Helmholtz Open Science Online-Seminar: Charité Dashboard on Responsible and Open Research
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History of the Open Access Movement
1991–2003: Beginnings of the Open Access Movement 1991 Paul Ginsparg founds the arXiv archive for physics preprints at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LAN-L) to make preprints in physics freely available. 1995 During what becomes known as the serials crisis in the 1990s, the rising costs of acquiring scholarly literature lead to a burden on the acquisition budgets of scholarly libraries, and thus, in many cases, to a deterioration in the supply of literature. Besides rising journal prices, the crisis has also been caused by the fact that more and more universities and scientific societies have outsourced the publishing of their publications to commercial publishers. Journal literature is particularly affected, which is why this development is also referred to as the serials crisis. Later, the crisis also takes hold in the area of monographs. 1999 Biomed Central (BMC), the first open access publisher, is founded by Vitek Tracz. In 2008, BMC is sold to Springer. The Open Archives Initiative (OAI), which promotes the development of technical standards for the interoperability of metadata, is founded. 2001 The first version of the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) , an interface for the harvesting of data from repositories , is released. CERN and the University of Geneva hold the first OAI Workshop . This gives rise to an important conference of the same name in the area of open science, which has been organised every two years in Geneva since then. 2002 Scholars and scientists join forces in the international and transdisciplinary Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) , which has arisen from a meeting of the Open Society Institute (OSI) in Budapest. The 2002 BOAI Declaration states that "the literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment". The nonprofit organisation Creative Commons is founded in the United States by Lawrence Lessig and others. It makes several copyright licences, known as Creative Commons licences , available to the public free of charge. Open Journal Systems , an open source software application for managing and publishing scholarly journals, is released by the Public Knowledge Project in Canada. SPARC Europe , an alliance of European science and research libraries, national libraries, library associations, and research institutions dedicated to advancing the open access movement, is founded. Its US counterpart, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), was founded in 1998. Sherpa Romeo (today Open Policy Finder ) goes online. The database for publisher and journal open access policies aggregates and presents self-archiving permissions and conditions of rights given by publishers to authors of journal articles. It also provides statistics in this regard. 2003 The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing is drafted by representatives of funding agencies, libraries, publishers, and scientists during a meeting on open access publishing held at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Focusing on biomedical research, the statement stresses the need for rapid and efficient dissemination of research results in accordance with the principles of open access. It also emphasises the opportunity (and the obligation) to share research results, ideas, and discoveries freely with the scientific community and the public. The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities is drafted within the framework of a conference on the development of new Web-based research environments (the first “Berlin Conference”) that was organised by the Max Planck Society and the European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO) project. By signing the declaration, leading European and American research organisations and universities commit to supporting the further development of the notion of open access, for example, by encouraging researchers to publish their results in open access. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ ) is launched at Lund University in Sweden as a central directory for open access journals . The community-curated directory indexes high-quality, peer-reviewed open access journals. The Deutsche Initiative für Netzwerkinformation (German Initiative for Network Information, DINI) launches the first DINI certificate for open access repositories (DINI Certificate for Document and Publication Services) . It defines Web standards for publication services in order to ensure that open access literature in repositories is findable, archived, and accessible. 2004–2009: Open Access Infrastructure Grows 2004 Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) for academic documents on the Web is launched by Bielefeld University. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) introduces its Open Access Policy , in which the publication of works in open access is highly recommended. 2006 The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) developed by Nottingham University in collaboration with Lund University goes online. The directory lists academic open access repositories and is searchable by region and content, among other things. Sherpa Juliet (today Open Policy Finder ), a database of information concerning funders’ open access policies and requirements, is launched. 2007 The DFG-funded information platform open-access.net is launched. It collates information relating to open access and makes it available at a central location. The conference Open-Access-Tage (Open Access Days) takes place in Konstanz for the first time. Since then, it has been organised annually at alternating venues as a central conference on open access in the German-speaking area. The European Commission adopts a policy paper on open access . The paper fully supports open access and sets the goal of advancing it both at European level and at the level of the member states. The European Research Council (ERC) also adopts a pro-open-access position . 2008 The European Commission launches the Open Access Pilot for funded projects and supports them in covering the costs of open access publication fees . The Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany establishes the Priority Initiative “Digital Information“ to coordinate its activities in the area of open access. The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) requires recipients of funding grants to publish their research results in open access. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) requires all research projects that it funds to make the research results from these projects available to the public in open access. Since then, FWF-funded scholars and scientists can obtain additional financial support within the framework of the programme to cover the costs of publishing peer-reviewed articles in open access. 2009 OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe) starts. The EU project aims to establish an electronic infrastructure responsible for archiving the research publications of all 27 EU member states, handling peer-reviewed articles, preprints, and conference publications, and managing research datasets. It has evolved out of the predecessor project, DRIVER, which built up a Europe-wide network of digital repositories. The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), an international association of repositories and repository networks from around the world, is founded. Its mission is to enhance the visibility and application of research outputs through collaboration across a global network of open access repositories. Like OpenAIRE, COAR has also evolved out of the EU project DRIVER. International Open Access Week takes place for the first time. During Open Access Week, numerous institutions worldwide organise events on open access in order to draw attention to the topic, to provide information about it, and to offer an opportunity for exchange. With a petition campaign, the so-called Heidelberg Appeal , the literary scholar Roland Reuss mobilises opposition against the digitisation of copyrighted works by Google Books and against open access. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) launches Stand-Alone Publications , one of the first programmes worldwide providing funding for the publication of open access books. 2010–2015: Upswing in Open Access Funding and Promotion 2010 Within the framework of the EU-funded project OAPEN (Open Access in European Networks), the platform of the same name is launched to support and promote the transition to open access for academic books. The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) launches the funding programme Open Access Publishing to support the establishment of open access publication funds at German universities, thereby decisively influencing developments in this area. As Fournier and Weihberg (2013) later note, during the transition from the subscription model to an open access model, substantial parts of the libraries’ acquisition budgets continue to be needed to finance licences. Therefore, the restructuring of (at least parts of) this budget, which is necessary to finance the transformation, can get off the ground only if additional funds to finance open access are made available for a limited period of time (p. 237). 2012 The statement of commitment to open access to scholarly journal literature in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) Declaration is reaffirmed. At the same time, recommendations for the implementation of open access are formulated, especially with regard to guidelines, licensing, and open access infrastructure and services and their sustainability. OAPEN launches the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) for peer-reviewed open access books as a counterpart of DOAJ . Besides metadata, it offers links to full texts of the publications on the websites or in the repositories of the publishers. The Finch Report is published. It includes recommendations for UK research funders regarding the implementation of open access. The report strongly advocates promoting and favouring gold rather than green open access . It comes in for criticism because of this ( Abadal, 2014 ), as rising publication costs and the obligation to use a specific licence (CC BY licence) are feared. The Open Access Network Austria (OANA) is founded under the organisational umbrella of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Austrian University Conference (UNIKO). The network was renamed Open Science Network Austria in 2018, retaining the same acronym, and was replaced by the Open Science Austria platform in 2022. 2013 The catch-all repository Zenodo is launched. It is funded by the European Commission and maintained by CERN. 2014 With its Strategy for Open Access , the government of the German Federal State (Land) of Schleswig-Holstein endorses and promotes open access to the results of scientific research and the sources of cultural heritage. With a position paper on e-science, the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the German Federal State of Baden-Württemberg drafts a concept for the further development of the scientific infrastructure in the state ( Fachkonzept zur Weiterentwicklung der wissenschaftlichen Infrastruktur ) that addresses the area of open access, among other things. A self-archiving provision is added to the German Copyright Act ( Section 38 (4) UrhG ). It grants authors the inalienable right to make the accepted manuscript version of their journal articles freely available to the public, for example via an open access repository, 12 months after first publication. This applies when the contribution results from research activities at least half of which were financed by public funds, and the work appeared in a periodical that is published at least twice a year. Beneficiaries of the EU research funding programme Horizon 2020 are required to make publications resulting from funded projects available in open access. In addition, there is a requirement to publish the underlying research data in open access. However, there is an opt-out option in this regard (“as open as possible, as closed as necessary”; Landi et al., 2019 ). In Austria, one of the first national open access agreements worldwide is concluded. The Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) negotiate the agreement with the publisher IOP Publishing. It is followed by further Austrian open access transformation agreements . The project e-infrastructures Austria is initiated to promote the coordinated development and further development of repository infrastructure in Austria. It is funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW). 2015 The Arbeitskreis Open Access (AKOA), an official working group of the Conference of Swiss University Libraries (KUB/BU; successor: Swiss Library Network for Education and Research, SLiNER ), is established. The Berlin Senate issues an Open Access Strategy for the Federal State of Berlin . This strategy paper contributes to establishing open access to digital knowledge resources. With the Fraunhofer Open Access-Strategie 2020 , the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft unequivocally enshrines the principle of open access when publishing research results. Since 2016: Open Access Transformation Gathers Momentum 2016 The Initiative Open Access 2020 (OA2020) , a global alliance of scientific and research organisations, is founded. It is committed to accelerating the transition from the subscription system for scholarly publications to new open access models. The goal of the OA2020 initiative is to bring about a situation where research articles are published without embargo periods , and the costs behind their dissemination are transparent, just, and economically sustainable. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) publishes a comprehensive open access strategy . The new measures are intended to contribute to establishing open access as a standard model of scholarly publishing in Germany. The Helmholtz Association adopts an Open Access Policy requesting employees to make publications resulting from their work for the Helmholtz Association openly accessible and reusable. The Leibniz Association adopts an Open Access Policy in which it enshrines open access as an important component in creating a culture of academic transparency. The recommendations for the implementation of open access in Austria are published by the “National Strategy” working group of the Open Science Network Austria (OANA). The declared aim is to achieve 100% open access for scholarly publications by 2025. 2017 The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) , a network of organisations committed to helping to secure the future of infrastructure and services in the area of open science, is founded. The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and its state scientific institutions pool their activities in the areas of open access and open science and develop the cross-university strategy Hamburg Open Science (HOS) . The project Austrian Transition to Open Access (AT2OA) starts. Funded by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research, its aims are to support the transformation of scientific publications from closed to open access and to implement measures to support this transformation. In Switzerland, a national open access-strategy is adopted. It provides that all scientific publications resulting from publicly funded research should be available in open access by 2024. 2018 Science Europe and 11 national research funding organisations join forces to form cOAlition S . With the support of the European Commission, cOAlition S publishes Plan S , which provides that scholarly publications on the results of research funded by grants provided by member organisations of cOAlition S must be made immediately available in open access without embargo. The publications may either be published on open access platforms or in open access journals or be made immediately available in open access repositories that fulfil the necessary preconditions. The German Federal State of Thuringia drafts a state-wide Strategy for the Digital Society with the aim of establishing open access at Thuringia’s universities, among other things. 2019 Projekt DEAL concludes “publish and read “agreements with major scholarly publishers that include, for the first time, an open access component. The project was initiated in 2014 by the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) on behalf of the Alliance of German Science Organisations. The goal of Projekt DEAL is to conclude nationwide licensing agreements for the complete e-journal portfolios of major scholarly publishers. A comprehensive consortial agreement is concluded with Wiley in early 2019 and with Springer Nature one year later, in 2020. The agreements grant the participating institutions reading access to around 1,900 Wiley and Springer Nature journals and enable authors affiliated with these insitutions to avail of the journals’ open access option without additional costs. The German Federal State of Brandenburg develops an Open Access Strategy . Funded by the Ministry of Economics, the strategy describes how open access can be substantially expanded. 2020 The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) grants an allowance for the funding of open access publication costs and provides targeted support for...
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Open Access Policy Frameworks
Intro Open Research Europe Graphic: Open Research Europe in Action. Source: Open Research Europe (2021). faster-h2020.eu The key takeaways from this article are 1 The main players in the policy area of open access in Europe and Germany, respectively, are the European Commission, the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR; until 2025 called the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF), and the governments of the federal states. 2 Through various policy measures, these players promote and expect open access to knowledge. 3 At the level of the German federal states, different trends in the areas of open access and open science are emerging. Practical tip The presentation “ Open Access unterstützen – Praxistipps für Landesregierungen ” lists measures with which the governments of the German federal states can practise and support open access. Object of Governance, Subject of Policy Discussion The topic of open access and the formulation and implementation of open access policies are the subject of policy discussions and negotiation processes. Who are the driving forces, and what are their positions? Open access policies are driven both from the top down – especially from the European level to the level of the national states and federal states – and from the bottom up, by committed scholars and scientists, scientific institutions, and open access initiatives. Important milestones in the debate on open access to information are (see also the History of the Open Access Movement ) are : the Declaration of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) , the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) . Further milestones include: the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) the Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science (2016) , The Vienna Principles: A Vision for Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century (2016) , the Jussieu Call for Open Science and Bibliodiversity (2017) , Plan S (2018) the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access (2022) . Many national and supranational institutions, for example the European Union (EU), the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR; until May 2025 called the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF), federal state ministries, the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), and to some extent also universities and non-university research institutions, play a dual role in this regard. As political actors, they participate through various interventions and measures in negotiation processes on open access; at the same time, they are also research funders , and in that capacity, they directly set standards and framework conditions. In what follows, we provide an overview of the main state actors in the policy area of open access. In each case, we briefly explain how free access to scientific knowledge is enabled or promoted by policy regulations in the respective contexts. Kindling, M., Martin, L., Neufend, M., & Wenninger, A. (2022). Open Access Atlas Deutschland: Status Quo in Bund und Ländern (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6472672 Supranational Level At the supranational level, the European Commission (EC) and the European Research Council (ERC) provide important stimuli for the implementation of open access and open science. In 2021, UNESCO also adopted a Recommendation on Open Science . Governance of Open Access in Europe As early as 2012, the European Commission issued a Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information, in which it called on Member States to implement clear and binding open access policies. According to the recommendation, it should be mandatory to provide open access to publications resulting from publicly funded research, preferably immediately but no later than 6 months after the date of publication in the case of the natural sciences and 12 months in the case of the humanities and social sciences. Although European Commission recommendations are not binding, the majority of the 27 EU Member States (inter alia Belgium , Greece , Italy , Croatia , Latvia , Malta , Poland , Portugal , Slovakia , Slovenia , Spain , Czech Republic , Hungary ) and three non-member States ( Norway , Serbia, and Switzerland ) have by now adopted open access and open science strategies. In the area of research funding , the European Commission requires funding recipients to provide open access to research publications resulting from funded projects (see also Horizon Europe ). [MG1] Error 404 bei Slovenia. [PSM2] Danke – das hier scheint der richtige Link zu sein: https://www.openaire.eu/community/blogs/slovenia-open-science-in-the-recently-adopted-resolution-on-the-slovenian-scientific-research-and-innovation-strategy-2030 Open Access in Germany In contrast to many other European countries, Germany does not have a uniform national open access policy. In its coalition agreement for the legislative period 2021–2025 , the previous German Federal Government undertook to strengthen open access and open science and to establish open access as a common scientific standard. This was duly taken into account with the adoption in 2023 of Joint Guidelines of the Federal Government and the Länder for the implementation of open access in Germany (Federal Ministry of Education and Research, 2023 ). In the coalition agreement of the current federal government in 2025 , open access is not explicitly mentioned; however, access to scientific research is to be facilitated by a research data act. Federal Ministry of Education and Research At federal level in Germany, the amendment of the Copyright Act (UrhG) in 2013 created the legal framework for green open access by implementing an inalienable secondary publication right ( Pflüger, 2016 , p. 14). In 2016, the then German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; renamed the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space, BMFTR, in May 2025) published a strategy for open access in Germany , which was updated in 2018. The aim of the updated strategy is to further establish open access as the standard for scholarly publishing and to close the gap between the scientific community’s desire for more open access publications and current publishing practice ( Federal Ministry of Education and Research, 2018 , p. 7). According to the strategy, various ways of providing open access should be allowed in principle, and academic freedom should remain untouched. Furthermore, publications resulting from publicly funded research should be openly accessible, and established quality assurance procedures should be ensured. Whereas the transposition into concrete policies is the responsibility of the individual federal states, the BMBF, in its capacity as a funding agency, set guidelines: Research projects funded by the BMBF – or its successor, the BMFTR – are expected to publish their results and their research data in open access . Besides scientific and scholarly institutions and libraries, funding recipients also include private sector actors, such as publishers and other service providers, that are establishing themselves in the open access landscape. Open Access at Federal State Level Because of the sovereignty of the federal states in the area of education and higher education policy, the adoption and implementation of open access and open science policies in Germany takes place mainly at federal state level (Kindling et al., 2022). These federal state policies are thus central elements of the open access transformation in the Federal Republic of Germany (Kindling et al., 2021). Some states, for example Baden-Württemberg , Berlin , Brandenburg , Hamburg , and Schleswig-Holstein have state strategies, which in some cases define concrete objectives. These objectives include, for example, an open access quota for journal articles, as well as open access officers and open access policies at all institutions ( Berlin ); the monitoring of open access publication figures ( Thuringia ); the adoption of a clear position on open access by university managers ( Brandenburg ); and a uniform technical infrastructure ( Hamburg ). Some federal state governments support open access through other instruments of higher education governance. For example, support for open access is mentioned in the science plan ( Bremen ), in the higher education development plan ( Saxony ), or in the digital strategy ( Rhineland-Palatinate , Saxony-Anhalt , Hesse ) of the respective federal states. Other federal state governments support the scientific institutions in their states through targeted measures, for example openaccess.nrw in North Rhine-Westphalia; through an open access publication fund ( Thuringia , Lower Saxony ); through open access networking units ( Berlin , Brandenburg ); or by funding openness as a cross-sectional topic ( Bremen ). Although other federal states have not yet adopted an explicit science policy position, many institutions already have well-established open access service offerings (e.g. Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Bavaria, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Rhineland-Palatinate) (Kindling et al., 2021).The Bundesländer-Atlas (Kindling et al., 2021), the oa.atlas federal state dossiers (2024), and the Open4DE Landscape-Report ( Bärwolf et al. 2023 ) also provide an overview of current and past open access and open science activities of the German federal states. Open Access in Austria and Switzerland Open Access in Austria In Austria, various open access initiatives emerged at a national level at an early stage (see the History of the Open Access Movement ). For example, in 2014, in cooperation with the Austrian Science Fund ( FWF ), the Austrian Academic Library Consortium ( KEMÖ) , as one of the first national library consortia worldwide to do so, concluded an open access agreement with a publisher (see Mayer 2022, p. 47). The FWF had already introduced its own open access policy in 2004, with a strong recommendation to publish works open access. In 2012, Open Access Network Austria (OANA; since 2022: OSA – Open Science Austria ) was founded as a joint national networking initiative on the part of the FWF and Universities Austria ( uniko ). OANA subsequently drew up a number of recommendations, inter alia for a national open access strategy (2016) and a national open science strategy (2020). Following the publication of the 2016 recommendations paper , many research institutions published open access policies. The 2020 recommendations served as a basis for the national Open Science Policy Austria , which was adopted in 2022. A secondary publication right was incorporated into law in 2015 (see also Legal Issues in Austria ). In 2019, the national funding initiative “Digital and Social Transformation in Higher Education” of the then Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research enabled the launch of several digitalization projects with a focus on open access, for example AT2OA2 . In its Government Programme 2020–2024 , the Austrian Federal Government gave a clear commitment to open access and actively supported Plan S for the implementation of open access. The current Government Programme 2025–2029 does not focus explicitly on open access or open science. Open Access in Switzerland According to the strategic vision of the Swiss Higher Education Policy Coordination 2025–2028 (Gesamtschweizerische Hochschulpolitischen Koordination 2025–2028 ), 100% of scholarly publications from Swiss universities will be made available in open access. In particular, swissuniversities , the umbrella organisation of universities in Switzerland, plays the role of a superordinate actor for the promotion of open access. As a funding institution, swissuniversities supports various open access projects . The Swiss National Open Access Strategy published in 2017 was updated in 2024. In the updated strategy, swissuniversities and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) set the framework conditions for the country’s open access transformation. The Open Science Delegation coordinates cooperation between the stakeholders. Besides this national strategy, the Swiss Library Network for Education and Research ( SLiNER ) published National Open Access Policy Guidelines in 2019, which serve as recommendations for the institutional open access policies of Swiss universities. In 2023, 86% of universities in Switzerland had an open access policy (see swissuniversities, 2023). Eleven partner institutions are collaborating to create a national diamond open access consortium ( CoDOA ) to enable the long-term and sustainable funding of diamond open access journals. The groundwork for enshrining a secondary publication right in law is currently in progress. References Bärwolff, T., Benz, M., Dreyer, M., Neufend, M., Kindling, M., Kirchner, A., & Schmidt, B. (2023). Open4DE landscape report . Open-Access-Büro Berlin. https://doi.org/10.21428/986c5d43.bab38f02 Federal Ministry of Education and Research. (2023). Open access in Germany. Joint guidelines of the Federal Government and the Länder . https://www.bmftr.bund.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/FS/772970_Open_Access_in_Deutschland_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4 Federal Ministry of Education and Research. (2018). Open Access in Deutschland. Die Strategie des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung [Open access in Germany. The strategy of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research]. https://www.bildung-forschung.digital/files/2018-08-Open_Access_neu_barrierefrei.pdf Kindling, M., Neufend, M., & Wenninger, A. (2021). Bundesländer-Atlas Open Access . Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5761153 Kindling, M., Martin, L., Neufend, M., & Wenninger, A. (2022). Open Access Atlas Deutschland: Status Quo in Bund und Ländern (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6472672 Kindling, M., Martin, L., & Neufend, M. (2024). oa.atlas: Konzept . Open-Access-Büro Berlin. https://doi.org/10.21428/986c5d43.54fbd167 Mayer, K. (2022). Open Access im Wandel. Infrastrukturen, Monitoring und Governance als zentrale Elemente einer erfolgreichen Transformation. Baseline Report zur Open Access Transformation in der Wissenschaft . Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI), Vienna. https://doi.org/10.22163/fteval.2022.533 Pflüger, T. (2016). Open Access-Regulierung im internationalen Vergleich. In T. Dreier, V. Fischer, A. van Raay, & I. Spiecker [known as Döhmann] (Eds.), Informationen der öffentlichen Hand: Zugang und Nutzung (1st ed., Vol. 3, pp. 537–562). Nomos. https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/37572/Pflueger_0-395438.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y swissuniversities. (2023). Open access strategy review. Background report . https://www.swissuniversities.ch/fileadmin/swissuniversities/Dokumente/Hochschulpolitik/Open_Access/OA_Strategie/OA_Strategy_Review_Background_Report.pdf UNESCO. (2021). UNESCO recommendation on open science . https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5741832 Further Reading Fuhrer, C., & Schurte, R. (2018). Nationale Open Access-Strategie in der Schweiz: Herausforderungen für die Hochschulen und ihre Bibliotheken. In Zentralbibliothek Zürich, A. Keller, & S. Uhl (Eds.), Bibliotheken der Schweiz: Innovation durch Kooperation: Festschrift für Susanna Bliggenstorfer anlässlich ihres Rücktrittes als Direktorin der Zentralbibliothek Zürich (pp. 97–118). De Gruyter Saur. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110553796-004 German Science and Humanities Council. (2022). Recommendations on the transformation of academic publishing: Towards open access . https://www.wissenschaftsrat.de/download/2022/9477-22_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=0 Taşkın, Z., Melinščak Zlodi, I., Laakso, M., Torny, D., Arasteh, S., Bargheer, M., Klaus, T., Schima, J., Agnoloni, T., Peruginelli, G., Davidson, A., Franczak, M., María Ángeles, C. B., de Pablo Llorente, V., Dobson, H., & Heyman, J. (2024). D5.2 National overviews on sustaining institutional publishing in Europe . Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13683953 Verdicchio, D., Kissling-Näf, I. (2020). Digitale Transformation und Open Access von Forschungsresultaten in der Schweiz. In J. Schellinger, K. Tokarski, & I. Kissling-Näf (Eds.), Digitale Transformation und Unternehmensführung (pp. 11–27). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-26960-9_2...
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Open Access in Educational Sciences
What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in the Educational Sciences Although open access as a publishing form is established in educational sciences, it continues to play a somewhat secondary role compared with proprietary publications. Journal articles are the preferred form of publication in educational sciences (Schmidt-Hertha & Müller, 2020), followed by monographs, edited collections, and contributions to edited collections, which together make up around one third of the publication output in this field (Abs et al., 2020). According to the German Education Index ( FIS Bildung ) labelling, as of August 2025, the full-text versions of 42% of the publication output, 32% of the listed journal articles, ca. 58% of the listed monographs and edited collections, and ca. 61% of the listed contributions to edited collections in educational sciences in 2024 were freely available. The German Educational Research Association (GERA/DGfE) , one of the key institutions in educational sciences in the German-speaking area, supports a large number of open access initiatives, but it has not yet adopted a clear position on open access. A further overview of open access developments in the German-language educational sciences is provided in a dissertation by Bambey (2016) and journal articles by Rummler (2021) and Schindler and Rummler (2018) . Open Access Journals As of October 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed around 1,980 journals under the subject Education . Important German-language open access journals that are listed in the DOAJ include: bwp@ DOAJ Die Deutsche Schule doaj Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research (FQS) DOAJ Magazin Erwachsenenbildung.at DOAJ MedienPädagogik. Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung DOAJ Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung (ZFHE) DOAJ Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung DOAJ Important open access journals that are not listed in the DOAJ include: bildungsforschung PhyDid widerstreit-sachunterricht Die Österreichische Volkshochschule (ÖVH) on_education. Journal for Research and Debate Beiträge zur Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung . Contributions up to and including 2013 and contributions from 2014 onwards can be found on peDOCS. Journal for Educational Research Online (JERO) journal für lehrerInnenbildung Erziehungswissenschaft Journals in the educational sciences are often published open access by committed individuals with the help of their institutions and through voluntary effort. For example, the German Youth Institute publishes the magazine IMPULSE . Although, as mentioned earlier, the German Educational Research Association (GERA/DGfE) has not yet adopted a clear position on open access, its journal, Erziehungswissenschaft , is published in diamond open access . In addition, the above-mentioned DOAJ-listed journal MedienPädagogik , which is published by GERA’s Media Education Division, is also diamond open access. In Austria, the Forum Neue Medien in der Lehre Austria publishes the journal Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung in diamond open access. And in Switzerland, the Swiss Society for Research in Education (SSRE) also publishes the quadrilingual journal Swiss Journal of Educational Research in diamond open access. Some journals rely on support from funding agencies or sponsors. For example, the Magazin erwachsenenbildung.at is funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Women, Science and Research (BMFWF ), while the online journal bwp@ is run inter alia through a cooperation with wbv Media and with support from sponsors. What are Open Access Journals Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality. Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2021) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of October 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed over 1,600 titles under the subject " Education ", and the OAPEN Library listed over 1.200 titles. Furthermore, peDOCS provides a good overview of series in educational sciences. And the German Education Index (FIS Bildung Literaturdatenbank) indexes open access monographs and contributions to edited collections. A large share of open access books in educational sciences are now published by university presses or institutional repositories (see Schindler & Rummler, 2018). Besides research reports and edited collections, these works include in particular monographic doctoral dissertations and habilitation theses. Although the German Educational Research Association (GERA/DGfE) has not yet adopted a clear position on open access, its divisions and committees publish various books and book series open access: Division 1 – Historical Education Research . Series: Jahrbuch Historische Bildungsforschung (Verlag Julius Klinkhardt) Division 7 – Vocational Education . Series: Jahrbuch der berufs- und wirtschaftspädagogischen Forschung (Verlag Barbara Budrich) Division 9 – Adult Education . Series: Schriftenreihe der Sektion Erwachsenenbildung (Verlag Barbara Budrich) The Gesellschaft für Medien in der Wissenschaft (GMW) published the conference proceedings series Medien in der Wissenschaft in open access with Waxmann Verlag until 2022. Furthermore, various publishers support the publication of open access books in educational sciences. They include Verlag Julius Klinkhardt , Barbara Budrich , Nomos , Beltz Juventa , wbv Media , transcript , Waxmann , and Werner-Hülsbusch-Verlag . Disciplinary Repositories The most important repositories in the educational sciences include: peDOCS : the disciplinary repository of DIPF – Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education for the areas educational research, educational science, and subject didactics. DIPFdocs : DIPF’s institutional repository. texte.online : publications on adult education of the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE) . Scripta Paedagogica Online : digital text archive on the history of education in the German-speaking area (holdings include, inter alia, journals, teacher registers, school programmes). VET Repository : the central repository of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training – BIBB for literature in the area of research on vocational education and training (VET). An overview of relevant repositories is also provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk if you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings As a virtual specialised education library, the Education Research Portal is the central point of access for literature searches in (German-language) educational sciences. It is run by the Information Centre for Education (IZB) of DIPF – Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education in Frankfurt am Main. The development of the portal was funded by the German Research Foundation ( DFG ). The offering, which can be used free of charge, is divided into three sections, Literature & References, Research Data in Education, and Research Information: In the Literature & References section, users can conduct searches, report publications that are not yet indexed in the database, publish documents via peDOCS , or avail of the services of the Specialised Information Service for Educational Science and Research . The Research Data in Education section contains comprehensive studies in empirical education research that have been documented for the long term. In addition, there is a central access point to descriptive information about the studies (e.g. survey instruments used, research data collected, information material on research data management) . The Research Information section provides a thematic compilation of relevant Internet sources for and about science and research in the area of education . The Education Research Portal has been online since August 2005. Following a complete overhaul, it was relaunched in September 2017. Open Science in the Educational Sciences In educational sciences, there are also other movements in the area of open science beyond open access. For example, a special issue of the journal Erziehungswissenschaft , Issue 61 (2-2020), entitled: “ Neue Formen der Archivierung, Bereitstellung und Nachnutzung von Forschungsdaten ” [New Forms of Archiving, Providing, and Reusing Research Data], which brought together arguments on open science and open data, sparked a debate within educational sciences on new forms of research and data collection and the requirements that these models involve. The special issue also addressed discernible limitations and reservations, especially regarding data protection and the use of open research data and processes. Nonetheless, open science practices and forms of open access publishing will also change things in educational sciences, as the open handling of research data is supported in principle. The German Educational Research Association (GERA/DGfE), the Society for Empirical Educational Research ( Gesellschaft für Empirische Bildungsforschung, GEBF), and the Gesellschaft für Fachdidaktik (GFD) have published a joint statement with recommendations on the archiving, provision, and reuse of research data in the context of education and subject didactics research. At an international level, as of November 2025, the registry of research data repositories re3data listed 100 open research data portals and repositories under “educational research”. In the German-speaking area, the portal Forschungsdaten Bildung indexes research data via the German Network Educational Research Data (Verbund FDB) and provides information on sharing and managing research data in education research. Engagement with open science and the adaptation of open science to the disciplinary framework conditions and possibilities can increasingly be observed in educational sciences (van Dijk et al., 2021; Krammer & Svecnik, 2020; van der Zee & Reich, 2018). Furthermore, educational sciences are also influenced by the open educational resources (OER) movement. By explicitly calling for open access to education, educational opportunities, and educational materials, this thematic field follows the lead of historical pedagogical precursors (Deimann, 2020; Hug, 2014). In recent years, an increasing number of studies have investigated the innovations in the area of educational and informational practice. These studies emphasise, examine, and critically discuss the new ways of handling materials and infrastructures (Schön & Ebner, 2021; Heck et al., 2020; Deimann, 2020; Heinen et al., 2015). The website OERinfo provides regular German-language news and information on OER as well as a compilation of German-language OER directories and platforms (e.g. the OER-Repositorium Baden-Württemberg and twillo ) . These directories and platforms cover both the areas of school and adult education and the area of higher education. In Austria, an OER certificate ( OER-Zertifikat.at) has been introduced for higher education teachers and institutions (Schön et al., 2 023). open-access.network (2021) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Abs, H. J., Kuper, H., Cathleen, G., Ludwig, K., Hüfner, K., Radhoff, M., Ruberg, C., Kerst, C., Wolter, A., Gerecht, M., Krüger, H.-H., Sauerwein, M., Schultheiß, J., Schmidt-Hertha, B., Müller, M., Martini, R., & Stelter, A. (2020). Datenreport Erziehungswissenschaft 2020. Erstellt im Auftrag der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft (DGfE). Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.25656/01:18987 Bambey, D. (2016). Fachliche Publikationskulturen und Open Access. Fächerübergreifende Entwicklungstendenzen und Spezifika der Erziehungswissenschaft und Bildungsforschung . https://doi.org/10.25656/01:12331 Deimann, M. (2020). Lernen mit Open Educational Resources. In H. M. Niegemann & A. Weinberger (Eds.), Handbuch Bildungstechnologie. Konzeption und Einsatz digitaler Lernumgebungen (pp. 699–708). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54368-9_58 Heck, T., Kullmann, S., Hiebl, J., Schröder, N., Otto, D., & Sander, P. (2020). Designing Open Informational Ecosystems on the Concept of Open Educational Resources. Open Education Studies , 2 (1), 252–264. https://doi.org/10.1515/edu-2020-0130 Heinen, R., Kerres, M., & Schindler, C. (2015). Provisioning strong and weak OER: Requirements of open informational ecosystems. Proceedings of Open Education Global 2015 . https://doi.org/10.25656/01:18242 Hug, T. (2014). Bildung für alle – eine Neuauflage? Offenheit und Teilen in der Open Educational Resources (OER) Bewegung. In P. Missomelius (Ed.), Freie Bildungsmedien und digitale Archive. Medien - Wissen - Bildung (pp. 227–256). Innsbruck University Press. https://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/literatur/vollanzeige.html?FId=1055764 Krammer, G., & Svecnik, E. (2020). Open Science als Beitrag zur Qualität in der Bildungsforschung. Zeitschrift für Bildungsforschung , 10 , 263–278. https://doi.org/10.1007/s35834-020-00286-z Rummler, K. (2021). Open Access Zeitschriften in den Bildungs- und Erziehungswissenschaften. Ausgewählte Aspekte zum Betrieb wissenschaftlicher Fachzeitschriften. Schweizerische Zeitschrift Für Bildungswissenschaften , 43 (1), 116–128. https://doi.org/10.24452/sjer.43.1.9 Schindler, C., & Rummler, K. (2018). Open Access in der Publikationslandschaft der Erziehungswissenschaft. Eine Sondierung mit Blick auf Monographien und Sammelwerke. Erziehungswissenschaft , 57 (29), 9–18. https://doi.org/10.3224/ezw.v29i2.02 Schmidt-Hertha, B., & Müller, M. (2020). Forschung und Publikationskulturen. In J. Abs, H. Kuper, & R. Martini (Eds.), Datenreport Erziehungswissenschaft 2020 . Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.3224/84742419 Schön, S., & Ebner, M. (2021). Digital gestütztes Lernen in der Erwachsenenbildung - wo liegt die Innovation? In Egger, R. & Härtel, P. (Eds.), Bildung für alle? Für ein offenes und chancengerechtes, effizientes und kooperatives System des lebenslangen Lernens in Österreich (pp. 231–252). Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31054-7_12 Schön, S., Ebner, M., Berger, E., Brandhofer, G., Edelsbrunner, S., Gröblinger, O., Hackl, C., Jadin, T., Kopp, M., Neuböck, K., Proinger, J., Schmölz, A. & Steinbacher, H.P. (2023). Development of an Austrian OER certification for higher education institutions and their employees. In D. Otto, G. Scharnberg, M. Kerres, & O. Zawacki-Richter (Eds.), Distributet learning ecosystems. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38703-7_9 van der Zee, T., & Reich, J. (2018). Open Education Science. AERA Open , 4 (3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858418787466 van Dijk, W., Schratschneider, C., & Hart, S. A. (2021). Open Science in Education Sciences. Journal of Learning Disabilities , 54 (2), 139–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219420945267 Further Reading Mruck, K., Mey, G., Schön, S., Idensen, H., & Purgathofer, P. (2013). Offene Lehr- und Forschungsressourcen. Open Access und Open Educational Resources. In M. Ebner & S. Schön (Eds.), L3T. Lehrbuch für Lernen und Lehren mit Technologien (2. Auflage). https://doi.org/10.25656/01:8356 Schaffert, S. (2004). Kostenlose Online-Literatur der Bildungsforschung. P@psych E-Zine , 9 . https://www.stangl-taller.at/paedpsych/ezine/2004/schaffert04/ Content editors of this page: Dr Klaus Rummler, Zurich University of Teacher Education , Dr Christoph Schindler, Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education , and Dr Sandra Schön, Graz University of Technology (Last updated: November 2025)....
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Open Access in Gender Studies
What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find arguments and reservations here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find out about how to publish and self-archive Open Access. Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Open Access in Gender Studies Gender studies is a field of knowledge that is strongly characterised by inter- or transdisciplinary work methods and in which a variety of disciplinary approaches can be found. In many cases, the publishing practices and venues of gender researchers depend on the specialist disciplines involved and are correspondingly heterogeneous. However, there are also several publications with a decidedly inter- or transdisciplinary focus. For the most part, gender researchers publish their works in journals, edited volumes, and monographs. In addition, handbooks, science blogs, and various other transfer formats are widespread. Preprints , by contrast, play hardly any role at all. Opportunities for Gender Studies Open access publishing offers enormous opportunities, especially for gender studies. Because of political reservations with regard to gender studies, and the ambiguous location of the field between the disciplines, its results are subjected to reception barriers. The potentially greater visibility and the direct access to full texts enables open access publications to overcome these barriers and thus demonstrate their quality. The opportunities offered by electronic publishing, and especially by open access , are now widely acknowledged in gender studies. There are now several open access publications In German-language gender studies, in particular journals and science blogs. There has also been a gradual increase in the number of publications in the area of open access books . Internationally, two developments can be distinguished: On the one hand, relevant, mainly English-language publications on gender studies are being published with large commercial publishers, which, to date, unfortunately offer only hybrid open access options against payment of publication charges . On the other hand, there are a growing number of open access publications in the non-English-speaking world that use no-fee and scholar-led open access models, thereby making an important contribution to bibliodiversity . Activities of the German Gender Studies Association The German Gender Studies Association (Fachgesellschaft Geschlechterstudien) actively supports open access publishing. As one of the four editors of the Open Gender Journal , and as the provider of the Open Gender Platform , the association has anchored open access as an important field of activity in its task spectrum. In addition, within the association, the working group Open Digital Gender connects existing initiatives and engages with current developments in the areas of open access and open science. Open Access Journals As of August 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 159 entries under the keyword gender . Only 34 of the journals listed in the DOAJ levy article processing charges ( APCs ). In Germany, the following open access journals and working paper series are published in the area of gender studies: Open Gender Journal DOAJ querelles-net (since 2020 a section of the Open Gender Journal) GENDER FORUM – An Internet Journal for Gender Studies DOAJ IZGOnZeit gender[ed]thoughts FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur Since 2020, the review journal querelles-net , one of the pioneers of the open access movement in German-speaking gender studies, has been integrated as a section in the Open Gender Journal . The aforementioned journals are not only accessible free of charge, they also fulfil the requirements for open access publications by using open licences . What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Handbooks The handbook “Politik und Geschlecht” [Politics and Gender] (edited by Christine M. Klapeer, Johanna Leinius, Franziska Martinsen, Heike Mauer, and Inga Nüthen), the first edition of which was published in 2017, is an open access introductory work to gender studies that is continuously supplemented and updated. This “living encyclopaedia” was created within the framework of the BMBF-funded project OAPEnz as a collaboration between ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences and the publisher Barbara Budrich . Open Access Science Blogs In addition to classical scholarly journals, there are also several open access gender studies science blogs. The posts in the blog interdisziplinäre geschlechterforschung , an interdisciplinary gender studies blog published by the Koordinations- und Forschungsstelle Netzwerk Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung NRW ( Coordination and Research Office of the Women’s and Gender Research Network of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia ), are preserved long-term in the repository of the Library of the University of Duisburg-Essen . The Genderblog of the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin focuses on the publication of findings, projects, and debates from gender studies research and teaching at the university. Open Educational Resources In the area of Open Educational Resources (OER), the OER “ Was ist Gender? ” [What is gender?] provides an introduction to the topic. The portal Gendering MINT digital makes reusable teaching modules from the area of research and teaching “Gender & STEM” available as OER. The Toolbox Gender und Diversity in der Lehre offers materials for designing discrimination-critical university teaching. All offerings are available under an open licence. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find legal information on Open Access here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Disciplinary Repositories With GenderOpen , which was established in 2018, gender studies has a disciplinary open access repository that ensures the long-term availability of publications under open access conditions. The repository also informs authors about their rights in the areas of self-archiving and the secondary publication right ( Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht ), thereby creating an awareness of the possibilities granted to them under German copyright law. In many cases, targeted collaborations with relevant scholarly publishers enable the self-archiving of the original publisher’s version and the corresponding metadata after expiry of an embargo period . Furthermore, there are collaborations between the GenderOpen repository and the publishers Barbara Budrich and De Gruyter , on the basis of which the original publisher’s version of electronic full texts of articles from certain journals and the corresponding metadata may be made freely available after the expiry of an embargo period. Authors have the possibility of deciding at the time of publication that their contributions are to be made available under a Creative Commons (CC) licence after this embargo period. GenderOpen then releases the contributions automatically. This applies to the following journals: FZG – Freiburger Zeitschrift für GeschlechterStudien (embargo: 24 months) FEMINA POLITICA – Zeitschrift für feministische Politikwissenschaft (embargo: 36 months) Feministische Studien (embargo: 24 months) The GenderOpen keyword index, Schlagwortindex GenderOpen , is a controlled vocabulary for the substantive description of gender studies publications. Developed within the framework of GenderOpen, it is also used by several journals, the Digital German Women’s Archive ( Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv , DDF), and the Gutachter*innen-Datenbank , a reviewers database. In 2019, GenderOpen received the DINI Certificate for Open Access Publication Services. An overview of relevant repositories is also provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now also provide open access content relevant to gender studies. Other Offerings Open access in German-language gender studies has been decisively advanced by individual projects. A groundbreaking role in this regard was played by the project Geschlechterforschung und Open Access. Ein Publikationsmodell für ein inter-/transdisziplinäres Forschungsfeld (Gender Studies and Open Access. A Publication Model for an Inter-/Transdisciplinary Research Field), which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and conducted at the Freie Universität Berlin (2011–2012). The project analysed the opportunities and challenges for open access publications in gender studies and showed that all the necessary technical and legal possibilities for implementing quality-assured open access publications exist. However, open access publications and electronic publication processes entail additional challenges, for example, clear divisions of roles, clarification of rights, and adaptation to transdisciplinary and cross-national standards. Another open access offering is the Open Gender Platform , which was developed and built at the Freie Universität Berlin‘s Margherita von Brentano Center within the framework of a project (June 2018–September 2020) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The project developed sustainable approaches for editorial workflows, business models, and quality assurance procedures and made them available to the entire field of gender studies for reuse. Deliverables included a reviewers database ( Gutachter*innen-Datenbank ) – that is, a directory of experts who have declared their willingness to act as reviewers for open access journals and books in Germany. Furthermore, there are collaborations between the GenderOpen repository and the publishers Barbara Budrich and De Gruyter , on the basis of which the original publisher’s version of electronic full texts of articles from certain journals and the corresponding metadata may be made freely available after the expiry of an embargo period. Authors have the possibility of deciding at the time of publication that their contributions are to be made available under a Creative Commons (CC) licence after this embargo period. GenderOpen then releases the contributions automatically. This applies to the following journals: GENDER – Journal for Gender, Culture and Society (24-month embargo) FZG – Freiburger Zeitschrift für GeschlchterStudien (24-month embargo) FEMINA POLITICA – Zeitschrift für feministische Politikwissenschaft (36-month embargo) Feministische Studien (24-month embargo) The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now also provide open access content relevant to gender studies. Practical Tip Open-Access-Literatur finden Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Science in Gender Studies The topic of open research data is being taken up only hesitantly in gender studies. According to a needs analysis on research data infrastructure in gender studies , only a few researchers have experience of the reuse of research data. The difficulties in disciplinarily classifying gender studies repeat themselves also in relation to open research data. To date, there are no explicitly designated research repositories for gender studies. Even when metadata have been properly recorded, a search always requires the use of various search strategies with different storage locations, keywords, and disciplines. However, whether an independent storage location for open research data is called for in an inter- and transdisciplinary field such as gender studies, in which researchers work with diverse types of data, has not yet been conclusively settled. Content editor of this page: Kathrin Ganz , Special Information Service Gender Studies (FID Gender) (Last updated: August 2024)....
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Open Access in Law
What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find arguments and reservations here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Perception of Open Access Survey on requirements and obstacles in the legal sciences. Open Access in Legal Scholarship The field of legal scholarship was comparatively late in recognising the relevance of open access for its own scientific practice. Admittedly, since the turn of the century, legal scholars have addressed the legal parameters of open access ( Spindler, 2006 ) and have examined in dissertations the significance of copyright’s exclusionary power for the supply of scientific information ( Krujatz, 2012 ) and in journal articles the backdoor to more open access offered by copyright law ( Radtke, 2022 ). There are even journals, such as RuZ – Recht und Zugang , that are specifically dedicated to legal issues relating to access to cultural heritage. And between 2015 and 2024, open access was the subject of legislation in six German federal states. However, when it comes to their own publishing practices, many legal scholars react to the topic of open access with a questioning look or a shrug of the shoulders. Others even reject it outright, which can lead to years of legal disputes . There are a variety of reasons for this – at least eight theses against open access in legal scholarship , which have since been called into question, are frequently advanced ( Hamann & Hürlimann, 2019 ). Open access is increasingly mandated by funders of legal science research and by universities (“top down”). In recent years, however, jurOA-Netzwerk , an informal network of legal scholars and librarians in the German-speaking area, has been working to promote open access in legal scholarship (“bottom up”). This network operates a mailing list that reports news on open access in legal scholarship. Since 2016, it has organised biennial conferences –the fifth of which took place in 2024 – that are documented on www.jurOA.de . By contrast, the established professional societies in the field of legal scholarship have so far been reluctant to participate in the open access debate. In its Criteria for the Assessment of Scholarly Performance in the Field of Private Law, the German Association of Teachers of Private Law (Zivilrechtslehrervereinigung) defines “successful reception” as a performance criterion and designates the publication venue as an indicator for scientific quality. However, this does not appear to be linked to any statements regarding the accessibility or reusability of publications. In the guidelines for good scientific practice issued by the German Association of Teachers of Private Law (Zivilrechtslehrervereinigung) and the German Association of Teachers of Public Law (Vereinigung der deutschen Staatsrechtsrechtslehrer) , there is no mention of open access. The Swiss Association of Jurists (Schweizerischer Juristenverein) has been pressured by the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences guidelines for granting financial contributions to publications to take small steps in the direction of open access. Journals As of October 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 860 entries under “Law “. However, this number is exaggerated, as the disciplinary assignment of journals in DOAJ is often misleading, and, on the other hand, many online law journals – both from the German-speaking area (Hamann, 2016, para 24) and the USA (Severin et al., 2020, p.16) – are not indexed. Specifically, a study conducted in 2019 found that, as of 1 August of that year, three of the 11 law journals from the German-speaking area indexed in DOAJ were assigned to the wrong subject or geographical area, while a further 39 online law journals were not included at all ( Hamann, 2019, p. 87, Footnote 11, pp. 90–92 ). Journals are indexed in DOAJ on application only . The application procedure is very laborious, and even professional publishers – and especially many smaller (scholar-led) journals – are unable to meet all the criteria for inclusion. Of the law journals from the German-speaking area (DE/AT/CH/LI) that are indexed in DOAJ, only one – the International Journal of Language & Law – is also a member of the Free Journal Network of even more critically curated platinum open access journals. In the case of other journals, membership is often precluded because FJN requires that member journals include a title and abstract in English for each published article. The most established law journals from the German-speaking area that are indexed in DOAJ include: German Law Journal (since 2000, now published in the UK) Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History (online since 2002) Ancilla Iuris: Lagen des Rechts (since 2006) Göttingen Journal of International Law (since 2009) International Journal of Language & Law (since 2012) Recht in Afrika / Law in Africa / Droit en Afrique (online since 2014) sui-generis (since 2014) In addition, as of 31.12.2022, there were a further 10 open access law journals from the German-speaking area ( Hamann, 2023 , p. 416). This number increased by two in 2024, when the renowned journals RabelsZ ( The Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law ) and ZGE ( Intellectual Property Journal ) were converted to open access within the framework of a pioneering subscribe-to-open (S2O) project at Mohr Siebeck . The further spread of this funding model, which was established only in 2017, means that further conversions of journals to open access can be expected. Besides genuinely open access journals, whose articles are published under an open licence (such as a Creative Commons CC BY or CC BY-SA licence), there are numerous online law journals that (a) distribute their content primarily on the Internet (i.e. in parallel with the print version) rather than just secondarily (i.e. some time after publication of the primary print version), and (b) make the full-text versions of their articles freely accessible, that is, accessible without special access data (Hamann 2019, p. 88). In Figure 1, each online law journal in the German-speaking area that existed as of 2022 is represented by a coloured square. Three groups can be distinguished: 16 genuinely open access journals, that is, journals whose articles were published under an open licence (top left, in orange, framed in red); 15 journals with more legally restrictive licences (top right, in grey); and 28 journals with traditional rights distribution (“free to read”, bottom half of the figure, in green). Figure 1. Licensing models of the online law journals in the German-speaking area as of 2022. Source (including explanation of the individual abbreviations): Hamann, 2023 : 418; CC BY 4.0 International . In addition to journals explicitly published under a Creative Commons (CC) or Digital Peer Publishing (DPP) licence, some of these journals describe themselves simply as open access (“OA”), whereas others either do not supply any information about the distribution of rights (“…”) or invoke the statutory distribution of rights (“UrhG” [German Copyright Act], in some cases using the © symbol). Figure 2. Year of establishment and country of origin of 47 online law journals from Germany (DE), Switzerland (CH), Austria (AU), and Liechtenstein (LI). Source: Hamann, 2019 : 94; CC BY 4.0 International As of 01.10.2024, the Zenodo collection “Daten zum Open Access in der deutschsprachigen Rechtswissenschaft” [Data on Open Access in German-Language Legal Scholarship], the most current list of online law journals in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Lichtenstein, comprised a list of the 71 journals (incl. seven that have ceased publication). The oldest journals have been online since 1996; the years 2013/14 saw a particularly strong wave of start-ups (see Figure 2). Because the start-ups are offset by journals that ceased publication, it is possible to determine how many online journals were in existence each year since 1996. As can be seen in Figure 3, the development curve rose steeply up to 2022. However, it also flattened in the last years of that period, and it is unclear whether this indicates a trend. Figure 3. Number of online law journals in the German-speaking area in the period 1996–2022. Source: Hamann, 2023 : 417; CC BY 4.0 International Outside the German-speaking area, the law reviews published by university presses in the United States, which are usually freely available online, constitute a flourishing eco-system of open access scholarly texts. The origins of these law reviews go back a long way – for example, to the popular repository infrastructure of the Berkeley Electronic Press (Bepress). Many of the student-edited journals in this eco-system still do not use any open access licences and can therefore be classified as gratis open access rather than libre open access . What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Academic Blogs In addition to scholarly journals, academic blogs increasingly also serve as serious forums for legal scholarship. Apart from the personal blogs of individual pioneers such as Ulrich Noack (“ Unternehmensrechtliche Notizen ” 2003–2022), multi-author blogs in particular have become established, whose content is made available mostly under different variants of CC licenses. Important examples include: Rechtswirklichkeit – the blog of the Berliner Arbeitskreis Rechtswirklichkeit (ISSN 2366-3022), since 2000 Umweltrechtsblog – the blog of the Verein zur Förderung von Information für die breite Öffentlichkeit im Umweltrecht, since 2007 Verfassungsblog – On Matters Constitutional (ISSN 2366-7044), since 2009 HHR – Humanitarianism & Human Rights (ISSN 2199-0859), since 2013 JuWissBlog – the blog of the association Junge Wissenschaft im Öffentlichen Recht (ISSN 2567-2754), since 2013 Völkerrechtsblog – the blog of the Arbeitskreis junger Völkerrechtswissenschaftler (ISSN 2510-2567), since 2014 D’Kart – an antitrust blog of the Institute for Antitrust Law (IKartR) of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, since 2017 Rechts|Empirie – Legal Empirics in Europe, since 2019 These blogs are used not only for science communication but increasingly also as platforms for the primary publication of short contributions with highly topical content and at the same time high academic standards. Open Educational Resources (OER) Open access in the area of legal monographs is currently experiencing its greatest upswing in the context of open educational resources (OER) (see Chiofalo & Milas, 2023). In 2017, Deutsche Straftheorie , a textbook on German criminal theory, was published in open access via Refubium, the repository of Freie Universität Berlin. And in 2018, the first OER textbook on Swiss law, entitled Introduction to Swiss Law , was published by Carl Grossman Verlag. Since then, great progress in the dissemination and acceptance of OER has been made primarily by didactic projects in the area of public law. Particularly noteworthy here are (a) the collaboratively produced textbooks of the association for legal scholarship OpenRewi on numerous topics such as administrative law, constitutional law, state organisation law, fundamental rights, asylum law, international law, and freedom of information law; and (b) Smartbook Grundrechte , a hybrid textbook with 67 instructional videos, which is co-authored by Emanuel V. Towfigh, professor of public law at EBS Law School, and Alexander Gleixner and was published in 2022 by Nomos Verlag. Monographs The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the OAPEN Library list law books in various subject classifications, which cannot be searched collectively. These include (as of April 2024 for DOAB and as of October 2024 for OAPEN): law (2,582 titles in the DOAB , 1,416 titles in OAPEN ) jurisprudence (235 titles in the DOAB , 229 in OAPEN ) legal (263 titles in the DOAB , 218 in OAPEN ) courts (3 titles in the DOAB , 19 in OAPEN ) Thus, across these categories, the two databases together list almost 5,000 legal books (multiple counts and overlooked categories cannot be ruled out). Because of the disparate categorisation, a more exact breakdown by publisher, year of publication, etc. would require a more in-depth empirical study. The pioneers of open access monographs in the field of legal scholarship were not the established scholarly publishers but rather private individuals and societal initiatives. They include, for example, the Mannheim solicitor Thomas Fuchs, whose essays and volumes are published on DeLegibus.com (since 1998); the online portal jurawelt.com with the law series TENEA (115 monographs 2002–2008); and Mark Schweizer, who self-published his dissertation online in 2005 (he later went on to become president of the Swiss Federal Patent Court). The first dedicated open access law publishers – at least in the German-speaking area – were probably Carl Grossmann Verlag in Germany (since 2016) and sui generis Verlag in Switzerland (since 2019). In 2024, Carl Grossmann Verlag published what was likely the first open access commentary in German jurisprudence ( Boehm et al., 2024 ), and between 2018 and October 2024, sui generis Verlag published 55 monographs . The Verein für Recht und Digitalisierung e.V. (VRD) has been promoting open access since 2021, with two dedicated open access series under the brand digital|recht ( Jüngels, 2023 ) – namely the “Schriften zum Immaterialgüter-, IT-, Medien-, Daten- und Wettbewerbsrecht” ( 20 volumes as of October 2024) and “Staat und digitale Gesellschaft” ( 6 volumes as of October 2024). After the open access model was also discovered by established publishing houses, the university press Universitätsverlag Göttingen was one of the earliest and most committed publishers with a legal publishing programme. Another was Nomos-Verlag in Baden-Baden; as of October 2024, the Nomos eLibrary listed 275 open access books. More conservative publishers also have open access monographs in their portfolios. They include, for example, Mohr Siebeck, with 204 titles , and Duncker & Humblot, with 74 titles (as of October 2024). Verlag C. H. Beck, the dominant publisher of German-language law books, has so far limited itself to making a digital version of the renowned print commentary “ Grundgesetz für jeden ” (Basic Law for Everyone) freely available online in 2024 – albeit not under an open licence. What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Disciplinary Repositories Disciplinary repositories have played a limited role in the field of legal scholarship to date. The few law repositories in existence include: 2 Dok (pronounced "Inter-Zwei-Dok"): This open access law repository of the Specialised Information Service for International and Interdisciplinary Legal Research (Fachinformationsdienst für internationale und interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung) at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is open to all legal scholars. Besides scholarly publications and research data , it also archives blog posts . SSOAR (Social Science Open Access Repository) : This full-text server maintained and operated by GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences serves five “communities”, including Jurisprudence and Administrative Sciences with over 3,000 archived documents (as of October 2024). LawArXiv : Established with the intention of creating an open access community for legal scholarship, this preprint repository was closed after accepting 1,390 documents. It no longer accepts new submissions, and the number of archived documents has since shrunk to 160. Fachrepositorium zum Schweizer Recht [Disciplinary repository on Swiss law]: Run by a non-profit association in Switzerland and supported by the Faculty of Law at the University of Zurich, Repositorium.ch offers free accessibility, a semantic search functionality, and an open API. However, it does not disclose the number of archived media. Because disciplinary repositories of legal scholarship are few and far between, general repositories such as Zenodo are often used for legal research data and publications. The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) provides an overview of relevant repositories. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) References Boehm, F., Euler, E., Klimpel, P., Rack, F., & Weitzmann, J. (2024). Creative Commons Public License (CCPL) – Kommentar und Handbuch für die Rechtspraxis . Carl Grossmann Verlag. https://openrewi.org/creative-commons-public-license-ccpl Chiofalo, V., Milas M. (2023). Die geschlossene Gesellschaft der Rechtswissenschaft: Chancen und Grenzen von Open Educational Resources, ZDRW – Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Rechtswissenschaft 10 , 168–187. https://doi.org/10.5771/2196-7261-2023-2 Hamann, H. (2016). Freier Zugang zur juristischen Fachliteratur im Spiegel der Open-Science-Bewegung. sui generis – die juristische Open-Access-Zeitschrift , 96–104. https://doi.org/10.21257/sg.28 Hamann, H. (2019). Lizenzmodelle juristischer Internetzeitschriften: Zur vernachlässigten normativen Dimension des "Open Access". Sonderheft der RW – Zeitschrift für rechtswissenschaftliche Forschung , 85–111. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748903659-91 Hamann, H. (2023). Urheberrecht als Ermöglichungsinfrastruktur für Open-Access-Publikationen? ZUM – Zeitschrift für Urheber- und Medienrecht 67 , 410–419. https://hanjo.1hamann.de/research/zum2023-410.pdf Hamann, H., & Hürlimann, D. (2019). Open Access bei der Veröffentlichung rechtswissenschaftlicher Fachliteratur – was soll das? Sonderheft der RW – Zeitschrift für rechtswissenschaftliche Forschung, 3–30. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748903659-9 Krujatz, S. (2012). Open Access. Der offene Zugang zu wissenschaftlichen Informationen und die ökonomische Bedeutung urheberrechtlicher Ausschlussmacht für die wissenschaftliche Informationsversorgung . Mohr Siebeck. https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/buch/open-access-9783161519987 Radtke, T. (2022), Die Hintertür zu mehr Open Access? GRUR – Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht 124 , 1562–1568. https://radtke.cc/publikationen/GRUR2022,1562.pdf Severin, A., Egger, M., Eve, M. P., & Hürlimann, D. (2020). Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: An evidence-based review. F1000Research . https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.17328.2 Spindler, G. (Ed.) (2006). Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen von Open Access-Publikationen . Universitätsverlag Göttingen. https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2006-115 Further Reading Contributions by Rux, J., Hamann, H., Lauber-Rönsberg, A., & Hotz, T. (2023). In: IUM (Ed.), Open Access und das Urheberrecht – Eine komplizierte Beziehung? Symposium of the Institut für Urheber- und Medienrecht on 10.2.2023 in Munich. ZUM – Zeitschrift für Urheber- und Medienrecht 67 [Special Issue], 405–427 Fischer, G. (2022). Im Ringen um Erkenntnis und Anerkennung: Wie Rechtswissenschaftler*innen das eigene akademische Publizieren im Zuge von Open Access sehen. RuZ – Recht und Zugang 3 , 19–49. https://doi.org/10.5771/2699-1284-2022-1-19 Euler, E. (2020). Open Access in der Wissenschaft und die Realitäten des Rechts. RuZ – Recht und Zugang 1 , 56–82. https://doi.org/10.5771/2699-1284-2020-1-56 Hamann, H., & Hürlimann, D. (Eds.). (2019). Open Access in der Rechtswissenschaft, Sonderheft der RW – Zeitschrift für rechtswissenschaftliche Forschung 2019 . https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748903659 Sandberger, G. (2017). Die Zukunft wissenschaftlichen Publizierens. Open Access und Wissenschaftsschranke. Anmerkungen zu den Kontroversen über die Weiterentwicklung des Urheberrechts. OdW – Ordnung der Wissenschaft , 2 , 75–96. https://ordnungderwissenschaft.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11_2017_02_sandberger_die-zukunft-des-wissenschaftlichen-publizierens_odw.pdf Symposium: Open Access Publishing and the Future of Legal Scholarship (2006). Lewis & Clark Law Review , 10(4), 733–924. https://law.lclark.edu/law_reviews/lewis_and_clark_law_review/past_issues/volume_10/number_4.php van Dijck, G. (2016). Legal research when relying on open access: A primer. Law and Method . https://doi.org/10.5553/REM/.00001 Content editor of this page: Prof. Dr Dr Hanjo Hamann, EBS Universität for Business and Law (Last updated: October 2024)....
