution with regard to the implementation of open access. Open Access Strategy An open access strategy describes objectives, measures, and, where appropriate, a timetable for the implementation and promotion of open access, for example at a scientific organisation or in a country. An open access strategy may include the development of an open access policy. → Open Access → Open Access Policy OpenAIRE Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe (Open AIRE) is a European-Commission-funded project that was launched in 2009 with the aim of establi­shing an electronic infrastructure to archive research publications from all 27 EU member states, to handle articles, → preprints , and conference publications, and to manage research datasets . OpenDOAR The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) is a central directory for → open access repositories . Open Journal Systems Open Journal Systems (OJS) is the most widely used open source software application for managing manuscript submissions and peer review and for publishing scholarly journals. → Peer review → Public Knowledge Project Open Monograph Press Open Monograph Press (OMP) is an open source software for managing and publishing scholarly books. It can be used to manage the editorial workflow required to publish monographs, edited volumes, and scholarly editions. → Public Knowledge Project Open Peer Review Open peer review refers to variants of the quality control of scholarly manuscripts that, in contrast to traditional peer review, take place in a transparent, open, and sometimes also collaborative way.→ Peer Review Open Policy Finder Open Policy Finder (formerly Sherpa Romeo and Sherpa Juliet) is an online resource that aggregates and presents publisher and journal open access archiving policies. → Green open access → Self-archiving Opt-out In general terms, to opt out means to choose not to – or no longer to – avail, for example, of a service or an option by making an opt-out declaration. Research funders that mandate → open access or open data sometimes offer an opt-out option – that is, the possibility of deciding for legitimate reasons against making research outputs freely available to the public (for example, when this is not compatible with the protection of personal data). Overlay Journal Overlay journals are open access journals that use the infrastructure of preprint servers. For example, authors make the preprints of their manuscripts freely available in arXiv and at the same time submit them for publication to an overlay journal. If the submitted article successfully undergoes peer review and is accepted for publication, the original version continues to remain available alongside the edited publisher’s version. → arXiv → Peer review → Preprint Peer Review Peer review is the most widely used procedure for controlling the quality of scholarly contributions before their publication. It involves the evaluation of a scholarly work by independent reviewers who are experts in the same field (hence peer , as in "belonging to the same group") → Open Peer Review Plan S Plan S is a strategy initiated by an international consortium of research funding organisations – cOAlition S – with the aim of implementing immediate → open access to scholarly publications resulting from funded research projects. Under this plan, recipients of funding from member organisations of cOAlition S will be required to make publications resulting from funded research available in open access by publishing them in high-quality open access journals or on high-quality open access platforms, or by making them immediately available with­out embargo in open access repositories that fulfil the necessary requirements. → cOAlition S Post-print A post-print is a scholarly text that has already undergone peer-review and has been accepted for publication. There are two types of post-prints: on the one hand, a post-print may be completely identical to the final published version, also known as the publisher's version or the version of record. On the other hand, the post-print may be substantively the same as the publisher’s version but differ, for example, in terms of formatting, layout, or pagination. In the latter case, it is known as the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM). → Version of record Predatory Publishing Predatory Journals are journals that use aggressive advertising and a seemingly professional appearance to lure scholarly authors into publishing contributions against payment of a → publication fee , but that do not provide any – or provide only inadequate – quality assurance measures. Preprint A preprint is a scholarly work that has not (yet) undergone peer review. The term is sometimes also used to refer to the manuscript version of a work that is submitted for publication to a journal or a publisher. → Peer review Public Knowledge Project The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a research and development initiative within the framework of which open source software applications for managing and publishing scholarly journals and conferences was developed. These applications – Open Journal Systems (OJS), Open Conference Systems (OCS), and Open Monograph Press (OMP) – improve access to knowledge and help to reduce publishing costs. → Open Journal Systems → Open Monograph Press Publication funds Open access publication funds are an instrument through which scientific and scholarly institutions support their authors in paying open access publication charges. This often involves reimbursing article processing charges (APCs) or book processing charges (BPCs). However, it may also entail funding consortial offerings, open access infrastructures, or the → transformation of → subscrip­tion journals into open access journals . In this way, scientific and scholarly organisation contribute to financially supporting open access publications. In this pursuit, they are usually guided their own criteria for the reimbursement of the costs incurred. → APC → BPC → Publication charges Publication charges Publication charges are fees charged by publishers prior to publication. For example, some publishers charge for colour figures (colour charges) or for the number of pages in a publication (page charges). In the open access context, publication charges are a possible business model for financing the publication. Because open access publications are always free to use for readers, the publication is paid for not by the readers but by the publishing authors. The fees charged for the publication of an article are known as article processing charges (APCs), while the fees for the publication of a book are called book processing charges (BPCs). → APC → BPC Publish and Read “Publish and Read” is a contract component to finance scholarly journals that is often used in transformative agreements between library consortia and publishers. The publish and read agreements negotiated by Projekt DEAL are a well-known example. In this type of financing, the participating research institutions pay not only to read the content of the journal in question (as is the case with subscriptions) but also for their authors to publish open access in that journal. Reading access is covered by the publish and read fees. The level of the fees is calculated based on the publication output of the individual institutions. → DEAL → Subscription → Transformation Repository A repository is a document server at a university or a research institution on which scholarly materials are archived and made available to the public worldwide on a long-term basis. Two types of repositories are distinguished: institutional repositories (operated by insitutions such as university libraries, other infrastructure organisations, or research organisations) and disciplinary repositories (trans-institutional, thematically bundled, e.g., for a particular discipline). → ROAR Rights Retention Strategy In traditional publishing agreements , authors often transfer a considerable part of their rights to publishers, which restricts their control over their works and may result in their having only limited possibilities of distributing and reusing them. Scientific institutions can counteract this by implementing a "rights retention strategy", for example by concluding agreements with their researchers that grant the institution the right to reuse scholarly works or make them available to the public, in order, for example, to make them available to the public via the institutional repository, incorporate them into educational materials, and much more besides. A rights retention strategy can be part of a more comprehensive open science strategy; it helps both institutions and authors to keep works visible and accessible in the long term without being restricted by publishing agreements. → Repository ROAR The Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) is a list of open access repositories. The searchable international database indexes the establishment, location, and growth of institutional open access repositories and their content. → Repository Scholar-led publishing The term scholar-led publishing refers to a publication model where scholars organise and come together to publish their research results independently. Thus, scholar-led publishers are publishers led by scholars. → Bibliodiversity → Fair open access Self-archiving Self-archiving refers to making documents that have been published with a publisher or in a journal freely available to the public on open access document servers or repositories. When doing so, the legal conditions and the publishers’ conditions (e.g., → embargo periods ) must be observed. The term self-archiving sometimes also refers to making publications freely available on the author’s personal website. → Green open access → Repository → Self-archiving → Secondary publication right SNF Mandated by the Swiss Federal Government, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) supports research in all academic disciplines. Moreover, grantees are required to make the results of SNSF-funded research available in an open access publication or repository. SPARC Europe The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition Europe (SPARC) is an alliance of European scholarly and research libraries, national libraries, library organisations, and research institutions. It aims to advance the open access movement. SSRN The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is one of the largest preprint servers in the social sciences . The searchable database offers researchers the opportunity to upload working papers and abstracts free of charge. After SSRN was taken over by the major publisher Elsevier in 2016, the announcement to found the non-profit server SocArXiv for preprints in the social sciences followed shortly afterwards. → Preprint Subscription Traditionally, journals have been funded via subscriptions: publishers publish journals to which interested users subscribe in order to obtain access to the content. In the scholarly context, subscribers are mostly the libraries of scholarly institutions. Rising journal subscription prices in the 1990s led to what became known as the serials crisis. A counter-model to subscription is open access. → Open access → Serials crisis Transformation In the context of open access, the term transformation refers to the complete conversion of the scholarly publication system to open access, inter alia by converting traditional subscription journals into open access journals. → OA2020 → Gold open access → Plan S → Subscription Version of record The version of record, or publisher’s version, is the version of a text that has already undergone peer review and been accepted for publication. It is identical with the formally published version of the work (i.e., the version published with a publisher or in a journal). → Post-print Serials crisis Rising journal subscription prices in the 1990s led to what became known as the serials crisis. While journal prices continue to increase, libraries have only a cer­tain budget for the purchase of journals. Due to the higher costs, they are obliged to cancel journal subscriptions. It therefore becomes increasingly difficult to adequately supply scholars and scientists with the scholarly information they require. → Subscription Zenodo Zenodo is an all-purpose open access repository that was developed within the framework of the European OpenAIRE project ; it is managed by CERN. Zenodo enables researchers to make datasets, research software, reports, and other research-related digital documents available to the public. A persistent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is issued for each submission, thereby facilitating the citation of the stored objects. Secondary Publication → Self-Archiving → Secondary publication right Secondary publication right The secondary publication right is a limitation under German copyright law that gives the author of a contribution to a periodically published collection the right to make the contribution available to the public online – for example by self-archiving it in a → repository after an → embargo period of 12 months, even if the publisher has already been granted an exclusive right of use. The prerequisite is that the contribution was produced in the context of publicly funded research. The secondary publication right refers to the accepted manuscript version of the contribution (i.e. the author's final version of the work, as accepted for publication following peer review but without the publisher's layout). The author is not obliged to make use of the secondary publication right. The contribution may not be made available under an open → licence (see Section 38 of the German Act on Copyright and Related Rights (UrhG) ). → Post-print ALL Altmetrics APC arXiv BASE Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing Bibliodiversity BMFTR (formerly BMBF) BPC Budapest Open Access Initiative Closed Access cOAlition S CoARA Creative Commons licences DEAL DFG Diamond Open Access DINI DINI Certificate DOAB DOAJ DOI DORA Double Dipping Dual Publishing Embargo Period Flipping Fair Open Access FWF HAL Hybrid Journals Impact Factor Information budget Knowledge Unlatched Consortial Financing Licence Mirror Journal OA2020 OAI-PMH OER Open Access Gold Open Access Green Open Access Open Access Monitor Open Access Policy Open Access Strategy OpenAIRE OpenDOAR Open Journal Systems Open Monograph Press Open Peer Review Open Policy Finder Opt-out Overlay Journal Peer Review Plan S Post-print Predatory Publishing Preprint Public Knowledge Project Publication funds Publication charges Publish and Read Repository Rights Retention Strategy ROAR Scholar-led publishing Self-archiving SNF SPARC Europe SSRN Subscription Transformation Version of record Serials crisis Zenodo Secondary Publication Secondary publication right...

Open Access Information

Open Access Primers What does Open Access mean? Open Access and Reuse Green and Gold and Diamond Open Access Open Access and Data Arguments and Reservations History of the Open Access Movement Publishing Open Access Publishing Open Access Journals Repositories Open Educational Resources Preprints Open Access Books Scholar-Led and Community-Driven Publishing Discipline-specific Open Access Here you can find discipline-specific information on Open Access. Financing Research Funders and Open Access Business Models for Journals Business Models for Books Legal Issues Licences Publishing Agreements Legal Questions in Germany Legal Questions in Austria Legal Questions in Switzerland Policy Frameworks Policy Frameworks Open Access Transformation Open Access Policies Implementing Open Access Publishing Open Access Journals Converting Journals to Open Access How do I operate a Repository Implementing Open Access Glossary The glossary covers basic Open Access terms used on the open-access.network website and explains them briefly. Literature on Open Access A collection of all the references that we provide on our information pages on open access can be found in our Zotero Library ....

Open Access Information Materials

Collection of the open-access.network project Presentations and reports from events of the open-access.network project, as well as all materials can also be found on our Zenodo community page. We make our materials available under an open licence, and we welcome their reuse. Videos from the project open-access.network Videos to introduce the topic Open Access in 60 seconds https://doi.org/10.5446/50832 10 reaons for Open Access (in German only) https://doi.org/10.5446/51995 Science communication and the publishing process https://doi.org/10.5446/59396 Why is Open Access so important? https://av.tib.eu/watchlist/14980 Open-Access-Myth Checking Watchlist of the individual clips: https://av.tib.eu/watchlist/14927 Full video: https://av.tib.eu/media/62326 ) What is the problem with the journal impact factor? https://av.tib.eu/media/67071 The advantages of an open access dissertation (in German only) https://av.tib.eu/media/68305 Videos about Open Access in practice Funding of Open Access articles (in German only) https://doi.org/10.5446/49536 Funding of Open Access monographs (in German only) https://doi.org/10.5446/49535 The 101 of Creative Commons licenses https://av.tib.eu/watchlist/14489 Alternative business models for open access publications https://doi.org/10.5446/60354 From now on Open Access - How journals can transform their business model https://av.tib.eu/watchlist/14704 Other oa.talk http://av.tib.eu/watchlist/14488 Guides, handouts and infographics (most in German only) Open-Access-Definition https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12684571 Open-Access-Infografik: Open vs. Closed Access https://zenodo.org/records/10973225 In wenigen Schritten zur Zweitveröffentlichung. Ein Leitfaden für Mitarbeiter:innen in Publikationsservices https://zenodo.org/records/10489037 Checkliste zur Qualität von Open-Access-Zeitschriften https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7571993 10 Gründe für Open Access https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7575092 Open-Access-Finanzierung – Das sind Ihre Möglichkeiten für die Publikation von Artikeln https://zenodo.org/records/7564431 Open-Access-Literatur finden https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7572602 Open Access unterstützen - Praxistipps für Hochschulbibliotheken https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7572517 Open Access unterstützen - Praxistipps für Hochschulen https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7572559 Open Access unterstützen - Praxistipps für Wissenschaftler*innen https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7575037 Open Access unterstützen - Praxistipps für Landesregierungen https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7572546 Open Access unterstützen - Praxistipps für Verlage und Journale https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7572574 Veranstaltungskonzept. Eine Vorlage zur Organisation von Open-Access-Veranstaltungen https://zenodo.org/records/6078419 Handout „Beitritt zum Editorial Board einer Zeitschrift: Ja oder Nein? Kriterien zur Entscheidungsfindung“ https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12805440 Publishing a Compilation Thesis Open Access – A Quick Guide for Ph.D. Candidates https://zenodo.org/records/13959523 Further materials and project results (in German only) Wahrnehmung und Bewertung von Angeboten und Fördermaßnahmen durch Open-Access-Professionals https://zenodo.org/records/7593728 Umsetzung von Open Access: Erhebung zu offenen Open-Access-Infrastrukturen https://zenodo.org/records/7558697 Umsetzung von Open Access: Erhebung zu Beteiligungsoptionen für Unternehmen an Open-Access-Finanzierung https://zenodo.org/records/7558684 Wahrnehmung von Open Access: Erhebung zu Anforderungen und Hindernissen in ausgewählten geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen. Geschichtswissenschaften und Soziale Arbeit https://zenodo.org/records/7540764 Wahrnehmung von Open Access: Erhebung zu Anforderungen und Hindernissen in ausgewählten Technik- und Naturwissenschaften. Maschinenbau und Chemie https://zenodo.org/records/7540662 Wahrnehmung von Open Access: Erhebung zu Anforderungen und Hindernissen in den Rechtswissenschaften https://zenodo.org/records/7535165 open.access-network Rätselpaket https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12779107 Literature on open access A collection of all literature references that can be found on our information pages on open access is available in our Zotero Library ....

Open Access Journals

Intro Facts about Open Access Journals open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) The key takeaways from this article are 1 Open access journals are journals whose articles are available and reusable worldwide free of charge and without restrictions immediately on publication. 2 Most open access journals do not charge their authors for publishing articles. In other cases, the author-pays model is common. 3 The content published in open access journals is searchable in the usual databases and search engines – the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) specialises in open access content. Definition Open access journals are journals whose articles are available and reusable worldwide free of charge and without restrictions immediately on publication. As a rule, contributions in journals that meet this definition are published under a Creative Commons licence granted by the authors. The publishers of these journals are granted only a non-exclusive right of use by the authors. Open access journals are the primary medium for what is known as gold open access to scholarly articles. If a journal does not levy article processing charges (APCs) , this is often referred to as diamond open access . Through gold or diamond open access, articles achieve the widest possible dissemination and are available to and reusable by researchers and all other interested parties as fast as possible. In this way, the visibility of research results is enhanced and their citation frequency is often increased ( Piwowar et al., 2018 ). open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access and Closed Access Practical Tip An overview of the requirements that open access journals must satisfy, and concrete criteria that authors can use as a guide when choosing a suitable publication venue can be found in the slides of a German-language presentation on the topic of " Quality of open access journals – Where to publish and where not to publish? ". Practical Tip The following tools can be helpful in finding suitable OA publication venues for your own manuscript: oa.finder (a tool for searching for scholarly publication venues; developed as a project by open-access.network ) B!SON (Open Access journal recommender, developed by TIB and SLUB Dresden ) Quality Assurance and Impact Measurement Find an introduction here. In terms of quality, there is no difference between open access and closed access (i.e., subscription-based ) journals. As is the norm in the case of scholarly journals, manuscripts undergo a quality assurance procedure – mostly peer review – before publication. In the context of open science and the idea of a transparent scientific process, some open access journals even go one step further and offer open peer review . By making the identities of all participants open, quality assurance becomes a community process, thereby ensuring constructive criticism. Moreover, the free availability of the full texts has the advantage of making it easier to detect plagiarism and errors. Where customary in the discipline in question, some open access journals occasionally also practise a form of editorial review. 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 ) Funding The main difference between open and closed access journals lies in the free availability and reusability of the former and in the way they are funded . In the case of traditional closed access (subscription-based) journals, the readers, or their institutions and scholarly libraries, pay high fees for access to the articles. Open access publications, by contrast, can be used free of charge. Hence, funding must take place via a different channel. The so-called author-pays model, where authors pay article processing charges (APCs) to publish their contributions, is very widespread. However, the majority of open access journals do not charge APCs ( Morrison, 2018 ). Rather, they are funded by professional societies, scientific institutions or library consortia, or through volunteer work. By now, many closed access journals offer authors the option of paying a high fee to make individual contributions freely available. The publishers of these so-called hybrid journals thus generate additional revenues without there being a corresponding decrease in subscription prices. Because of this so-called double dipping on the part of publishers, hybrid open access is quite controversial. Via transformative agreements with commercial publishers – for example, those negotiated by the German initiative Projekt DEAL – the costs of these hybrid APCs are increasingly being covered in a contractually specified amount by library consortia with the aim of transforming the hybrid journals into open access journals in the long run. Many research funders and institutional publication funds refuse to fund OA publication fees for contributions to hybrid journals (see e.g. Plan S ). To circumvent these exclusion criteria, some major publishers have founded so-called "mirror journals" , i.e. OA versions of subscription journals whose thematic focus, editorial boards and peer review processes are largely identical to those of the corresponding subscription journal. Both the cOAlition S and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) consider such journals to be de facto hybrid journals whose articles are not eligible for funding ( Voigt, 2022 ). open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Source: altmetric.com Self-Archiving Green open access can also be provided to publications in closed access journals by making them available free of charge in repositories . Under German copyright law (UrhG), scientific contributions published in conventional journals may, under certain conditions, be self-archived in a repository. Impact The Journal Impact Factors , a metric for the citation frequency of articles published in a given journal, are published in the Journal Citation Reports , which also covers open access journals. However, the misuse of the Journal Impact Factor to evaluate outputs of scholarly research has been strongly criticised (see the Declaration on Research Assessment, DORA ). Altmetrics have emerged as an alternative to the traditional bibliometric indicators. They capture the diverse reactions to scholarly publications on the Web. Finding Content The content published in open access journals is indexed in many locations and is searchable in the usual databases and search engines. The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) specialises in open access content. In journal and article databases, filter options offer the possibility of limiting the search to open access content. This is the case, for example, in the Electronic Journals Library (the option "free for everyone") or in the Web of Science. GoTriple is an interesting discovery platform for open access content from the social sciences and humanities. A useful open source tool for finding open access versions of scholarly publications is Unpaywall , which is available as a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome ( Piwowar et al., 2018 ). Finding Open Access Publications Numerous search engines specialise in open access. This presentation provides an overview of how to find free scientific literature. Open Access in Specific Disciplines The introductions to open access in specific disciplines on open-access.net are also a good starting point. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) The central database for open access journals is the DOAJ, which can also be searched by field. Publishing Open Access Journals Find an introduction here. German-Language Presentation on “Founding Open Access Journals” The slides of this presentation entitled “ Open-Access-Zeitschriften gründen – woran muss ich denken? [Founding open access journals – What should I bear in mind] provide valuable tips about the things that editors should consider before launching an open access journal. Founding A Journal Do you see a need for a new journal in your field, and would you like to publish it as an open access journal? Many open access journals are set up by scholars and scientists. Because there are now a large number of options from a discipline-specific, technical, and financial perspective, we would recommend, as a first step, that you talk to the open access experts at your institution. Many institutions offer their researchers the possibility of supporting the creation and management of independent open access journals, for example, via the software application Open Journal Systems (OJS) . One example is the TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library, which operates a publication platform, TIB Open Publishing , on which open access journals can be hosted with OJS. Although open to all fields, the focus is on the technical sciences and the natural sciences. In addition, there are also a number of open access publishers – and also conventional publishers, which are increasingly switching to open access publications – under whose umbrella you could set up your journal. We recommend that you take a look at our discipline-specific pages to see which publishers in your field already have open access offerings. The Open Access Journals Toolkit can also provide helpful guidance on founding and operating an open access journal. If you want to convert an existing subscription-based journal to open access rather than founding a new journal, you can find further information on how to do so on our Converting Journals to Open Access page. References Kaden, Ben (2023): OA Takeaways: Die Kritik am DEAL-Vertrag mit Elsevier in der FAZ vom 29.11.2023. https://doi.org/10.59350/dzrhw-yb070 Mittermaier, B. (2025). Transformationsverträge sind eine Sackgasse: In Erinnerung an Irene Barbers (1966–2025). O-bib , 12 (1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/6117 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 , e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375 Ross-Hellauer, T. (2017). What is open peer review? A systematic review [Version 2; peer review: 4 approved]. F1000Research, 6 , 588. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11369.2 Voigt, M. (2022, August 15). Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand… Mirror Journals gezielt erkennen. FIS & EPub – Gemeinsamer Blog der DINI AG Forschungsinformationssystem und Elektronisches Publizieren . https://blog.dini.de/EPub_FIS/2022/08/15/spieglein-spieglein-an-der-wand-mirror-journals-gezielt-erkennen/ Ziegler, G. M., & Dirnagl, U. (2024, August 29). Pro & Contra: Warum die „Deal“-Verträge (k)ein Gewinn für die Wissenschaft sind. Forschung & Lehre. https://www.forschung-und-lehre.de/politik/warum-die-deal-vertraege-kein-gewinn-fuer-die-wissenschaft-sind-6595...

Open Access Preprints

Intro What are Preprints? Preprints are preliminary versions, or manuscript versions, of scholarly works – especially journal articles – that are made available to the (professional) public. As a rule, they are non- peer-reviewed versions whose public release primarily serves to expedite the sharing of research findings. Preprints are made freely available to the public on preprint servers, thereby also making an important contribution to green open access . Quelle: Becklas, Carolin; Hauss, Jonas (2025): Was sind Preprints? av.tib.eu/media/69857 The key takeaways from this article are 1 Preprints are early versions of scholarly publications that are made available to the (professional) public – as a rule without prior peer review. 2 Preprints, which are particularly common in physics and other natural sciences, are made freely available to the public on preprint servers and make an important contribution to green open access. 3 Preprint servers enable the publishing of so-called overlay journals – that is, online journals that use the infrastructure of a preprint platform for submissions and publication. Characteristics of Preprints Many months may elapse between the submission of a manuscript and its publication in a journal. According to one study ( Huisman & Smits, 2017 ), the average duration of the peer-review process is 17 weeks. In addition, time is needed for typesetting and, if applicable, copy-editing and printing. In order to expedite the dissemination of research findings, preprints are shared in many disciplines. However, cultures differ greatly across disciplines. In physics , preprints are an indispensable communication tool – depending on the subfield, preliminary versions of over 90% of all journal articles are made available to the public on the preprint server arXiv prior to publication of the final version ( Gentil-Beccot et al., 2009 ). By contrast, authors in other disciplines have not yet adopted a comparable preprint culture. It may be that not all journals in these disciplines accept manuscripts that have previously been posted as a preprint. As a rule, preprints have not yet undergone any scholarly quality assurance processes. Substantively, they may therefore differ considerably from the published versions, or they may not even be accepted for publication. While scholars and scientists are aware of this, problems may arise if, for example, the media pick up findings from preprints and disseminate them to a large audience without indicating that they are preliminary and have not been peer reviewed. To enable non-scientific readers to better understand the nature of preprints, medical preprint servers display caution statements. Source: Based on: Shafee, Thomas (2020). Typical publishing workflow for an academic journal article (preprint, postprint, and published) with open access sharing rights per SHERPA/RoMEO. Own work; adapted from diagram by Ginny Barbour Wikimedia Commons ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Preprint Servers There are numerous preprint servers. The following figure shows some commonly used ones: Source: Khurana, S. (2020). Commonly used pre-print servers for researchers Zenodo Zenodo is a universal data repository. Much of the material on this website is also accessible here in the Zenodo collection open-access.network . In principle, preprints can be disseminated through all possible channels, for example, email, institutional repositories , or research institution websites. As a rule, they are uploaded to preprint servers, which are usually dedicated to one or more specialist fields. Although no peer review takes place on these plat­forms, uploaded publications usually undergo a basic screening process to ensure that they are scientific and fit the disciplinary scope of the server. Pre­print servers have often emerged from and are financed by scientific commu­nities. Some are operated by research institutions or professional societies. Only rarely are they operated by publishers. The oldest and largest preprint server is arXiv , an open access repository for scholarly articles in eight subject areas, including physics , mathematics , and computer science , that was founded in 1991. As of April 2021, arXiv hosted over 1.8 million documents. Other important preprint platforms are bioRxiv ( biology ), SocArXiv ( social sciences ), EarthArXiv ( geosciences ), medRxiv ( medicine ), and ChemRxiv ( chemistry ). Functionalities differ across platforms. As a rule, revised versions of papers can be uploaded – for example, after acceptance by a journal – and a link can be provided to the final published version ( version of record ). Some platforms also offer a comments function so that authors can receive feedback, and findings can be discussed in the community. History As early as the 1960s, there was a system in biology whereby reports of current research findings – especially in the form of preprints – were reproduced and circulated by postal mail by a central registry ( Cobb, 2017 ). A similar system also existed in the field of high-energy physics ( Gentil-Beccot et al., 2009 ). With the advent of the Internet, the sharing of manuscripts became much easier, as they could be circulated via email. In 1991, Paul Ginsparg founded arXiv at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a server for preprints from high-energy physics ( Ginsparg, 2017 ). The manuscripts were thus freely available to all interested parties. The scope of arXiv was later extended to include other areas of physics, as well as mathematics, computer science, and neighbouring fields such as quantitative finance and quantitative biology. It was only after the turn of the century that other fields followed arXiv’s lead. For example, in 2013, bioRxiv was launched as a preprint server for biology, thereby making preprint sharing more popular in the life sciences . The initiative ASAPbio advocates the use of preprints in biology. Boosted by the success of the Open Science Framework (OSF) – an open source infrastructure that, inter alia, enables preprints to be uploaded and searched for – there has been a veritable boom in preprint servers for the most diverse subject areas since 2016. Nonetheless, the acceptance of preprints and the willingness to share them varies greatly across disciplines. During the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints have played an important role in the rapid dissemination, checking, and correction of research findings on the SARS-CoV-2 virus ( Fraser et al., 2020; Gianola et al., 2020 ). This chart on preprints in the life sciences illustrates how strongly the importance of preprints has increased in recent years: Source: Polka, Jessica K., & Penfold, Naomi C. (2020). Biomedical preprints per month, by source and as a fraction of total literature (3.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3819276 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) History of Open Access Find an introduction here. Preprints and Open Science Click on the picture to watch the video. Video about Preprints. Source: Youreka Science (2016). What Are Preprints? YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zMgY8Dx9co In contrast to journal articles, which are often behind paywalls, preprints are freely accessible in the long term and are thus a key component of green open access. When a journal article is not freely accessible, the preprint version can be found via services like Unpaywall provided it is linked to the publisher’s version (the version of record). Preprints also make the process of gaining and communicating scientific knowledge more transparent. They enable critical discussion of works in the community before final publication Thus, authors can receive and take into account feedback in addition to the actual peer reviews. Preprints thus form the basis for informal or formalised open peer review ( Frick, 2020 ). Overlay Journals Preprint servers enable the publishing of so-called overlay journals ( Gowers, 2015 ) – that is, online journals that use the infrastructure of a preprint platform, especially arXiv, for submissions and publication. Authors post their papers on arXiv and submit a link to the arXiV preprint to the journal in question, which then organises the review process. If the paper is accepted, it is included in the journal – that is, it is linked from the journal website and assigned a DOI and possibly a comment from the editor. In this way, the advantages of arXiv (cost-effective, freely accessible, well-known infrastructure) are combined with those of a journal (peer-review, reputation, possibly an Impact Factor). Successful examples of overlay journals are SIGMA (Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications) , Logical Methods in Computer Science (LMCS) , Discrete Analysis , and Quantum . open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Cobb, M. (2017). The prehistory of biology preprints: A forgotten experiment from the 1960s. PLOS Biology , 15 (11). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2003995 Fraser, N., Brierley, L., Dey, G., Polka, J. K., Pálfy, M., Nanni, F., & Coates, J. A. (2021). Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic . bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.22.111294 Frick, C. (2020). Peer-Review im Rampenlicht. Ein prominentes Fallbeispiel. Informationspraxis , 6 (2). https://doi.org/10.11588/ip.2020.2.74406 Gentil-Beccot, A., Mele, S., & Brooks, T. (2009). Citing and reading behaviours in high-energy physics. How a community stopped worrying about journals and learned to love repositories . arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/0906.5418 Gianola, S., Jesus, T. S., Bargeri, S., & Castellini, G. (2020). Characteristics of academic publications, preprints, and registered clinical trials on the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS ONE , 15 (10). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240123 Ginsparg, P. (2017). Preprint déjà vu: An FAQ . arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04188 Gowers, T. (2015, September 10). Discrete Analysis – An arXiv overlay journal. Gowers’s Weblog . https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal/ Huisman, J., & Smits, J. (2017). Duration and quality of the peer review process: The author’s perspective. Scientometrics , 113 , 633–650. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2310-5 Further Reading Ettinger, C., Sadanandappa, M. K., Görgülü, K., Coghlan, K., Hallenbeck, K. K., & Puebla, I. (2022). A guide to preprinting for Early Career Researchers [OSF Preprints]. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/e59tk...

Open Access Publishing

Find out how to publish open access Open Access Publishing Open Access Journals Repositories Preprints Open Educational Resources Open Access Books Scholar-Led and Community-Driven Publishing...