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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 a German-language presentation entitled “ Qualität von OA-Zeitschriften – Wo publizieren und wo lieber nicht ” [Quality of open access journals – Where to publish and where better not to]. 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 ) EZB (Search tool for open access journals and funding options). The Electronic Journals Library (EZB) has expanded its services and can now be used as a central tool for searching for journal-level information on the coverage of article processing charges (APCs) by authors’ own institutions. The search tool can be used, for example, to identify contact persons, specific requirements or financial limits, and specific procedures for submitting invoices to the respective institutions. You can find further information on the new functions of the tool he re . 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 disclosing the identities of all participants open, and possibly also the reviews ( Ross-Hellauer, 2017 ), 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? open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 Funding The main difference between open access 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 author-pays model, whereby authors pay article processing charges (APCs) to publish their contributions, is very widespread. A substantial proportion of open access journals use a diamond open access model, which means that no fees are charged to readers or authors. Diamond open access journals are typically funded by professional societies, scientific institutions, or library consortia. 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 therefore 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 Consortium (formerly Projekt DEAL) – the costs of these hybrid APCs are increasingly being covered up to a contractually specified amount by library consortia with the aim of transforming the hybrid journals into open access journals in the long run. However, critics question the effectiveness of these agreements. Several analyses have found that the transition from subscription-based to purely open access journals often fails to materialize and is not adequately encouraged ( Mittermaier, 2025 ). In addition, the agreements could consolidate market and dependency structures to the advantage of major publishers, and their cost calculation sometimes lacks transparency or is questionable ( Ziegler & Dirnagl, 2024 ). Furthermore, it is feared that transformative agreements channel the flow of publications to a few major publishers, thereby threatening bibliodiversity ( Kaden, 2023 ). 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 established "mirror journals" , that is, 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 German Research Foundation (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. This is referred to as the “ secondary publication right ”. 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...

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...

Intro The Path a Publication Takes Source: based on Rücknagel, J. & Schmeja, S. (2021). Open Access Basics - How to publish and What to Consider? (S.4). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4530414 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) The key takeaways from this article are 1 Authors can make their publications freely available by publishing them open access or by self-archiving them in an open access repository. 2 When choosing a publication venue, criteria such as thematic focus, quality, and costs should be considered. 3 When self-archiving, authors should grant third parties rights of use in the works. Scientific Publishing Only when authors publish their research results do their findings achieve visibility and can thus be adequately recognised and cited. For a long time, publishing works in print media – for example, as journal articles, monographs, or contributions to collections – was the most common way of permanently recording and disseminating scholarly and scientific information. Through the possibility of electronic publication, and especially through open access , a large number of alternative publication options have arisen. This significantly increases the citation frequency, and thus also the visibility, of research results ( Swan, 2010; Li et al., 2018 ). The aspects that should be considered when publishing open access or when self-archiving in an open access repository are outlined in what follows. Scientists can actively support the change to open science through their own publishing behavior. This practical tip "Supporting Open Access" explains how. Practical Tip What variants of open access publishing are there? Which ones are suitable for me? Where can I publish in accordance with the principles of open access? How do I find a suitable journal? What do research funders expect? You can find the answers in the presentation " Open Access Basics – How to Publish and What to Consider? " Practical Tip The AuROA catalogue of services ( Leistungskatalog ) offers a compilation of possible individual tasks and services in the open access publishing process. AuROA (Authors and Legal Certainty for Open Access) is a project that between 2021 and 2023 addressed the heterogeneous and complex needs, perspectives and demands of open access publishing in book-oriented disciplines. Publication Routes Source: based on Oberländer, A. (2020). Open Access – Es ist nicht alles Gold, was glänzt. In: Open Science. Von Daten zu Publikationen. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4018594 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) The road to publication usually starts with the decision as to how the research results should be published. There are many reasons in favour of open access publishing; they are summarised on the Reasons and Reservations page. Basically, two different open access strategies can be distinguished: gold open access and green 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. This literature is freely available and reusable immediately, without an embargo period . Green open access means making research results freely available by self-archiving them in an institutional or disciplinary repository . This can also be done in parallel with or after publication in a journal or with a publisher. Choosing a Publication Venue Several parameters play a role when choosing a publication venue. These parameters are largely the same for closed access and open access publications. They include the thematic focus of the venue; the type of quality assurance it employs; its reputation in the field; and, if applicable, the licensing conditions under which the publications are made available and the level of any publication fees that may be charged. In the context of open access, research funders’ requirements increasingly play a role. Among funders, one finds not only regulations whereby grant holders should provide open access to the scholarly publications arising from funded research, but sometimes also specific requirements with regard to publication venues ( Dreher, 2020; Rücknagel, 2021 ). Further information on research funders’ policies and a list of funding organisations can be found on the Financing page . Die Vorteile einer Open-Access-Dissertation Quelle: Becklas, C., Hauss, J. (2024): Die Vorteile einer Open Access Dissertation. open-access.network, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) et al. https://doi.org/10.5446/68305#t=00:00,01:15 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Source: Translation of a flowchart by Brinken, H. & Rücknagel, J. (2021). Open Access – Das sind Ihre Möglichkeiten für die Publikation von Artikeln. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5045255 ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ). 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 ) Gold Open Access Finding Suitable Journals/Publishers If the intention is to publish a work open access (gold OA), for example, as a journal article, a monograph, or a contribution to a collection, it is advisable to first search for thematically suitable journals or publishers with open access offerings. On our web page Subject-Specific Open Access , we provide discipline-specific information that can offer helpful introductory pointers. Open access journals can be searched via the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) . For open access books, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the online library and publication platform OAPEN are first ports of call. Suitable publication venues can also be found in conversation with colleagues. If a publisher does not offer a gold open access option, it is often worthwhile enquiring specifically whether it would allow the article to be self-archived in a repository. Quality Criteria Open access publications undergo the same quality assurance proce­dures as traditional publications. The review procedures do not differ either: from classical peer review and editorial review to open review procedures – everything can be found here. The German-language publication Qualitätsstandards für Open-Access-Monografien und -Sammelbände ( AG Universitätsverlage, 2018 ) offers guidance when choosing a suitable publisher for open access books. When choosing a journal, the German-language checklist on the quality of open access journals provided by Brinken et al. (2021) can help when assessing its quality. Further information in this regard can be found on the Open Access Journals and Open Access for Monographs pages. The impact and visibility of scholarly publications play an important role for the reputational gains and thus for the career prospects of individual scholars and scientists. Studies show that the citation frequency of open access publications is usually much higher than that of their closed access counterparts. Overviews in this regard are provided by the Open Access Citation Advantage Service and by Piwowar and colleagues’ Large-Scale Analysis of the Prevalence and Impact of Open Access Articles ( Piwowar et al., 2018 ). Journal Impact Factors , a metric of the citation frequency of articles in scholarly journals, are published in the annual publication Journal Citation Reports , which also covers open access journals. So-called altmetrics have emerged as an alternative to the traditional bibliometric indicators. They capture the diverse reactions to a scholarly publication on the Web. Financing In contrast to closed access, where libraries and users pay for access, open access publications are financed in a different way. The so-called author-pays model, whereby authors pay article processing charges (APCs) or book processing charges (BPCs) to have their works published, is very common in the open access context. To find out whether, or what level of, author fees are charged, it is usually helpful to check the website of the journal or publisher. If a journal indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) charges APCs, details are deposited in the journal record. However, a large percentage of open access journals indexed in DOAJ are free of charge both for readers and authors ( Morrison, 2018 ). These journals are financed, for example, by professional societies, academic institutions, library consortia, or – in kind – by voluntary work. For open access books, university presses run by universities or their libraries, and publishing initiatives established by scholars and scientists (e.g. the consortium ScholarLed ) are an affordable and high quality alternative to commercial publishers. Detailed information on financing open access articles and books can be found on the Financing page. Many research institutions have a publication fund from which open access publication fees can be paid. The management of the funds is usually located at the institutions’ libraries. In addition, some open access publishers offer institutional membership, which is similar to a discount model. Institutions pay an annual membership fee, thereby enabling their members to publish their works in the journal in question free of charge or for a reduced fee. Moreover, via transformative agreements with commercial publishers, such as those negotiated by the German initiative Projekt Deal , contractually agreed fees for individual hybrid open access articles in subscription journals are increasingly borne by library consortia. Information on this is provided by the open access officers at the respective institutions . The funding of genuine open access models by consortia is increasingly moving into focus: the costs are borne by a consortium, and no publication fees are payable by authors, irrespective of whether their institutions participate in the financing. In addition to funding research, some funding organisations also bear publication costs for articles in scholarly journals and other publications. When submitting a funding proposal to the German Research Foundation (DFG) , application can also be made for a publication grant. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) have established dedicated funding programmes to finance open access articles and books. The Volkswagen Foundation also bears the publication costs incurred by the projects it funds and expects grant recipients to publish open access. International funding organisations, such as the Wellcome Trust , as well as the EU framework programme Horizon 2020 , reimburse publication charges for open access articles within the framework of their funding. In addition, the Open Access Books Toolkit provides a l ist of funding sources for open access books . Practical Tip An overview of the requirements that open access journals must fulfil and concrete criteria that authors can use as a guide when choosing a suitable publication venue, can be found in the presentation " Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality ". Research Funders and Open Access Find an introduction here. 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 ) 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 ) Self-Archiving (Green Open Access) It is not always possible to publish open access, for example, when no suitable open access journal is available. A publication can nonetheless be made freely available by self-archiving it in an open access repository. In this way, the author can comply with the open access mandate of a funding organisation or their own institution, and the publication can be made freely accessible to everyone worldwide. Finding a Suitable Repository The self-archiving of publications can take place in institutional or disciplinary repositories. The Information for Different Disciplines page lists the repositories available in the respective disciplines. The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) also provide overviews. Authors do not have to pay any charges to make their publications available in an institutional or disciplinary repository, nor do readers have to pay to access these publications. What specifically needs to be considered when (self-)archiving can be read by country in our legal section . Self-Archiving Rights Most publishers allow their authors to make their works available in repositories in parallel with publication. The Sherpa Romeo database provides an overview of the open access policies of many journal publishers. Publishers often allow the author’s final version after peer-review (author’s accepted manuscript, AAM) or the published version to be self-archived. Publishing agreements should be drafted in such a way that the authors reserve the right to self-archive their works online in a freely accessible way. Ideally, authors should grant the publisher only non-exclusive rather than exclusive rights of use for the intended types of use. If this is not possible, and no alternative publishing option is available, authors can consider attaching an addendum to the publishing agreement in order to reserve a non-exclusive right to use the work online in a repository. Various possible solutions to this problem are available on the Publishing Agreements page. Under Section 38 of the German Act on Copyright and Related Rights (UrhG) , authors of scientific contributions that result from research activities at least half of which were financed by public funds, and that were published in a collection that appears periodically at least twice a year, have the right to self-archive them in an open access repository upon expiry of 12 months after publication. According to this statutory provision on self-archiving , it is therefore possible in these cases to make these works available in a repository even if the publishers have been granted exclusive rights of use ( Brehm, 2021 ). A German-language guide issued by the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) at the University of Konstanz provides an overview of the topic of self-archiving. Self-archiving is easier when a work is published in an open access journal or with an open access publisher. As a rule, they allow the work to also be made available in a repository provided the place of publication is credited. Find Repositories on OpenDOAR Click here. Legal Questions Find an introduction here. Legal Parameters Wie genau funktionieren Creative-Commons-Lizenzen? Quelle: Brinken, H., Hauss, J. & Rücknagel, J. (2021). Wie genau funktionieren Creative-Commons-Lizenzen? open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/52952 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Source: Foter (2015). How To Attribute Creative Commons Photos ( CC BY-SA 3.0 ) Authors who wish to make their works available in open access should observe several legal parameters. Of central importance is that the authors themselves have the right to exploit their works online. However, this is not necessarily a given in standard publishing agreements. An overview of the legal situation in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland can be found on the Legal Issues page, which provides information on copyright, making documents available in repositories, publishing agreements, licences, liability law, and data protection. Open Access Licences One important aspect of open access is the reuse of publications. In order to make it clear what rights third parties have when (re-)using research results, user licences are granted. It is up to the authors themselves to decide what degree of freedom of use of their works they wish to allow. It is recommended that they allow a free worldwide right of access to and reuse of the publication. The granting of open licences by authors should take place in consultation with the respective publishers or, if applicable, in compliance with the repositories’ licensing requirements. In the area of science and research, the open Creative Commons (CC) are the most common. An overview of various open content licensing models can be found on our Licences page . The use of licences to grant specific rights of use facilitates law enforcement in the case of misuse and gives users explicit indications as to how the document in question may be reused. At the same time, the author reserves the right to permit in separate agreements further uses that go beyond those specified in the licence. Predatory Journals Unfortunately, there are also journals that exploit publication charges. These predatory journals , which are founded by so-called predatory publishers, try – sometimes massively – to attract researchers to publish in their journals. However, they do not observe the usual standards of good scientific practice. Hence, there is no quality assurance, for example, in the form of peer review, nor is there adequate editing. Thus, predatory journals damage science and scholarship because they also publish poor-quality contributions whose compliance with academic or ethical standards has not been checked. As publications in these dubious journals can cause substantial damage to the reputations of scholars and scientists, they are urgently advised against submitting manuscripts to them. Source: Monash Health Library. Predatory Publishing A-Z Elements ( CC BY-NC 4.0 ) Online course Find the online course Predatory Journals: Identify, Avoid, and Publish Safely here Practical Tip Recognising Predatory Journals It is not always easy for authors to recognise whether a journal is predatory or not, because the providers often go to a lot of trouble to make their journals appear trustworthy. On professional-looking websites, sometimes entire editorial boards are given false names or well-known researchers are listed as editors without their knowledge. The German-language checklist on the quality of open access journals provided by Brinken et al. (2021) can help authors to make informed decisions. Other criteria for the assessment of the trustworthiness of a journal are provided by the website Think. Check. Submit. It can also be helpful to ask colleagues whether they have ever heard of the journal in question. In case of suspicion, attention should definitely be drawn to the journal. By keeping their eyes open and being the properly aware, authors can avoid publishing with predatory publishers by mistake. The Monash Health Library has published the useful Predatory publishing A-Z elements . Further German-language information on predatory journals and predatory publishers can be found in an overview provided by Helmholtz Open Science and in a fact sheet published by the Science Media Center Germany . In addition, there is a catalogue of criteria for recognising high-quality journals and so-called fake journals. References AG Universitätsverlage. (2018, September 11). Qualitätsstandards für Open-Access-Monografien und -Sammelbände . https://ag-univerlage.de/?p=1974 Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 Brinken, H., Rücknagel, J., & Wenninger, A. (2021). Checkliste zur Qualität von Open-Access-Zeitschriften . Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643853 Dreher, L. (2020, August 27) . Open-Access-Vorgaben in EU-Projekten . OpenAccessTalk. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4048489 Li, Y., Wu, C., Yan, E., & Li, K. (2018). Will open access increase journal CiteScores? An empirical investigation over multiple disciplines. PLOS ONE , 13 (8), e0201885. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201885 Morrison, H. (2018, January 31). DOAJ APC information as of Jan 31, 2018. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir Les Savoirs Communs. Open Access Scholarship / Littérature Savante En Libre Accès . https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/02/06/doaj-apc-information-as-of-jan-31-2018/ 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 Rücknagel, J. (2021, April 15). Fördererauflagen zu Open Access - was gilt es zu beachten? OpenAccessTalk. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4694320 Rücknagel, J., & Schmeja, S. (2021, January 28). Open access basics – How to publish and what to consider? OpenAccessTalk. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4530414 Swan, A. (2010). The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to date . https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268516/ Further Reading Forschungszentrum Jülich, Zentralbibliothek (2022). Predatory Publishers. "Schwarze Schafe" im Wissenschaftsbetrieb. Checkliste. URL: https://www.fz-juelich.de/de/zb/open-science/predatory-publishers Reimer N., & Halbherr, V. (2021). Kriterienkatalog zur Erkennung von qualitativ hochwertigen Journals und von sogenannten Fake-Journals. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5031928 Schmitz, J., & Schmeja, S. (2019). Bericht zum Workshop "Was tun, wenn es passiert ist? Umgang mit Publikationen, die bei einem Predatory Journal eingereicht wurden." https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3553616 Solomon, D. J., & Björk, B.-C. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology , 63 (8), 1485–1495. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22673...

Intro 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 ) KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS ARTICLE 1 There are various business and funding models for open access journals. 2 Three basic types of funding models can be distinguished: APC-based, institutional, and consortial models. 3 Within the framework of the open access transformation, efficient, transparent, and fair models should preferably be used. Journal Costs Open access means free access to and reuse of scientific information. Because open access journals can be accessed by readers free of charge, the production costs ( Borrego 2023 ) cannot be recovered through subscriptions but rather must be funded through alternative business models. The serials crisis and the associated large profits earned by scholarly publishers from public funds were key reasons for the emergence of the open access movement . When discussing business models, it is therefore meaningful to distinguish between covering costs and making a profit, especially in cases where it is a matter of reallocating costs for the purpose of converting journals to open access . In all cases, the operating and personnel costs required to receive, manage, publish, and distribute works must be financed. In addition, there are infrastructural costs, for example for server capacities and websites. Added to this are new cost demands for the publication of research data or multimedia content. In the area of gold open access , there are a number of different business models ( Keller, 2017 ; Russell, 2019 ; Waidlein et al., 2021 ). Basically, open access journals can be financed through article processing charges ( APCs ), by institutions, or by consortia. Models that manage entirely without APCs are referred to as diamond open access . Practical Tip Here you can find the slides of the open access talk Open-Access-Finanzierung: Fragen und Probleme (Funding Open Access: Issues and Problems). Source: based on Oberländer, A. (2020). Open Access – Es ist nicht alles Gold, was glänzt. In: Open Science. Von Daten zu Publikationen. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4018594 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Alternative Business Models for Open Access Publications Source: Strauß, H., Rücknagel, J., & Hauss, J. (2022). Alternative Geschäftsmodelle für Open-Access-Publikationen. https://doi.org/10.5446/60353 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Author-Pays Model Article Processing Charges (APCs) The central feature of the author-pays model is that in the interval between manuscript acceptance and article publication, APCs are payable by the authors or their institutions. The availability of funds for and the acceptance of such payments depends also on the publication culture of the discipline in question. Other factors include access to third-party funding and the authors’ professional status. APCs are therefore often viewed critically . It is feared that they create access barriers, especially for authors from countries in the Global South or for early career researchers. On the other hand, many commercial open access journals offer fee waivers in individual cases (e.g. for authors from low- and medium-income countries; Lawson, 2015) and pass on these costs to APC-paying authors. Many research funding organisations require that publications resulting from the projects they fund be published open access; in return, they cover the cost of APCs. However, the spread of APC models may lead to a burden on research budgets. Publication Funds Publication funds are one instrument for the institutional support of authors in paying APCs. Many universities and non-university research organisations have such publication funds, from which they pay APCs on their authors’ behalf ( Bruch et al., 2014 ; see the overview in the Open Access Directory). In many cases, funds earmarked for the procurement of literature, and especially for journal subscriptions, also flow into the publication funds. In this way, although the research organisations still pay for the publications, they are now freely accessible worldwide. In Germany, the establishment of publication funds has long been associated with institutional funding programmes of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft , DFG) . Since 2020, higher education institutions and non-university research organisations can apply for a fixed allowance for the open access publication of research results from the realigned DFG funding programme Open Access Publication Funding . With this partial funding of individual publications, the operation of publication funds continues to be supported. Subsidies for open access publication fees are possible inter alia for journal articles, including articles published under transformative agreements such as those negotiated by Projekt Deal . Some German federal states, for example Schleswig-Holstein (until 2024), provide state support for open access by making funding available for publication funds. Furthermore, agreements concluded between open access publishers and research organisations can regulate the payment of APCs and possible discounts. Hybrid Journals: Open Access as an Exception Fee-based open access options for individual articles in subscription journals (which are then often known as hybrid journals ) are a very controversial business model,as the journal not only earns revenue from subscriptions but also from articles that are made open access against payment of APCs. The costs per article are generally much higher than in the case of gold open access journals, although revenue is obtained from two sources. Often referred to as double dipping , this double financing is practised mainly by commercial journals and applied to existing journals that are not earmarked for conversion to open access . Other reservations against hybrid models relate to the fact that they do not contribute to the transformation of the scholarly publishing market to open access, that costing is not transparent, and that individual open access articles in closed access journals do not achieve adequate visibility.In negotiations with publishers (e.g. in the case of individual subscriptions, but also in the case of national licences and consortial models), public institutions usually urge publishers to take measures to counter double dipping, for example by offsetting APCs for open access articles against subscription fees. In Germany, the DEAL Konsortium has concluded transformative agreements with the scholarly publishers Springer Nature, Wiley, and Elsevier to effectively address this problem. The author-pays model is now widespread and is often erroneously used as a synonym for open access business models. However, even before the emergence of the open access movement, journals required their authors to contribute to the financing. Conversely, very many open access journals do not charge their authors any fees. Of the 20,949 journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) as of August 2025, 13,824 did not levy any article processing charges ( APCs ). Institutional Funding Business models that rely on direct payments by authors create a large administrative burden. Moreover, it is feared that APCs give rise to unequal prerequisites for access to publishing opportunities. Hence the interest in models that rely directly on funding by institutions. Institutions can, for example, provide publishing services or fund open access journals completely, so that other authors also benefit. One traditional variant is the (partial) funding of publications via professional associations or other institutions of a discipline. Some professional associations traditionally fund their publishing activities from membership fees. Thus, their members are usually both users and authors of the articles published, so that the costs of publishing open access are shared by both groups. One example of a community-funded journal is Documenta Mathematica , which was founded by the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (German Mathematical Society). The digital edition is open access; a print edition is available for a small fee. According to the society, the costs of producing the journal are low and are covered mainly by the society. Ultimately, many open access journals rely on the commitment of those involved, who either work on the journal as part of their employment or on a voluntary basis. Support by staff, and possibly the assumption of material costs, can be regarded as an important form of institutional support. Furthermore, nowadays, many academic institutions invest in their own publishing services, for example platforms and services for the production of journals with the help of the open source software Open Journal Systems (OJS) . In this case, the institution subsidises the costs of making the content available and may be responsible for parts of the publishing process. Practical Tips The OA Journals Toolkit provides practice-oriented tips for setting up new open access journals. In addition, the guides published [MG1] [PSM2] by the project Scholar-led Plus offer valuable support in further developing and professionalising scholar-led publishing activities at your institution and making them sustainable in the long term. Since May 2025, these offerings have been supplemented by the Servicestelle Diamond Open Access (SeDOA) . As a DFG-funded project, SeDOA is taking a coordinating role with the aim of sustainably increasing the efficiency of diamond open access (DOA) publishing in Germany through the optimisation of hitherto decentralised services, the centralised provision of relevant information, and the targeted promotion of structural and technical innovations Publishing Open Access Journals Find an introduction here. Editorial process at Open Journal Systems (OJS) Quelle: OJS-net.de Community Funding: Consortial Funding, Membership Models, and Crowdfunding Source: Wrzesinski, M. (2023). Nachhaltige Finanzierung und Organisation von Zeitschriften. https://doi.org/ 10.5446/62588 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) KOALA – Establishing, Expanding and Anchoring Consortial Open Access Solutions The KOALA consortial model enables sustainable funding for diamond open access publications. KOALA creates bundles of thematically focused journals, which are then offered to academic institutions – especially libraries and research institutions – for community funding. The level of the contributions depends on the size and type of the institution, the number of academic staff members, and the number of students. As soon as the pledging target for a journal bundle has been reached, the titles it contains are securely funded and made freely accessible for a period of 3 years. Regular Operations at the TIB Hanover The Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology University Library ( TIB ) acts as a central service provider and coordinator for the KOALA model and operates the service for journals in its subject range (natural sciences and engineering) as part of its regular operations. It is responsible for hosting, consortial management, and communication with the publishers and partner institutions. This organisational framework guarantees stable, transparent, and fair funding of open access journals in the STEM fields. KOALA at the SLUB Dresden Since 2024, the KOALA model is also being piloted at the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB). Under the name KOALA-SLUB , several subject-specific journal bundles have been established. The SLUB Dresden is responsible for organising the KOALA funding solution – a role equivalent to that of the TIB Hanover. OLEcon Open Library Economics (OLEcon ) supports diamond open access journals of economics by organising consortial co-funding for journals that are either already open access, that are just getting started , or that want to flip (i.e. convert from a subscription model to open access) The OLEcon journal bundle is growing steadily. Journals can apply for funding within the framework of regular calls for applications. Already funded journals are evaluated after 3 years. In addition to the desired institutional participation, OLEcon is establishing a success monitoring system to ensure that the consortium can operate in the most stable and sustainable way possible. edu_consort_oa The project network edu_consort_oa aims to sustainably fund open access publications in educational science, educational research, and subject didactics through crowdfunding and consortial funding. In edu_consort_oa, libraries can participate in annual funding rounds for the financing of open access monographs and diamond open access journals. At present, a package of around 20 e-books, and – for the first time – up to five diamond open access journals (individually, not as part of a package) per year are currently funded for a period of 2 years. An overview of the funded e-books can be found on the Education Research Portal (Fachportal Pädagogik) website. All funded titles can be accessed via peDOCS and the German Education Index (FIS Bildung Literaturdatenbank ). OACIP The Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP) aims to support non-commercial diamond open access journals in the long term through a consortial funding model. Academic institutions can provided targeted support for quality assured publications, which are evaluated based on standardised transparency and sustainability criteria. The funding period is 3 years. Institutions can either co-fund all the journals or individual journals in the OACIP bundle. A further option is to contribute to the OACIP General Fund, which is used to fill any funding gaps at the OACIP journals. In 2024, OACIP funded eight journals from the STEM fields and the humanities and social sciences. SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) SCOAP³ is an international consortium dedicated to funding open access in high-energy physics. It aims to make high-energy physics articles freely accessible worldwide – without article processing charges for authors. The funding is provided by over 3,000 libraries, research performing organisations, and research funding organisations from over 40 countries. SCOAP³ is coordinated by CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in collaboration with scholarly publishers. The partners’ contributions are based on their publication output and are centrally administered. SCOAP³ transforms existing subscription models into a community-funded open access model. In the current funding phase (2025–2027), 11 high-energy physics journals are freely accessible worldwide. Community funding models for open access publications eliminate both article processing charges ( APCs ) and subscription fees ( diamond open access ). To enable researchers to publish their works free of charge, academic institutions join forces and share the costs. Various approaches exist for this. They include consortial funding, membership models, and crowdfunding. These models cannot always be clearly distinguished from one another. However, each model has certain basic characteristics. Consortial funding is a collaborative model in which several academic institutions – typically libraries, higher education institutions, or research funding organisations – jointly fund open access journals, books, or infrastructures ( Reinsfelder & Pike, 2018 ). Examples include KOALA , OLEcon , and Scoap3 . Membership models, for example the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) , enable academic institutions to fund the infrastructure, editorial work, quality assurance, and long-term archiving of diamond open access journals through a fixed annual membership fee. In the case of crowdfunding, a specific project – for example certain journal or book packages – is usually put out to tender. One well-known platform for the crowdfunding of open access publications is Knowledge Unlatched . Crowdfunding campaigns usually have a time limit. If the funding target is reached, the project can be realized. Although crowdfunding is often project related, many initiatives aim to create longer-term structures. Successful crowdfunding can, for example, lay the foundations for a membership funding model or consortial funding. Another model is Subscribe to Open (S2O) , in which open access journals are funded through existing subscriptions. Each year, libraries and other institutions are invited to renew their subscriptions on the same conditions as before, with the aim of making the content of the journal freely accessible for everyone. If the funding target is achieved, the entire volume is published in open access. If the target is not reached, access remains restricted as before. S2O thus offers a gentle transition to open access without structural changes for libraries or additional costs for researchers. Praxistipp Der Diamond Funding Navigator von der TIB bündelt Angebote für die kollektive Finanzierung von Diamond-Open-Access-Publikationen weltweit - laufende und zurückliegende. Dies soll insbesondere Personen, die in der Literaturerwerbung und Lizenzierung tätig sind, sowie Fachreferent:innen dabei unterstützen, passende Finanzierungsangebote zu finden. Further Funding Options Another way of funding open access publications is the parallel sale of content in separate (print) editions. In the area of digital publishing, there have been various attempts to implement the so-called freemium model, where the fee-based variant provides more benefits than the cost-free variant. For example, this may involve making the HTML version of an article freely available to all Internet users but making the premium version in PDF format accessible only to subscribers. One example is the OpenEdition Freemium programme for the development of open access publishing in the humanities and social sciences. OpenEdition OpenEdition is a digital publishing platform that specialises in the humanities and social sciences. It was established in France and is supported by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). OpenEdition offers researchers and institutions infrastructure and services for publishing scientific content open access and making it visible. The platform comprises four key offerings: OpenEdition Journals (scholarly journals) OpenEdition Books (monographs) Hypothèses (scholarly blogs) Calenda (scholarly event calendar) OpenEdition aims to promote free access to high-quality scientific information and to provide a sustainable, non-commercial publishing environment for the academic community. Transformation und Transparency In the area of business models, the transformation of a scholarly journals landscape shaped by subscriptions to a landscape oriented mainly towards open access is very challenging. In Germany, the DEAL Konsortium is trying to contribute to the transformation of journals by negotiating transformative agreements with an open access component ( publish and read ). Whereas it appears to be possible to convert journals completely to open access while covering operational costs, the high fees charged under the author-pays model may lead to an increase in research organisations’ overall costs (Mittermaier, 2025). With ESAC (Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges) , an international initiative has been established that aims to ensure that the processing of publication costs within the framework of transformative agreements is efficient and transparent. References Borrego, A. (2023). Article processing charges for open access journal publishing: A review. Learned Publishing: Volume 36 (3), 359-378. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1558 Bruch, C., Fournier, J., & Pampel, H. (2014). Open-Access-Publikationsfonds: Eine Handreichung (Arbeitsgruppe Open Access der Schwerpunktinitiative Digitale Information der Allianz der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen, Ed.). https://doi.org/10.2312/allianzoa.006 Keller, A. (2017). Finanzierungsmodelle für Open-Access-Zeitschriften. Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis, 41(1), 22–35. https://doi.org/10.1515/bfp-2017-0012 Lawson, S. (2015). Fee waivers for open access journals. Publications, 3(3), 155–167. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications3030155 Mittermaier, B. (2025). Transformationsverträge sind eine Sackgasse. O-Bib. Das Offene Bibliotheksjournal, 12(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/6117 Reinsfelder, T. L., & Pike, C. A. (2018). Using library funds to support open access publishing through crowdfunding: Going beyond article processing charges. Collection Management, 48(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2017.1415826 (Author’s accepted manuscript: https://hdl.handle.net/1805/15059 ) Russell, B. (2019, October 23). Guest post — The future of open access business models: APCs are not the only way. The Scholarly Kitchen Blog. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/10/23/guest-post-the-future-of-open-access-business-models-apcs-are-not-the-only-way/ Waidlein, N., Wrzesinski, M., Dubois, F., & Katzenbach, C. (2021). Working with budget and funding options to make open access journals sustainable (HIIG Discussion Paper No. 2021–1). HIIG. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4558790 Links for Further Reading Bickel, L., Clasen, N., & Flohr, R. (2019, November 13). Open-Access-Tage 2019: Geschäftsmodelle und ihre finanziellen Folgen für die Open-Access-Transformation. ZBW MediaTalk. https://www.zbw-mediatalk.eu/de/2019/11/open-access-tage-2019-geschaeftsmodelle-und-ihre-finanziellen-folgen-fuer-die-open-access-transformation/ Björk, B.-C., & Korkeamäki, T. (2020). Adoption of the open access business model in scientific journal publishing: A cross-disciplinary study. College & Research Libraries, 81(7). https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.81.7.1080 Bosman, J. & Kramer, B. (2018, Mai 16). Linking impact factor to ‘open access’ charges creates more inequality in academic publishing. Times Higher Education Blog. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/linking-impact-factor-open-access-charges-creates-more-inequality-academic-publishing Budzinski, O., Grebel, T., Wolling, J., & Zhang, X. (2020). Drivers of article processing charges in open access. Scientometrics, 124(3), 2185–2206. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03578-3 Demeter, M., & Istratii, R. (2020). Scrutinising what open access journals mean for global inequalities. Publishing Research Quarterly, 36(4), 505–522. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-020-09771-9 . Frick, C., & Kaier, C. (2020). Publikationskosten für Zeitschriftenartikel abseits von Open-Access-Publikationsfonds – Lost in Transformation? o-bib – das offene Bibliotheksjournal, 7(2), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/5586 Ginsparg , P. (2021). Lessons from arXiv’s 30 years of information sharing. Nature Review Physics, 3, 602–603. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00360-z Grossmann, A., & Brembs, B. (2021). Current market rates for scholarly publishing services. F1000Research, 10. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.27468.2 Jahn, N., & Tullney, M. (2016). A study of institutional spending on open access publication fees in Germany. PeerJ 4. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2323 Kändler, U., & Tullney, M. (2019, October 15). Jenseits von APC: Kriterien für Geschäftsmodelle. Open-Access-Tage 2019, Hannover. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3490914 Michael, A. (2020, August 27). Sustainable open access – what’s next? The Scholarly Kitchen Blog. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/08/27/sustainable-open-access-whats-next/ 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 Schönfelder, N. (2018). APCs—Mirroring the impact factor or legacy of the subscription-based model? Bielefeld University. https://doi.org/10.4119/UNIBI/2931061 Shamash, K. (2016). Article processing charges (APCs) and subscriptions: Monitoring open access costs. Jisc. https://www.jisc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/apc-and-subscriptions-report.pdf Tautz, D., Holzer, A., Schmidt, K. M., Buchner, J., Grötschel, M. & Jurburg, S. (2025). Ein neues Verfahren zur direkten Finanzierung und Evaluation wissenschaftlicher Zeitschriften. Diskussion Nr. 38, Halle (Saale): Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina. https://doi.org/10.26164/leopoldina_03_01261 Tobschall, E. (2021, October 27). ArXiv ist 30! TIB-Blog. https://blogs.tib.eu/wp/tib/2021/10/27/arxiv-ist-30/...

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. 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 African Studies The field of African studies encompasses interdisciplinarily oriented area studies on Africa in the humanities, the social sciences, and cultural studies. Depending on the discipline, ( ethnology , political science , linguistics ) developments in the area of open access correspond to those in the respective disciplinary cultures: whereas open access often plays only a minor role in many humanities disciplines, developments in linguistics are certainly more dynamic. For a long time, printed monographs and edited volumes were the primary form of publication in African studies. However, in recent years, the importance of (online) journals has increased greatly. For Africanists, the prestige of a journal is still often the decisive selection criterion. This holds true both for disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals. The Journal Impact Factor is also gaining importance, although it is demonstrably unsuitable for the evaluation of Africa-related publications (see African Studies Library, 2022 ). [1] The spread of forms of open access publishing is of particular importance for African studies, as print publications by African publishers are often difficult to access because of inadequate distribution opportunities. Moreover, publications from the Global North are often difficult to access on the African continent because of the publishers’ high prices and distribution channels. Besides the use of green open access , the expansion of diamond open access offerings is of particular importance in this context, especially because of the obstacles that open access publication fees represent for authors from the Global South. Despite these circumstances, open access is still somewhat underrepresented in African studies compared with other disciplines, although there are now several important initiatives for the promotion of open access in African studies, for example the African Principles for Open Access in Scholarly Communication in and about Africa . The repository AfricArXiv is an important initiative (see the Disciplinary Repositories section on this page). Best-practice examples of open access were presented in 2017 at a workshop organised by the Specialised Information Service (FID) African Studies (VAD e. V., 2017) and in 2022 in collaboration with open-access.network . Furthermore, in the African Studies Toolbox , the FID African Studies regularly presents relevant information on open access , for example a series on the Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht ( secondary publication right ) under German Copyright Law, as well as information on open access initiatives of publishers with series on Africa-related research. The latter initiatives are described in more detail in the Open Access Books section on this page. Open Access Journals As African studies is an interdisciplinary field, there is no specific keyword for searching in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). With 141 titles as of March 2024, journals from South Africa are particularly well represented, while 27 indexed journals could be found under the keyword African Studies . Important open access journals in the field of African studies include: Africa Spectrum DOAJ Afriques : Débats, Méthodes et Terrains d'Histoire DOAJ Nordic Journal of African Studies DOAJ Journal of African Languages and Literatures DOAJ The African Journal of Information and Communication DOAJ The open access journals of the Dakar-based Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) – for example Africa Development , African Sociological Review , African Journal of International Affairs , and Afrika Zamani – are among the pioneers of open access in African studies. They are available together with all back issues on the CODESRIA website. The journal Africa Spectrum has been published by the GIGA Institute for African Affairs (IAA) since 1966. Through financial support from the Federal Foreign Office , the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and the city of Hamburg , it is available in open access at Sage Publishing. Since 2003, the journal has collaborated closely with the Association for Africa Studies in Germany (VAD) . Members of VAD support this collaboration as editors, as members of the editorial board, as authors, and in the peer-review procedure . Furthermore, a subscription to the print edition is included in VAD membership ( dual publishing ). African Journals Online (AJOL) is a South African online service that provides access to research published in Africa. As of March 2024, it listed 485 open access journals. Sabinet , which is also based in South Africa, provides access to the full texts of journals from and about Africa; as of March 2024, it listed 130 open access journals. Global Africa is a pan-African, international journal dedicated to the dissemination of and the quest for excellence in humanities and social science research on the African continent and in the African diaspora. In accordance with the diamond open access model, authors or their institutions do not have to pay article processing charges (APCs) , and the full-text versions of Global Africa articles are freely available to readers online as soon as they are published on the Global Africa website . 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 ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 42 titles under the keyword Africa and 218 titles under African History . In addition, there are open access books in African linguistics, for example those published by Language Science Press . As of March 2024, OAPEN listed 25 titles under Africa and 116 titles under African History . On the Open Book Publishers website, search results under the keyword Africa include titles from various disciplines. In addition, there is a series of open access books in the African Studies Collection of the publisher Routledge that were unlocked in collaboration with Knowledge Unlatched . The Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS) publishes a book series with the publisher Brill . Books in the AEGIS series are available in open access, albeit after an embargo period of two years. In addition to the titles published with Brill, CODESRIA lists a large number of open access book titles on its website . African Minds is a not-for-profit open access publisher of scholarly books based in Cape Town, South Africa; it publishes predominantly in the social sciences and humanities. Disciplinary Repositories The most important repository of African studies is AfricArXiv , a freely accessible digital archive for African and Africa-related research hosted by the Open Science Framework (OSF) . It offers a platform for working papers, preprints , and accepted manuscripts ( post-prints ). There are also options for linking research data and code and for article versioning. AfricArXiv is multidisciplinary, but because of its focus on research from Africa, it is a valuable resource for African Studies. The International African Institute (IAI) in London has produced an interactive map of digital repositories in Africa in collaboration with AfricArXiv. This interactive map identifies and lists institutional repositories in Africa. It builds on earlier work by the IAI that focused on identifying repositories at African university libraries, and it also includes other institutions and their document servers, for example national and international repositories. Furthermore, it maps the interactions between the research repositories. An overview of repositories on the African content is also provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) in its country overview. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. 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 The Specialised Information Service (FID) Africa Studies at the University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg in Frankfurt am Main offers the African studies community an OJS hosting service that provides support in establishing an open access journal . This service includes both the technical provision, maintenance, and regular updating of OJS on a permanently available server as well as advice on and practical support for the conceptual design and the creation of the journal(s). References African Studies Library. (2022). The Journal Impact Factor in African Studies . https://africanstudieslibrary.org/en/toolbox/the-journal-impact-factor-in-african-studies/ VAD e. V. Vereinigung für Afrikastudien in Deutschland (2017). Open Access Workshop des FID Afrikastudien . https://www.vad-ev.de/oa-workshop/ Further Reading Bezuidenhout, L., Havemann, J., Kitchen, S., De Mutiis, A., & Owango, J. (2020). African digital research repositories: Mapping the landscape [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3732172 Bezuidenhout, L., Havemann, J., Kitchen, S., De Mutiis, A., & Owango, J. (2020). African digital research repositories: Mapping the landscape [preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3732274 Content editor of this page: Dr Anne Schumann-Douosson, Specialised Information Service (FID) African Studies (Last updated: July 2024)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in Art History Works in art history are increasingly being published in digital formats, and open access plays an important role in this regard. For example, Heidelberg University Library , together with its Specialised Information Service Art, Design, Photography, arthistoricum.net , have jointly developed strategies for digital publishing in the arts with representatives of the professional associations in the field of art history. Particularly in Die Zukunft des kunsthistorischen Publizierens [The Future of Art Historical Publishing]), an e-book edited by Maria Effinger and Hubertus Kohle (2021), the possibilities of digital publishing are set out in numerous contributions from an art history perspective. These thoughts were further developed by Maria Effinger (2023) in an article entitled “ Kunstgeschichte kommunizieren? Aufgaben, Herausforderungen und Weiterentwicklungspotenziale beim elektronischen Publizieren im Open Access ” [Tasks, Challenges, and Potential for Further Development When Publishing Electronically in Open Access]. A further fundamental work entitled Digitales Publizieren in den Geisteswissenschaften: Begriffe, Standards, Empfehlungen [Digital Publishing in the Humanities: Concepts, Standards, Recommendations] (AG Digitales Publizieren , 2021) was published by the Digital Publishing Working Group of the association Digital Humanities in the German-Speaking Area (DHd) . Veronika Fischer and Grischka Petri’s (2022) guide Bildrechte in der kunsthistorischen Praxis [Image Rights in Art Historical Practice] provides answers to questions about image rights. Open Access Journals As of September 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals ( DOAJ ) listed 87 entries under the search term History of the arts and 686 entries under Fine arts . Besides newly established open access journals, retrodigitized journal volumes are also available in open access. New issues of these journals either appear simultaneously in print and in digital format, or the digital version is made available in open access after an embargo period (delayed open access). Important open access journals published in the German-speaking area include: 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual – Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur DOAJ ABE-Journal: Architecture Beyond Europe DOAJ Belvedere Research Journal ; International Journal for Digital Art History Journal for Art Market Studies DOAJ kritische berichte. Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaft Kunstchronik. Monatsschrift für Kunstwissenschaft Kunstgeschichte. Open Peer Reviewed Journal kunsttexte.de – Journal für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte Pegasus. Beiträge zum Nachleben antiker Kunst und Architektur RIHA Journal DOAJ Sediment – Materialien und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Kunstmarkts transfer – Zeitschrift für Provenienzforschung und Sammlungsgeschichte | Journal for Provenance Research and the History of Collection Within the framework of the Specialised Information Service Art, Design, Photography, arthistoricum.net , for which it is co-responsible, Heidelberg University Library provides a technical infrastructure for publishing open access journals . The offering is addressed to art historians worldwide. The publication platform uses the open source software Open Journal Systems (OJS), which is provided by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) . As of September 2025, 52 open access journals were being published via arthistoricum.net. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of September 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books ( DOAB ) listed 581 titles under the keyword History of art and 36 titles under History of art/art & design styles , while the OAPEN Library ( OAPEN ) listed 27 titles under History of art/art & design styles . Many international museums and research institutions, for example the Getty Research Institute’s Getty Publications Virtual Library , the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s MetPublications , and the Canadian Online Art Book Project , now offer cost-free access to a selection of their books. The open access publication platform arthistoricum.net ART-Books , which is provided by Heidelberg University Library , publishes open access scholarly e-books from the fields of art history, photography, and design ( gold open access ) and also makes digital versions of print books from these fields available to the public ( green open access ). The cost-free offering is addressed to art historians worldwide. The platform uses the open source software Open Monograph Press (OMP) , which is provided by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) . Disciplinary Repositories ART-Dok , the publication platform of arthistoricum.net, offers scholars from all over the world an opportunity to make their digital art history publications (monographs, articles, lectures, etc.) available in open access. The self-archiving of digital versions of works published in print format elsewhere is also possible and desired. As of September 2025, ART-Dok contained over 9,500 open access publications. Overviews of relevant repositories are also provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and by re3data under the search terms Art History and Data Access (as of September 2025). What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Useful Offerings Subject Portals and Platforms The information and service portal for art history arthistoricum.net is operated by the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) and Heidelberg University Library. The Digital Art History Research Group , a platform for digital art history, promotes networking among scholars in the field of art history who develop, use, and theoretically reflect on digital tools and methods. The Deutsche Verband für Kunstgeschichte e. V . (German Association for Art History) represents the interest of art historians working in Germany and at German institutions abroad. The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now make available open access content of relevance to art historians. Databases and the Like The Art Discovery Group Catalogue is an international database with holdings from art and museum libraries in the USA and Europe. Via arthistoricum.net ’s catalogue, users can search for literature of relevance to art history. Searches in the full texts of collections and in image sources and disciplinary repositories are also possible. The Getty Research Portal is a subject portal of the Getty Research Institute. The portal offers worldwide open access to digitized art history literature. The Database Information System (DBIS) provides an overview of databases in the areas of art history and architecture . Image Databases The Bildarchiv Foto Marburg at Philipps-Universität Marburg is the German Documentation Centre for Art History. With around 2.6 million images, it is one of the largest digital image archives for European art and architecture. With around 7 million digitized images, the Deutsche Fotothek is a universal archive of art and cultural history. It is located at the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) . heidICON is Heidelberg University Library’s object and multimedia database. prometheus is a distributed digital image archive for research and teaching located at the Department of Art History at the University of Cologne . With almost 4 million high-quality digitized images from the fields of art and archaeology, the web-based collection currently connects 128 databases from institutes, research facilities, and museums on a common user interface. Open Science in Art History Although open access has received strong support in the field of art history in recent times, legal, technical, and organizational issues relating to the publication and archiving of art history research data still put obstacles in the way of many scholars who want to publish their data open access. To remedy this, the consortium NFDI4Culture , which was established in October 2020, has set itself the goal of creating an infrastructure for research data on tangible and intangible cultural assets and, when doing so, to engage with the needs of the communities. The NFDI4Culture Helpdesk advises art historians on various aspects of handling research data. Questions can be asked about legal aspects, publishing and archiving data, digitization in general, open access standards, and support for the planning of funding proposals. Moreover, with its FAIR Clearing Unit, NFDI4Culture has created an advisory service that promotes the application of quality standards such as the FAIR Principles. The Munich Memorandum 2024 – Research Data in Art History: 10 Theses (Deutscher Verband für Kunstgeschichte e. V. et al., 2024) formulates from the perspective of art history in Germany current requirements, positions, and impulses for the further development of digital art history research data and their infrastructure. In addition to the possibility of archiving research data in institutional research data repositories, research data relating to open access publications on arthistoricum.net can also be published online and archived with arthistoricum.net@heiDATA . DARIAH-EU is a European network that not only supports and improves digital research and teaching in the arts and humanities but also promotes the transition to open science in these fields. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Praxistipp Wie und unter welchen Bedingungen audiovisuelle Materialien als Open Educational Resources in Forschung und Lehre genutzt werden dürfen, erläutert das Rechtsgutachten von Klimpel & Rack (2023) . References AG Digitales Publizieren (2021). Digitales Publizieren in den Geisteswissenschaften: Begriffe, Standards, Empfehlungen. https://doi.org/10.17175/wp_2021_001_v2 Effinger, M., & Kohle, H. (Eds.) (2021). Die Zukunft des kunsthistorischen Publizierens. arthistoricum.net. https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.663 Effinger, M. (2023). Kunstgeschichte kommunizieren? Aufgaben, Herausforderungen und Weiterentwicklungspotenziale beim elektronischen Publizieren im Open Access. kritische berichte51(1). https://doi.org/10.11588/kb.2023.1.92820 Fischer, V., & Petri, G. (2022). Bildrechte in der kunsthistorischen Praxis. Ein Leitfaden (2nd ed.). Verband Deutscher Kunsthistoriker e.V. http://doi.org/ 10.11588/artdok.00007769 Deutscher Verband für Kunstgeschichte e. V., Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (2024). Forschungsdaten in der Kunstgeschichte: 10 Thesen - Münchner Memorandum 2024. https://doi.org/10.11588/artdok.00009194 Content editor of this page: Alexandra Büttner. Last revision of content: Maria Effinger, Heidelberg University Library (as of October 2025)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. 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 the Arts In recent years, the arts disciplines have also increasingly taken a position on open access . Because they are situated between the arts and the sciences, they always play a special role in this regard. The arts are characterised not only by a diversity of disciplines that work both artistically and academically, but also by an extremely diverse publishing landscape with actors from the areas of science, culture, education, and (creative) industry. The diversity of the arts disciplines is also reflected in the broad range of publications, which may be text-based or non-text-based. Whether they be artist books, exhibition catalogues, photos, music/performance productions, or 3D-objects, these publications usually require consideration of numerous legal issues and are often a challenge for publishing platforms. The currently existing infrastructures for open access publications are geared mostly towards text-based publications and are not adequate for the needs in the arts. The infrastructures in the area of research data , some of which already exist or are currently being developed, are important points of reference and are groundbreaking for open access infrastructures (not only) in the arts. In addition, because of the close links with the creative industries, develop­ments in the arts impact a new area for the open access community – namely, the economic livelihood of artists. Artists work both for cultural and educational institutions and in the culture industry; they are dependent on marketing their content; and their publications are financed only partly via royalties. Moreover, they are often members of collecting societies, and are limited in their freedom to freely license their works. An open access strategy in the arts must therefore include the safeguarding of artists’ incomes. The arts disciplines already clearly show that open access must always be seen in the context of all building blocks of open science and of all actors. Open Access Journals As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 627 entries under the keyword fine arts and 89 entries under music and books on music . The listed open access journals cater often for the arts-related scholarly disciplines but only rarely for the arts or artistic practice. In addition, journals are not the dominant form of publication in the arts disciplines. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 169 titles under the keyword fine arts , while the OAPEN Library listed around 450 titles under art . However, the search results are mainly publications from the areas of art/art history or even ethnology rather than from the visual or applied arts. In the last few years, the first open library consortia have been establishing themselves, for example the Open Library Medienwissenschaft since 2021 and KOALA Media Studies since 2023. Disciplinary Repositories The most important disciplinary repositories in the arts include: ART-Dok , the full-text server of the Specialised Information Service for Art, Photography and Design musiconn , the portal of the Specialised Information Service for Musicology media/rep/ , an open access repository for media studies publications The above-mentioned repositories are geared towards text-based publications. The increasing importance of open access in the arts is also changing the discip­linary repositories: needs are being identified and new projects that deal with the building of repositories for non-text-based and multimedia media are arising. An overview of relevant repositories is provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Fokusgruppe "OA-Künste" Die digitale Fokusgruppe OA-Künste ist ein Netzwerk mit Mailingliste, das für alle künstlerischen Einrichtungen und Hochschulen offensteht. Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings The network Open Access in den Künsten [Open Access in the Arts] offers all artistic institutions and higher education institutions a forum for exchange and discussion. The aim of the network is to share materials and information and to anchor the open access idea in the arts. The focus of the network is on libraries, which, as service facilities, promote and contribute to shaping the establishing of open access structures at various levels. Open access is also gaining in importance in art and museum libraries ( Hahn, 2018 ). Besides making text-oriented electronic resources available, these libra­ries have long been administering analogous special collections, such as image archives, graphical collections, or artist books. Here, open access can be a step towards digital transformation and the expansion of the collection profile and the information offering. Via synergy effects, this can also advance open access in the arts. For several years now, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kunst- und Mu­seumsbibliotheken (Working Group of the Art and Museum Libraries, AKMB) has offered further training in the area of open access. Open Science in the Arts Open science is also a key topic in the arts. The process of creating art, and also the works themselves, often move between several components of open science. In view of the diversity of the content and formats in the arts, it is therefore very expedient to focus not only on open access but also on open science as a whole, including, for example, open research data. Besides the open access infrastructures, the offerings of cultural institutions and research data infrastructures also offer points of reference. The expertise that exists in NFDI4Culture and other representatives of the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) is a valuable support for the arts in establishing publication infrastructures. NFDI4Culture is a consortium within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) that represents the art history, musicology, theatre, dance, architecture, film, and media studies communities. The aim of the consortium is to establish a range of offerings such as advisory and training services, guidelines, and forums for discipline-specific exchange. Moreover, NFDI4Culture engages with the legal complexities of dealing with cultural heritage, for example with questions of provenance or copyright. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Hahn, C. (2018). Open Access im Museum . Herbstfortbildung AKMB Dresden. https://www.initiativefortbildung.de/pdf/schlaglichter_AKMB2018/Hahn_OA_Museum.pdf Further reading Somajni, Chiara; Tóth-Czifra, Erzsébet; Barbieri, Chiara; Marazza, Suzanna and Pensa, Iolanda (2024). Open Science for Arts, Design andMusic: Guidelines for Researchers, Librarians and Practitioners in the Humanities . SUPSI, CC0 1.0 except where otherwise stated. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13896781 Content editors of this page: Anika Wilde, Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch , and Friederike Kramer, Library of the Berlin University of the Arts, UdK (Last updated: July 2024)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access in Biology The publishing landscape in biology is being shaped by a large and steadily growing number of open access journals. Initiatives such as Plan S in Europe and Plan U in the United States ( Sever et al., 2019 ), as well as the nationwide licence agreements negotiated by Projekt Deal (now the DEAL Consortium) in Germany, are also bringing about structural change towards open access as the standard publishing model in biology. The next step to be taken is the transition to diamond open access models. Preprint servers such as bioRxiv are now widely used, as they enable the rapid communication of research results before peer-review processes are completed. Besides scholarly articles and the underlying research data, software developments and AI models are important outcomes of the scientific process. Open access to these outcomes is ensured through a large number of international repositories and databases. Open Access Journals As of December 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 897 journals under “Biology” and “Microbiology”, the most important of which include: eLife PLOS Biology PLOS ONE Scientific Reports Open Biology BMC Biology One of the driving forces of the open access movement in biology is the publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS) . With the establishment of the journal PLOS Biology in 2003, it laid a foundation stone for the dissemination of the open access idea in the life sciences . Besides PLOS Biology, PLOS publishes further journals, including PLOS ONE , which is considered the archetype of a megajournal – a model that has since been adopted by many other publishers (e.g., Springer Nature with Scientific Reports ). One important characteristic of these megajournals is that submitted manuscripts are assessed solely on the basis of their scientific validity. Rejections due to lack of relevance – as is often the case with many other journals – do not happen at megajournals. Thus, based on the number of articles published per annum, PLOS ONE is one of the largest scholarly journals in the world. Another publisher that plays a pioneering role in the area of open access is BioMed Central , which is now part of Springer Nature. It has a large portfolio of journals and is a co-founder of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) . The open access publisher Frontiers also plays a formative role. It publishes numerous life sciences journals, is a member of OASPA, and has distinguished itself through its community model of peer review The open access journal Open Biology was founded by the Royal Society in 2011. And in 2012, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust founded the journal eLife with the declared aim of providing a high quality alternative to Nature, Science, and Cell. Open Research Europe is a diamond open access publishing venue that was initiated by the European Commission. It enables researchers to rapidly publish articles, data, and methods stemming from EU-funded projects. The platform combines preprint publication with downstream, transparent peer review. Especially in the life sciences, it is used to make results from Horizon Europe-funded projects rapidly accessible, to implement data practices that comply with the FAIR Data Principles , and to ensure a high level of visibility. It thus offers an important alternative to traditional publishing models and promotes a culture of open science in Europe. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of December 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 1,550 titles in the category “ Biology, life sciences ”, while OAPEN listed over 125 titles under “ Biology, life science ”. Although open access books have not played a prominent role in biology to date, there are numerous open access (text)books of outstanding quality. They include, for example, Microbiology , which is jointly published by OpenStax and the American Society for Microbiology Press. Disciplinary Repositories The most important repositories in biology include: bioRxiv : This preprint server specifically for the life sciences has been provided by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory since 2013. Use of the server intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in many life sciences disciplines, self-archiving preprints there is now the norm. arXiv : Operated by Cornell University Library, this preprint and post-print server has for some years now had a Quantitative Biology section with 11 categories. Preprints : This multidisciplinary platform also has a biology section. PaleorXiv : This subdiscipline-specific preprint server hosts and provides access to preprints from palaeontology. PUBLISSO-Fachrepositorium Lebenswissenschaften (FRL) : Hosted by ZB MED, this repository offers authors the possibility of self-archiving their texts and research data. PubMed Central and Europe PubMed Central : These platforms are the largest venues in the world for post-print versions of publications. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) requires that author accepted manuscripts (i.e. post-prints) of articles arising from NIH-funded projects be made publicly available on PubMed Central immediately after publication in a journal. These manuscripts do not necessarily have to be made available under an open licence, nor must they be part of the BMC Open Access Subset , which can be separately downloaded and searched . Preprints are now an integral part of publishing practice in biology. Initiatives such as Plan U ( Sever et al., 2019 ) and ASAPbio (Accelerating Science and Publication in biology) advocate that preprints of all scholarly articles should be made freely available. The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) also 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 ) open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access in Medicine and Life Sciences Find an introduction here. Open Science in Biology In the biosciences, there are many projects – also in collaboration with other disciplines – that develop as grassroots movements and address various aspects of the scientific process in the spirit of open science. They aim, for example, to increase the public online availability of research data (open data), software source code (open source), lab journals (open notebook science), manuscript peer reviews (open peer review), teaching materials ( open educational resources ), the quantification of the impact of publications ( open metrics ), and research funding proposals, including their reviews (Mietchen, 2014). However, open science also means opening up science to society (citizen science, e.g. the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) project Finde den Wiesenknopf [Find the Great Burnet]). Some journals also see a need to increase the transparency of research. For example, since 2014, PLOS ONE has required that all data underpinning research must be made available together with the publication. PLOS Biology and PLOS Genetics support th e Research Resource Identification Initiative , which helps researchers to assign unique identifiers to their research materials and methods. In biology, too, numerous communities have adopted the FAIR Data Principles , in order to ensure more efficient and sustainable use of data and software. For many years now, there have been repositories and databases for some data in biology. For example, via websites and application programming interfaces (APIs), the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) , in particular, offer structured access to various data collections, such as sequences and structures of biomolecules like DNA, RNA, and proteins. As of December 2025, the Registry of Research Data Repositories, re3data , listed almost 1100 peer-reviewed data repositories in the area of biology. Despite all these initiatives and offerings, it is clear that by no means all research communities in biology are being reached, and by no means all technical potential is being adequately used to ensure the effective sharing of knowledge. This discrepancy between theoretical possibilities and actual implementation can be explained, among other things, by the fact that the ways in which researchers and the outputs of their research are evaluated when jobs and funding are being allocated remain unchanged. The evaluation criteria are generally limited to formal publications in scholarly journals and the Journal Impact Factor . This practice impacts researchers’ motivation to make their results, data, and methods publicly available at an early stage, and thus prevents the broad and rapid reuse of these resources. A rethinking of the evaluation of research outputs is thus desirable. This is precisely the change to which the signatories of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) aspire. Specifically, they advocate that, besides making the necessary infrastructure available, incentives should be created for making the results of scholarly research available to the public as early as possible and free of technical, financial, and legal barriers. The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) , which is currently under construction in Germany, is another important project in the area of open science in biology. Within the framework of this project, new technical and structural foundations are being created for research data management in the whole of Germany. In the first two selection rounds of the NFDI Programme, several consortia from the life sciences and biomedical research ( DataPlant , GHGA , NFDI4BioDiversity , NFDI4Health , NFDI4Immuno , NFDI4Microbiota ) received funding. By making infrastructure, know-how, and training available, and also by developing and establishing (metadata) standards, these consortia aim to promote open and efficient science as well as the implementation of the FAIR Data Principles and cultural change in that direction. 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 On the left-hand side you can find helpful services and tools to inform yourself about specific questions on Open Access. References Mietchen, D. (2014). The Transformative Nature of Transparency in Research Funding. PLOS Biology, 1 2(12). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002027 Sever, R., Eisen, M., & Inglis, J. (2019). Plan U: Universal access to scientific and medical research via funder preprint mandates. PLOS Biology, 17 (6). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000273 Further Reading Rapp Learn, J. (2019). What bioRxiv’s first 30,000 preprints reveal about biologists. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00199-6 Rat für Informationsinfrastrukturen (RFII). (2016). Leistung aus Vielfalt. Empfehlungen zu Strukturen, Prozessen und Finanzierung des Forschungsdatenmanagements in Deutschland. https://rfii.de/download/rfii-empfehlungen-2016/ Galtier, N., Belkhir, K., Antoine, P.-O., Bibal, C., Boëte, C., Delsuc, F., Huchard, E., Kéfi, S., Maeder, C., Paradis, L., Puechmaille, S. J., Queffelec, A., Scornavacca, C., Smadja, C. M. (2026). Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology, Journal of Evolutionary Biology , 39(2) . https://doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voaf143 Content editor of this page: Prof. Dr. Konrad Förstner, ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences (Last updated: December 2025)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Perception of Open Access Survey on requirements and obstacles in selected technical and natural sciences: Mechanical engineering and chemistry. Open Access in Chemistry The acceptance and spread of open access are still less advanced in chemistry than in physics or biology , for example. The reasons for this are diverse and undoubtedly arise also from the traditional development of the chemistry community. Nevertheless, there has been an increase in open access activities in chemistry in recent years. For example, large specialist publishers have converted several journals to open access, and chemical societies have intensified their activities towards open access, as shown, for example, by the establishment of the preprint server ChemRxiv . One pioneer in this field is Peter Murray-Rust of the University of Cambridge, who has been active both in the area of open access and open data . There are still reservations about open access publishing in chemistry – also because of fears regarding the free reuse of research results by industry and the related aspects of patent-protected results. However, these fears can be dispelled by granting suitable reuse licences. Although the German Chemical Society (GDCh) was critical of Plan S in a statement issued in 2018, its partner publisher Wiley-VCH signed a transformative agreement with DEAL in 2019 ( Schmitz, 2019 ). Moreover, a DEAL agreement with Springer Nature has been in force since 2020, and in 2024, a DEAL agreement was concluded with Elsevier. Open Access Journals As of October 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 636 indexed journals under the keyword chemistry . The most important open access journals in chemistry include: ARKIVOC Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry Journal of Cheminformatics (BMC) Chemical Science (RSC) ChemistryOpen (Wiley -VCH ) ACS Central Science Communications Chemistry Although this list is just a small selection of chemistry journals with open access models, it includes journals from relevant publishers or with a long open access tradition. In addition to their traditional, subscription-based journals or their hybrid journals, some large and eminently relevant and renowned publishers – for example the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and Nature Publishing – also offer open access journals in chemistry. Furthermore, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is planning to convert its entire journal portfolio (44 journals as of 2024) to open access by 2028 (see https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2022/oct/rsc-oa-commitment/ ). Although the Journal Impact Factor as a quality metric is very controversial (see the Declaration on Research Assessment, DORA ), it should be noted that many of the aforementioned open access journals have sizeable Impact Factors. For example, according to the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), as of 2023, the Impact Factor of the RSC journal Chemical Science was 7.6, and the Impact Factor of the ACS journal ACS Central Science was 12.7. One journal that has been open access since the beginning of the open access movement is ARKIVOC (established in the year 2000). It covers organic chemistry, including areas of bio-organic and organometallic chemistry. The journal is published by ARKAT USA, Inc ., a not-for-profit organisation established through charitable donation in the year 2000, whose aim is to promote the dissemination of organic chemical research worldwide, hence benefitting students, researchers, and commercial and non-commercial enterprises. Thus, neither the submission of an article to ARKIVOC nor its publication is subject to author-side fees. This is also true of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry (BJOC) , which has been published in open access since 2005 and is fully funded by the Beilstein-Institut. Thus, both journals fall under the label “platinum” or “ diamond open access ”. In addition to being reusable completely free of charge, the articles are published under a CC BY licence, thereby enabling their greatest possible reuse. The Journal of Cheminformatics was established in 2009 as an open access journal at BioMed Central (BMC), which is now part of Springer Nature. It covers all areas of cheminformatics and molecular modelling. The citation rate has more than doubled in the past five years, increasing from 3,490 citations in 2019 to 9,430 citations in 2023. The journal ChemistryOpen has been published since 2012 by Wiley-VCH on behalf of ChemistryEurope, an association of 16 European chemical societies. Until 2020, ChemistryEurope was known as ChemPubSoc Europe. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of October 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 1,960 titles under the keyword chemistry , and the OAPEN Library listed some 972 titles under the search term chemistry in the subject area science . The most important publishers of chemistry include Taylor & Francis , Springer Nature , and De Gruyter , all of whom have published only a small number of open access books in chemistry to date. Disciplinary Repositories The most important disciplinary repositories in chemistry include: Beilstein Archives : contains preprints from the fields of organic chemistry and nanotechnology that are intended for publication in one of the Beilstein journals. The service is operated and funded by the Beilstein-Institut. ChemRxiv : a server for preprints in chemistry and related areas. ChemRxiv is collaboratively managed and funded by the five largest chemical societies in the world: the ACS, the Chinese Chemical Society, the Chemical Society of Japan, the GDCh, and the RSC. PubMed Central : contains full texts of biomedical and life sciences journal literature (incl. biochemistry, medical chemistry). It is the full-text archive of the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). The archive was developed and is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at NLM. Institutional repositories of relevance for chemistry include, for example, JuSER , the publication portal of Forschungszentrum Jülich; the publications database of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht ; the publications repository of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf ; and Renate , the German National Library of Science and Technology’s (TIB) repository for science and technology. An overview of relevant repositories is provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk 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. FID Chemie Other Offerings Chemistry is shaped by laboratory work. The experiments conducted are documented in so-called lab notebooks, or lab books. These records are still often kept in paper form. However, as digitalisation advances, the possibilities of digital documentation are also increasing. Chemotion is an electronic lab notebook (ELN) for chemistry, in which molecules and reactions can be systematically recorded in digital form ( Tremouilhac et al., 2017 ). In addition, the content and data can be made freely available for reuse under a Creative Commons licence via the affiliated Chemotion repository . The development of the Chemotion open source software was funded by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). For an overview of various electronic lab notebooks, see the ELN-Wegweiser (ELN guide) published by ZB MED ( Adam & Lindstädt, 2020 ). Open Science in Chemistry Although the topic of open science and its sub-topic open access to research data are still addressed less in chemistry than in other disciplines, there are small rays of hope, for example in the area of crystallography. The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) and the Crystallography Open Database (COD) provide an access to crystallographic data that is already well established in that community. There are already a number of open access databases in the area of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy (e.g. the Spectral Database for Or ganic Compounds ) that can be used to search for and to compare spectroscopic data. However, this is mostly limited more to the depiction of spectra than to the actually recorded data points Chemical data and information can be deposited and made freely available in the PubChem database at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) . PubChem collects information on, for example, chemical structures, identifiers, chemical and physical properties, and biological activities. Within the framework of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NDFI) , the topic of open science and the handling of research data at national level is being addressed in the chemistry consortium NFDI4Chem (Steinbeck et al., 2020). The aim is to advance the digitalisation of all relevant steps in chemical research in order to support researchers in collecting, storing, processing, analysing, disclosing, and reusing research data. Within the framework of NFDI4Chem, discipline-specific repositories for research data are also being developed further. They include, for example, the repository Chemotion for diverse analysis data; the NMR spectroscopy data repository nmrXiv ; and RADAR4Chem, a generic repository for all types of chemical research data. The Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data) provides a good overview of further research data repositories for chemistry. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Adam, B., & Lindstädt, B. (2021). Electronic laboratory notebooks in the context of research data management and good research practice – A guide for the life sciences . ZB MED – Leibniz Information Centre for Life Sciences. https://www.publisso.de/fileadmin/user_upload/PUBLISSO/PUBLISSO_ELN-Guide_2021-04-07_view_englisch.pdf Schmitz, K. (2019). DEAL-Vereinbarung tritt heute in Kraft . https://web.archive.org/web/20250803053202/https://www.gdch.de/service-information/nachricht/article/deal-vereinbarung-tritt-heute-in-kraft.html Steinbeck, C., Koepler, O., Bach, F., Herres-Pawlis, S., Jung, N., Liermann, J., Neumann, S., Razum, M., Baldauf, C., Biedermann, F., Bocklitz, T., Boehm, F., Broda, F., Czodrowski, P., Engel, T., Hicks, M., Kast, S., Kettner, C., Koch, W., … Wulle, S. (2020). NFDI4Chem – Towards a national research data infrastructure for chemistry in Germany. Research Ideas and Outcomes, 6 , Article e55852. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.6.e55852 Tremouilhac, P., Nguyen, A., Huang, Y.-C., Kotov, S., Lütjohann, D. S., Hübsch, F., Jung, N., & Bräse, S. (2017). Chemotion ELN: An Open Source electronic lab notebook for chemists in academia. Journal of Cheminformatics , 9 (1), Article 54. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-017-0240-0 Further Reading Brazil, R. (2024, September 2). Will open science change chemistry? Chemistry World . https://www.chemistryworld.com/careers/will-open-science-change-chemistry/4020023.article Jensen, J. (2021, January 8). Open access chemistry publishing options in 2021. Proteins and Wave Functions . https://proteinsandwavefunctions.blogspot.com/2021/01/open-access-chemistry-publishing.html Content editor of this web page: Dr. Janna Neumann, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology (last updated: October 2024)....

What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. 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 Computer Science With roots in mathematics and electrical engineering, the still young academic discipline of computer science has always adopted an open approach to the research results achieved. Success stories include open source operating systems, such as Linux, and the typesetting system LaTeX, which is well established in the field of scholarly publishing, in particular. Because of the many links to other disciplines (bioinformatics, business informatics, …), framework conditions for scholarly publishing differ across the individual subfields. The main focus of the present article is on the core of computer science. Since the mid-1990s, conferences, symposiums, and even workshops, have established themselves as publication venues for the dissemination of research results, and they hold a dominant position vis-à-vis traditional scholarly journals. This is also reflected in the programme areas of scholarly publishers and of professional societies that act as publishers. The strong focus on conference publications regularly leads to perception problems in the scientific landscape, for example when this form of publication is ignored in evaluation processes ( Jagadish, 2008; Vardi, 2009; Vardi, 2010; Konstan & Davidson, 2015 ). This tension between conference publications and journal articles also manifests itself in the current open access offerings in the field of computer science. In individual subfields (e.g., theoretical computer science and cryptology), there is a well-established preprint culture. Various publication venues for workshops and conferences have become established, which differ in terms of their level of requirements or their thematic focus. Among journals, progress in the direction of open access is somewhat subdued but nonetheless tangible. The commercial publishers have recognised that open access is an additional source of revenue. However, many open access journals in computer science operate without the backing of a traditional publisher and are organised from within the community, which sometimes means that the level of professionalisation, for example when it comes to getting indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) , is very different. The national and international scientific associations in the field of computer science have to date adopted a more conservative approach to open access, although there has been some movement on the topic in recent years: The German Informatics Society (GI): Although the GI signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in 2007, and although it makes its series Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) freely available online, the scholarly journals of the thematic fields are still strongly tied to the classic subscription model . Via the Digital Library , subdivisions of the GI can make their own publications available in open access. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): The US-based ACM has been participating in the Plan S initiative since January 2021. Moreover, via ACM Author-Izer , ACM authors can generate and post links on their homepage and in their institutional repository to enable visitors to download their articles from the ACM Digital Library free of charge. However, from a licensing point of view, it often remains unclear whether reuse is permissible. Hence, the goals of open access are only partially achieved. Authors also have the possibility of making articles published by ACM available in open access by availing of the author-pays option . In addition, in 2023, the ACM Council reiterated its intention to transition to a fully open access publishing model by 2026. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): The IEEE Computer Society is the section of the professional society IEEE that is responsible for computer science and engineering. It acts as a publisher for scholarly journals and conference proceedings. Open access is available in hybrid journals , and especially in the open access megajournal IEEE Access . However, there are no explicit possibilities of publishing articles in open access in IEEE conference proceedings. Some commercial publishers offer authors the option of paying a fee ( article processing charge, APC ) to make individual articles available in open access ( ACM Author Gateway ; Lecture Notes in Computer Science ). This hybrid publishing model, which is practised by many publishers in the journals area, has thus also become established to a certain extent in the area of conference proceedings. The provision of open access to data and software is an important step towards transparency of scientific works. These open data and software allow results and experiments to be reproduced to a certain degree. In the field of computer science, so-called artefact evaluations have become established both in the area of conferences and of journals, and related data are very often made freely accessible. Open Access Journals As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 554 entries under the keyword Computer Science . Important open access journals include: IEEE Access DOAJ IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) Journal of Graph Drawing Algorithms and Applications (JGAA) Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) Journal of Spatial Information Science (JOSIS) Journal on Satisfiability, Boolean Modeling and Computation (JSAT) Logical Methods in Computer Science (LMCS) PeerJ Computer Science Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (PVLDB) 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 ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 3,220 titles under the keyword Computer Science . Because of the conference culture in computer science, the majority of open access books are conference proceedings. Purely monographic works are rarely published in open access. The following list contains the most important conference proceedings series in computer science: CEUR Workshop Proceedings Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science (EPTCS) JMLR Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) (Springer; hybrid via Open Choice) Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs) Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs) Procedia Computer Science (Elsevier) Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (PMLR) USENIX Although DOAB and OAPEN list a number of open access books in computer science and its subfields, they are currently very incomplete in relation to open access conference proceedings. Disciplinary Repositories The following repositories – both transdisciplinary repositories and repositories specialising in a single subfield of computer science – enable access to preprints and post-prints of works made available by the authors. As the latter versions often contain further details (e.g., technical proof), they are often consulted or cited for more in-depth engagement with a topic: arXiv/CoRR bioRxiv Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (ECCC) HAL IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings Conference management systems play an important role in the scientific self-or­ganisation of conferences in the field of computer sciences. That such systems are available in open access or free of charge is crucial in the planning and orga­nising of conferences and workshops. Although there is no concrete link as such between open access and the availability of conference management systems, the latter aspect must be kept in mind when developing future open access of­ferings, because conference management systems are where the metadata and the draft versions of contributions are collected. The following is an exemplary list of conference management systems that are frequently used in computer science: EasyChair (free of charge but not open access) HotCRP (free of charge but not open access) SoftConf START V2 (fee based) Searches in Computer Science Because of the focus on conference publications in its publication culture, the field of computer science is inadequately covered in trans-disciplinary indexing and search systems that are based on journals. The dblp computer science bib­liography , which was created in the early 1990s, established itself as an open access – and by now broad-scope – bibliographic service. It enables searches for individual authors and especially for conferences and journals in computer science. The following is a list of relevant search services for computer science: ACM Digital Library citeseerx Computer.org dblp IEEE Xplore Semantic Scholar Open Science in Computer Science Computer science acts as a technological trailblazer for the current debate on open science. The computer scientist Ben Shneiderman played a decisive role in coining the term Science 2.0 ( Shneiderman, 2008 ) and opened the debate on the technological renewal of science processes. There is a particular focus on open research data . Since 2011, more and more conferences (especially on software engineering) have established special committees to evaluate so-called research artefacts. These committees ensure that artefacts submitted along with a research paper are consistent with the paper and are complete, well documented, and easily reusable. Papers whose artefacts have been successfully evaluated are awarded an “Artefacts Evaluated” badge. Several publishers, for example ACM and Schloss Dagstuhl , have already implemented this procedure. Software developers frequently use GitHub as a software repository. GitHub is a commercial service used by software developers for administering different versions of software development projects. The reproducibility of results also plays a role in various journals that have specialised in the publication of software, algorithms, proof procedures, and data. They include, for example, the Journal of Open Source Software the Archive of Formal Proofs the journal Image Processing On Line the journal Data Another initiative that originated in – but is not limited to – computer science is the project Software Heritage , which has set itself the task of archiving and preserving software in source code form. As of October 2024, Software Heritage had archived over 327 million projects. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Jagadish, H. V. (2008). The conference reviewing crisis and a proposed solution. ACM SIGMOD Record, 37 (3), 40–45., https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1462571.1462582 Konstan, J. A. & Davidson, J. W. (2015). Should conferences meet journals and where? a proposal for "PACM". Communications of the ACM 58(9), 5. https://doi.org/10.1145/2811400 Shneiderman, B. (2008. March 2008). Science 2.0. Science, 319 (5868), 1349–1350. https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1153539 Vardi, M.Y. (2009). Conferences vs. journals in computing research. Communications of the ACM , 52 (5), 5., https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1506409.1506410 Vardi, M. Y. (2010). Revisiting the publication culture in computing research. Communications of the ACM, 53 (3), 5., https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1666420.1666421 Content editors of this page: Dr Michael Wagner, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics , and Dr Marc Herbstritt, University of Freiburg (Last updated: December 2024)....