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What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: 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 humanities and social science disciplines: historical sciences and social work. Open Access in Historical Studies Historians are generally well disposed towards all forms of open access . The number of open access journals and digital collections in historical studies is steadily growing. In the case of monographs and edited collections , however, open access is progressing more slowly. Blogs are another form of publication used to disseminate scholarly information in this field. Besides publications, freely available historical sources, especially in the form of digital reproductions and machine-readable digital editions, are of great importance in historical studies. In addition, in the areas of digital humanities of relevance to historical studies, open access tools (e.g. for text mining) also play a role. Open Access Journals As of December 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 1,582 open access journals under “ History ”. Important open access journals in historical studies include: Historische Zeitschrift ( https://doaj.org/toc/2196-680X ) Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte ( https://doaj.org/toc/2196-6842 ) Zeithistorische Forschungen ( https://doaj.org/toc/1612-6041 ) Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften ( https://doaj.org/toc/2510-1358 ) Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung. Beihefte Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung ( https://doaj.org/toc/2701-0449 ) Reviews also play an important role in historical studies. Many journals that are not open access nonetheless make their review sections freely available. Furthermore, there are a number of open access review platforms: Francia-Recensio (review journal of the German Historical Institute Paris) recensio.net (platform for reviews from journals in historical studies from all over Europe) recensio.regio (platform for reviews from historical journals with a regional focus) RIDE (review journal dedicated to digital editions and resources) sehepunkte (review journal) ​​​​​​​ What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video about the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Brinken, H. (2020). Finanzierung von Open-Access-Artikeln, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/49536 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (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 2,773 monographs and edited collections under “ History ”. The OAPEN Online Library also provides open access full texts on historical topics . As of December 2025, the publication platform OpenEdition provided 5,203 open access books under “ History” . Overall, there are a great variety of publishing models, whose conditions, costs, and technical implementation vary greatly. The German-language university presses in the consortium AG Universitätsverlage strongly support the open access movement, and many of them publish monographs and edited collections from the humanities. Within the framework of the open access transformation , scholarly publishers, for example Barbara Budrich , de Gruyter , transcript , Wachholtz , and Wallstein , increasingly offer authors – also from historical studies – the option of publishing their works open access. In the meantime, there are a number of open access publishers in the humanities that publish works exclusively in open access and do not levy book processing charges ( BPCs ). They include, for example, Language Science Press and Edition Topoi . The Edition Open Sources , which is hosted by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) , makes academic editions of primary sources available in open access. Stand-alone publications funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), including publications on historical topics, are made available in open access in the FWF-E-Book-Library . In the series Historisches Forum , themed issues with contributions and reports from historical studies are published in collaboration with Clio-online and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin . Disciplinary Repositories As of December 2025, the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) listed 26 repositories under “ History ”, and the Registry of Research Data Repositories re3data.org listed 141 research data repositories with historical content. In addition, content and publishing opportunities of relevance to historical studies can be found in repositories, databases, and other reference systems of neighbouring disciplines. An important role in the provision of content is played by the Specialised Information Service (FID) for Historical Studies – historicum.net . The FID offers publishing, archiving, and search services. Other specialised information services also offer historians significant added value. Because of the multi-perspectivity of the field, diverse historical studies content can be found in numerous sub-disciplines. This content can be found in the respective disciplinary repositories by using appropriate search filters (e.g. “history”). Furthermore, many specialised information services offer advice on and services for open access publishing. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video about self-archiving rights Source: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk if you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings Blogs In addition to the many stand-alone historical blogs by research institutions, associations, and individual researchers, there is a central platform for humanities and social science blogs, Hypotheses . Run by the open access service provider Open Edition , Hypotheses hosts several thousand blogs, including blogs on topics related to historical, archival, and auxiliary studies. As of December 2025, some 315 blogs from the German-speaking area were listed under “History & Archaeology”. Redaktionsblog , the blog by the editorial team of the German-language Hypotheses portal, de.hypotheses.org, serves to develop and disseminate scholarly information and to create a network. Subject Portals and Platforms Subject portals provide central points of entry for searches for open access publications, historical sources, and other materials. Clio-online is a subject portal for historical studies. It is involved in numerous projects, including Zeitgeschichte online – a subject portal for contemporary historians – and H-Soz-Kult. Clio-online publishes a series of German-language handbooks, Clio Guides , for a diverse range of historical studies specializations (covering digital methods and techniques, epochs, collections, and topics). The Clio Guides provide detailed guidance on relevant information resources, media, and search options. European History Online , which is provided by the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) , publishes scholarly contributions on European history between 1450 and 1950. The contributions in German and English are linked to various materials. historicum.net , the Specialised Information Service for Historical Studies, provides a wide range of historical information and in particular the German Historical Bibliography . H-Net - Humanities and Social Sciences online is a network for academic communication in the humanities and social sciences. H-Soz-Kult , a moderated information and communication platform for historians, publishes academic news and alerts users to new releases. Databases Access to digitised resources (archivalia, library and museum collections) is essential for historical research. Key databases for historical studies are often operated by individual institutions that are crucial to the discipline or are merged in inter-institutional databases. Arachne is the central object database of the German Archaeological Institute (DAO) and the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne at Cologne Digital Archaeology Laboratory (Arbeitsstelle für Digitale Archäologie). Archives Portal Europa provides inter alia 285 million individual documents from over 7,000 cultural institutions, sometimes with links to digital objects. The Deutsche Biographie provides information on over one million persons from the German-speaking area from the early Middle Ages to the present day. The Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library) lists and links over 26 million objects from German cultural institutions (archives, libraries, museums). e-codices - Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland has set itself the goal of providing free access to all medieval manuscripts and a selection of modern manuscripts of Switzerland via a virtual library. On the portal e-rara.ch , digitised printed works from the 15th to the 20th centur y from various Swiss libraries are made publicly available free of charge. Europeana aggregates over 60 million objects (images, text materials, sound and video recordings, and 3D objects) from over 2,000 European cultural organisations. The Handschriftenportal (Manuscript Portal) serves as a central reference for the manuscripts in German collections, which it links to indexing data and digital reproductions. perspectivia.net , the publication platform of the Max Weber Foundation – German Humanities Institutes Abroad , provides free access to the full texts of journals, reviews, monographs, and conference proceedings (digital publications and retrodigitised works). The Regesta Imperii (RI) record in the form of German-language regesta (abstracts) all activities of the Roman-German kings and emperors from the Carolingians to Maximilian I (ca. 751–1519) and the popes in the early and high Middle Ages that are evidenced by charters or other historical sources. The RI project provides RI Opac – a freely accessible literature database for medieval research in the entire European language area – a regesta database , and publications. The Wörterbuch-Netz , a project of the Trier Center for Digital Humanities (Kompetenzzentrum für elektronische Erschließungs- und Publikationsverfahren in den Geisteswissenschaften) at the University of Trier, provides inter alia dictionaries of the older historical stages of the German language. Open Science in Historical Studies Across the wide spectrum of historical studies, key elements of open science exist in the form of digital sources, machine-readable editions, the use of open access tools for innovative digital research, and the publication of research results in open access. The Digital Historical Studies Working Group ( Arbeitsgemeinschaft Digitale Geschichtswissenschaft ) within the Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands e. V. (Association of German Historians, VHD) focuses on the potential of the digital humanities – or e-humanities – for historical studies and offers a forum for exchange with neighbouring disciplines working in history. Established in 2023, NFDI4Memory is a consortium within the German National Research Infrastructure, NFDI , for humanities disciplines working in history. It is led by the Leibniz Institute for European History (IEG) and also comprises 10 other co-applicants (including the VHD). The consortium promotes the quality-assured, standardised, and competent use of research data in the historical disciplines. The EU-funded project Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud (SSHOC) is an online market place that makes digital tools, services, training materials, and datasets in the social sciences and humanities freely available with the aim of promoting interdisciplinary research and collaboration in these disciplines. The European research infrastructure OPERAS promotes open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities in the European Research Area. OPERAS supports open science inter alia through projects such as TRIPLE (Transforming Research through Innovative Practices for Linked Interdisciplinary Exploration), which is dedicated to developing a multilingual and multicultural discovery service for the social sciences and humanities. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Practical Tip The legal opinion by Klimpel and Rack (2023, new edition of the 2015 version) explains how and under what conditions audiovisual materials may be used in research and teaching. Further Reading Daniel, S., Enderle, W., Hohls, R., Meyer, T., Prellwitz, J., Prinz, C., Schuhmann, A., & Schwandt, S. (Eds.). (2023–2025). Clio Guide. Ein Handbuch zu digitalen Ressourcen für die Geschichtswissenschaften (3rd expanded and updated edition ). Clio-online. https://guides.clio-online.de/ Content editor of this page: Eva Bunge, Deutsches Museum (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. Open Access in Medicine and Life Sciences In medicine and the life sciences, open access is particularly supported by mandates from research funders such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) , the Wellcome Trust , and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation . Calls for free access to the results of research in medicine and the life sciences point to the direct link between open access and public health, especially in the Global South. Consequently, the World Health Organization (WHO) is also committed to promoting open access to the results of medical research; it operates IRIS , a repository for the sharing of health-related information. Some research funders also provide publishing platforms on which the results of the research that they fund can be published. Examples of such platforms include Wellcome Open Research and Gates Open Research . To comply with funding requirements, the published results of NIH-funded research must be made accessible on PubMed Central (PMC) , the disciplinary repository for biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the NIH National Library of Medicine. Many of the open access journals in the life sciences that were founded in the 2010s are now well established. Journals such as PeerJ , BMJ Open , Cell Reports , and eLife focus exclusively on this domain. In addition, since around 2016, preprint servers have increasingly played a role in making the results of research in medicine and the life sciences available in open access at an early stage. They include, for example, bioRxiv and medRxiv , which have a life science focus (further preprint servers can be found in the preprint server directory provided by ASAPbio). During the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints in medicine gained increased importance for the rapid dissemination of research results. However, criticism of the publication of preprints was also voiced, because results were available before undergoing quality control through peer review and the media picked up these unreviewed results and treated them as scientific facts The infiltration of the state of the art in medicine and the life sciences by predatory publishing – especially journal hijacking (Hegedűs et al., 2024), indexjacking (Abalkina, 2024), and paper mills (Abalkina, 2023) – is proving increasingly problematic. According to estimates, around 3% of the articles published in medicine and the life sciences originate from paper mills (Van Noorden, 2023). Due to these phenomena, it is becoming more and more difficult to filter out scientifically valid results for review articles and evidence syntheses. As a result, medical treatments may become ineffective, or even dangerous (Chambers, 2024). Thus, in view of the existence of predatory publishing and hijacked journals, particular prudence is necessary. If you are unsure about the reliability of a journal, it is advisable to consult checklists such as Think . Check . Submit or to check whether the journal may have been hijacked. When it comes to paper mills, editors and publishers in particular must be vigilant to avoid being overrun by mass submissions of inferior quality. At the publisher level, there are now several initiatives such as United2Act and STM Integrity Hub that are dedicated to combatting the problem and filtering out such submissions by technical means even before the peer-review stage. Open Access Journals As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 4,462 indexed journals under the subject category "Medicine" alone, of which over 581 had been awarded the DOAJ Seal . The journal list on the PubMed Central platform also offers search possibilities. Versions of articles from certain journals are available free of charge immediately upon publication or after an embargo period or are available in open access under a Creative Commons licence. The Electronic Journals Library (EZB) provides information on the open access status of journals in medicine and the life sciences. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed over 11,399 titles under the search string "Life Science" OR Medicine , and the OAPEN Library listed 332 titles under the search term " medical ". As scholarly communication in medicine and the life sciences takes place for the most part via journal publications, open access books are not at the forefront of discussion in this domain. Larger publishers with a medical or life science focus and a portfolio of open access journals usually also offer open access book programmes in which books can be published in open access against payment of a book processing charge (BPC) . While most programmes are still strongly geared towards printed books, a small number of initiatives promote purely electronic implementation, particularly with a view to exploiting the advantages of a digital environment and enhancing publications with multi-media content such as videos or audio files (Bardi & Manghi, 2014; Breure et al., 2011) or with links to further materials. They include, for example, the Living Handbooks programme offered by ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences , which focuses particularly on handbooks. Disciplinary Repositories The leading repositories in medicine and the life sciences include: PubMed Central , full-text archive at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine Europe PMC , a full-text platform funded by an alliance of 27 funders of biomedical research PUBLISSO Disciplinary Repository for Life Sciences provided by ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences PubMed Central is by far the most important repository in medicine and the life sciences. It is a database of choice for literature searches, and thus plays a key role in ensuring the visibility of journals, institutions, and authors in the life science disciplines. As an offering from Germany, the PUBLISSO Disciplinary Repository for Life Sciences provided by ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences offers researchers the possibility of publishing or self-archiving documents, articles, and research data. In addition, it offers institutions in the fields of medicine, healthcare, and food, environmental, and agricultural sciences that do not have their own repositories the possibility of cohesively presenting their publications on their own institute pages. An overview of relevant repositories is provided by the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find legal information on open access here. 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. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Science in Medicine and Life Sciences Because of the immense importance of medical and life science information for society, there are numerous initiatives to promote the opening of the research cycle in this domain, and especially to facilitate access to and the reuse of research data . Information on research data in medicine and the life sciences can also be found under Lebenswissenschaften "on the German-language information portal on research data management Forschungsdaten.info . Many journals in medicine and the life sciences require that, when submitting a manuscript, authors provide a data availability statement indicating where the research data underlying the results can be found – also, and especially, so that these data can be included in the peer review. In addition, to improve the transparency and reproducibility of research, journals are increasingly insisting that these data – as well as code, protocols, and other materials – are adequately described. The journals of the Nature Portfolio are one example of this. In its code of conduct, “ Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice ”, the German Research Foundation (DFG) also advocates that researchers should wherever possible document and make available their research data in accordance with the FAIR Principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016). Within the framework of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) , numerous consortia are being funded that aim to ensure access to and the sharing of data – also, and especially, personal and sensitive data – by developing appropriate infrastructure and standards. At the same time, the accessibility and sharing of studies are also to be improved. One example is the Study Hub of the NFDI4 Health Consortium. In the life sciences, increasing use is being made of electronic lab notebooks, the digital variant of traditional hard-copy lab notebooks. The advantage here is that the data are collected directly in digital form and can thus be integrated more easily into the research data management system, thereby enabling them to be made available at a later date through improved documentation. In addition, the digital environment offers further advantages, such as time stamps, linking, connection to other applications and analysis tools, search and filter functions, functionalities for collaborative work, and reuse of templates, etc. Furthermore, electronic lab notebooks provide some protection against data loss, for example through illegible handwriting or loss. ZB MED – Leibniz Information Centre for Life Sciences has compiled information to assist in the selection of electronic lab notebooks , as well as a guide with best practice examples. Open Access in Biology Find an introduction here. References Abalkina, A. (2023). Publication and collaboration anomalies in academic papers originating from a paper mill: Evidence from a Russia-based paper mill. Learned Publishing , 36 (4), 689–702. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1574 Abalkina, A. (2024). Challenges posed by hijacked journals in Scopus. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology , 75 (4), 395–422. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24855 Bardi, A., & Manghi, P. (2014). Enhanced publications: Data models and information systems. LIBER Quarterly, 23 (4), 240–273. https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.8445 Breure, L., Voorbij, H., & Hoogerwerf, M. (2011). Rich Internet publications: "Show what you tell." Journal of Digital Information , 12 (1). https://journals.tdl.org/jodi/index.php/jodi/article/view/1606 Chambers, H. (2024). Unmasking the fraud: How paper mills are undermining scientific publishing. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology , 66 (10), 1262–1263. https://doi.org/10.1111/dmcn.15997 Hegedűs, M., Dadkhah, M., & Dávid, L. D. (2024). Masquerade of authority: Hijacked journals are gaining more credibility than original ones. Diagnosis , 11 (3), 235–239. https://doi.org/10.1515/dx-2024-0082 Van Noorden, R. (2023). How big is science’s fake-paper problem? Nature , 623 (7987), 466–467. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03464-x Wilkinson, M. D., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. J., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., Blomberg, N., Boiten, J.-W., Santos, L. B. da S., Bourne, P. E., Bouwman, J., Brookes, A. J., Clark, T., Crosas, M., Dillo, I., Dumon, O., Edmunds, S., Evelo, C. T., Finkers, R., … Mons, B. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data , 3 (1), 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18 Content editor of this page: Dr Jasmin Schmitz, ZB MED – Leibniz Information Centre for Life Sciences (Last updated: April 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 in Linguistics The topic of Open Access has been receiving increasing amounts of attention in linguistics since around 2012. Two particularly significant events that played a role in this were the founding of Language Science Press by German linguists Stefan Müller and Martin Haspelmath in 2014 and the emergence of the journal Glossa , catalysed by a conflict between the editorial board of the journal Lingua and its publisher, Elsevier , in 2016. The eLanguage platform of the Linguistic Society of America, founded in 2006 by Stephen R. Anderson and Dieter Stein, is an important precursor to these two initiatives. Unfortunately, this platform is no longer active, although several journals that used to be part of eLanguage – such as Semantics & Pragmatics , Dialogue & Discourse and Journal of Historical Syntax – continue to enjoy a flourishing existence. All three of these journals are scholar-led initiatives . Established publishers are reacting to these developments, slowly but inexorably. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft – the journal of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) – has been open access since 2017. From 2025, it will be available in diamond open access from PubliKon at the University of Konstanz. Open Access Journals As of November 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 906 indexed journals under “ linguistics ”, most of which are diamond open access – that is, they do not charge fees to either authors or readers. A further list of open access linguistics journals can be found in the oaling blog . Important open access linguistics journals include: Constructions Glossa DOAJ Glossa Psycholinguistics Semantics & Pragmatics DOAJ Linguistik Online DOAJ Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft DOAJ Biolinguistics DOAJ Open Linguistics DOAJ Dialogue & Discourse DOAJ Journal of Historical Syntax DOAJ Syntactic Theory and Research In addition, there are many journals dedicated to the linguistic investigation of particular languages or language families, such as Studies in African Linguistics , Finno-Ugric Languages and Linguistics , Indo-European Linguistics , and Isogloss . What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of November 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 4,282 titles under “ linguistics ”, and the online library OAPEN listed 16,187 titles under “ linguistics ”. The key player in the landscape of open access books in linguistics is Language Science Press , a publisher whose costs are borne primarily by a consortium of university libraries. This enables them to avoid charging book processing charges (BPCs) entirely. However, in addition, virtually all presses that regularly publish linguistics books now offer the opportunity to publish open access upon payment of a BPC. It is increasingly common for monographs and edited volumes to be published in open access. As regards handbooks, MIT Press publishes a series of Open Handbooks in Linguistics . Open access textbooks , too, are becoming increasingly common . Disciplinary Repositories The most important repositories in linguistics include LingBuzz (for general linguistics) and semanticsarchive.net (for the core areas semantics and pragmatics). Depending on authors’ disciplinary identities, linguistics papers can sometimes also be found at Humanities Commons (CORE) or arXiv.org . The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) also provides an overview of relevant repositories. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings The oaling blog provides a list of open access journals as well as a roundup of developments in the area of open access in linguistics. LingOA (Linguistics in Open Access) functions as an umbrella organisation for open access journals; its aim is to transform established subscription-based journals to open access. Open access book reviews are regularly published on Linguist List . Open Science in Linguistics Linguistics researchers work with different types of data, from experimental findings to text corpora. Here, the principles of openness and transparency have become increasingly important in recent years. Berez-Kroeker et al. (2022) published an Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management . Linguistic research data and software can be deposited in the Tromsø Repository of Language and Linguistics (TROLLing). Access to text and language corpora plays a significant role in linguistics – especially in corpus and computational linguistics. The dominant way in which corpora are provided is to set up a web-based query option (either freely accessible, usable free of charge after registration, or not freely accessible). This makes optimal use of the structure and annotation of the corpora and requires neither download nor software installation. However, as a rule, the corpora and tools themselves cannot be downloaded and reused for further dissemination or analysis. This is often due to copyright reasons. Examples include the COSMAS corpora of the IDS (Institute for the German Language) in Mannheim, Varitext (French, University of Cologne), and the DWDS (Digital Dictionary of the German Language) , where a core corpus ( Kerncorpus ) can be freely downloaded. By contrast, LAUDATIO (Humboldt Universität Berlin), which focuses on corpora of historical language stages, practises an open access model. The European initiative LRE Map covers a large number of linguistic resources (data, tools, guidelines). In linguistics, the open source idea plays an increasingly important role insofar as some tools are offered under open licences, and the standardisation and interoperability of data are taken into account. Open Text Collections , an initiative funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), aims to make text collections for descriptive linguistics available in a sustainable and open way. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Berez-Kroeker, A. L., McDonnell, B., Koller, E., & Collister, L. B. (2022). The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management . The MIT Press. Further Reading Haspelmath, M. (2013). Why open-access publication should be nonprofit – a view from the field of theoretical language science. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience , 7 (57). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00057 Kleineberg, M., & Kaden, B. (2017). Open Humanities? ExpertInnenmeinungen über Open Access in den Geisteswissenschaften. LIBREAS. Library Ideas , 32 . https://libreas.eu/ausgabe32/kleineberg/ Müller, S. (2012). A personal note on open access in linguistics. Journal of Language Modelling , 0 (1), 9–39. https://doi.org/10.15398/jlm.v0i1.52 Content editors of this page: Prof. Dr. George Walkden , Universität Konstanz, and Prof. Dr. Christof Schöch, Universität Trier (Last updated: November 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 Mathematics In contrast to their peers in many natural science or technical disciplines, mathematicians still draw on older literature when investigating current research questions. Open access in mathematics is therefore not restricted to current research results but also includes older literature. Retrodigitisation and open access to this digital content thus play an important role in this discipline. Another difference between mathematics and most natural science disciplines is the acceptance of literature that has not undergone scientific quality control. For example, in 2006, Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for a series of three papers proving the Poincaré conjecture, which he had published only on the preprint server arXiv . Because these papers were published open access, Perelman’s proof could be checked by various groups, even without undergoing classical peer review . Mathematicians are highly critical of rising journal prices. Thus, it is not surprising that in this field in particular, researchers often call for, and also participate in, boycotts of scholarly publishers (e.g. The Cost of Knowledge ). Open Access Journals As of November 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 815 entries under Mathematics . Article processing charges (APCs) are often viewed critically. For this reason, open access mathematics journals often use business models without APCs. Many of these journals are published directly by scientific institutions or professional associations. Examples include: Journal de l'École Polytechnique – Mathématiques Documenta Mathematica Because, as mentioned above, older literature is of great importance in mathematics, older journal volumes are often made freely available online even if the current volumes are closed access and thus subject to a fee. In these cases, the moving- wall model is often used: for a certain period of time (e.g. the first five years after publication) access is fee-based; after expiry of this embargo period , access is free. When publishing works in open access journals, care should be taken – also in mathematics – to avoid predatory publishing . What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of November 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 95 titles under “ Mathematics “ and 207 titles under “ Mathematics & science “ , while OAPEN listed around 70 titles under “ Mathematics “ . Most books in mathematics are published with publishers that have traditional business models, and open access books are still a peripheral phenomenon. Disciplinary Repositories The most important repository in mathematics is arXiv , a preprint server for physics, mathematics, and related disciplines (see our Physics page). As arXiv grew in importance, the once-longstanding practice whereby authors published their preprints on their institutions’ websites was abandoned. Many repositories in mathematics no longer publish any new preprints (one exception: the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics’ MPIM Preprint series ). Mathematics research data can be conveniently deposited in Zenodo or in disciplinary repositories, which can be found, for example in the Registry of Research Data Repositories, re3data . In addition, there are a number of open access repositories with retrodigitised mathematics literature, the most important of which are: Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum (GDZ) : contains, among other things, the Collection Mathematica , in which the Göttingen State and University Library’s entire historical mathematics collection up to and including the year 1900 is made accessible. NUMDAM : is located at the Université Grenoble Alpes and contains many French and Italian journals. Although access is free, embargo periods vary from journal to journal. The University of Michigan Historical Mathematics Collection: contains monographs published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Historical Math Monographs (Cornell University Library) Project Euclid (Cornell University): hosts e-journals, many of which are open access. The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) provides an overview of these and other repositories. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here, Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Useful Offerings The information platform zbMATH OPEN (formerly known as Zentralblatt MATH) has been open access since 2021. Open and reusable interfaces ensure the networking and sharing of scientific information. The goal is to establish the platform as a crucial hub in an open global mathematics library. The European Digital Mathematics Library ( EuDML ) is another open access research tool. Furthermore, within the framework of the Committee on Electronic Information and Communication (CEIC) of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) , efforts are being made to develop a World Digital Mathematics Library (WDML) in which the entire mathematics literature would be indexed, interlinked, and made accessible and reusable in the long term. zbMATH OPEN is a first step in this direction. To ensure the scientific quality of open access articles, the Episciences project provides a free platform on which contributions can undergo peer review. In this way, articles deposited in arXiv can undergo scientific quality control. Open Science in Mathematics Mathematical methods are also increasingly being applied successfully in interdisciplinary research and are therefore widespread. For example, mathematical models, parameters, data, and numerical algorithms are used in machine learning. Mathematical research data have thus become very complex, multifaceted, and unwieldy. The publication of these resources in open access is therefore highly beneficial for interdisciplinary research. However, especially in the area of data sciences, huge computing capacity is sometimes required (see the Mathematical Research Data Initiative, MaRDI, 2021). Traditionally, proving theorems is a central element of the publishing culture in mathematics. These proofs must be completely understandable to readers within the contribution itself. In open access publications, all content is already freely available. For a long time, there was therefore no need to provide supplementary research data. However, as digitalisation advances, automated theorem-proving procedures , visualisations, and other types of mathematical research data are increasingly emerging, and the open accessibility of these resources is becoming more and more important. Mathematical research data are very complex and diverse. The MaRDI Knowledge Graph , which is currently being developed, links many open access sources of mathematical research data. Besides the Knowledge Graph, other research data services tailored to the mathematics community can be found on the MaRDI Portal . Software developed in mathematics is often versioned and made available via Github , which has been part of Microsoft since 2018. Public GitHub repositories can be accessed without prior registration. However, to upload one’s own data, registration is necessary; the basic functions of the service are available free of charge. Many universities and research institutes offer Git instances of their own, based, for example, on the open source platform GitLab. Some journals that cover the computationally intensive areas of mathematics, for example numerics, already check the reproducibility of the code and software components of papers. One example is Computational Science and Engineering , a gold open access journal with its own Code Review Board. Efforts are being made to extend this to other areas of mathematics. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Further Reading Boege, T., Fritze, R., Görgen, C., Hanselman, J., Iglezakis, D., Kastner, L., Koprucki, T., Krause, T., Lehrenfeld, C., Polla, S., Reidelbach, M., Riedel, C., Saak, J., Schembera, B., Tabelow, K., & Weber, M. (2022). Research-data management planning in the German mathematical community [Preprint]. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.12071 Das, P. K. (2017). Anatomy of open access mathematics journals. Journal of Information and Knowledge, 53(6), 447–454. https://doi.org/10.17821/srels/2016/v53i6/98585 Hanselman, J. (2025). Guidelines for writing and reviewing mathematical software. Notices of the AMS. https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202507/noti3210/noti3210.html Taubert, N. (2021). Green open access in astronomy and mathematics: The complementarity of routines among authors and readers. Minerva, 59, 173–194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-020-09424-3 Teschke, O. (2018, December). Green, gold, platinum, nickel: On the status of open access in mathematics. EMS Newsletter. https://ems.press/content/serial-article-files/10613?nt=1 Content editor of this page: Dr Gernot Deinzer, Regensburg University Library . Last revision of content: Tabea Bacher, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (MPI MiS) , with the kind support of Britta Schneemann, MPI MiS (as of November 2025)....

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

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

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

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

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

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 Sociology In sociology, there are many different attitudes towards open access . Whereas digital resources are widely used in research and teaching, sociologists are as yet rather hesitant about publishing their works open access ( Graf et al., 2019 ). One reason for this is the culture of publishing in the humanities and social sciences. In these disciplines, to which sociology belongs, books in the form of monographs, thematic edited collections, conference proceedings, etc. are the predominant types of publications. In addition, many sociologists lack information on open access, with the result that they often classify open access publications as qualitatively inferior, and rely on established publishers as supposed guarantors of quality. Furthermore, there is often a need for information and clarification in the areas of licences and copyright ( Graf et al., 2019 ). Financial questions also play a major role for authors and publishers. In many cases, for example, it is unclear how financing can be arranged if nobody has to buy the work ( Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2020 ). Hesitancy on the part of sociologists is also reflected in the attitude of large professional associations. Neither the German Sociological Association (DGS) nor its US counterpart, the American Sociological Association (ASA) , are among the signatories of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities . Although institutional expression s of commitment to open access are lacking in sociology, the groundwork for open access has been laid, as the following offerings on this page show. Open Access Journals As of December 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 914 entries under the keyword Sociology . Important open access journals include: Forum Qualitative Social Research (FQS) DOAJ Survey Research Methods (srm) DOAJ Sociological Research Online Comparative Population Studies DOAJ Demographic Research DOAJ Demography methods, data, analyses DOAJ Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World DOAJ Many renowned scholarly journals do not offer an open access option; others make articles freely available after an embargo period ( green open access ). For example, the journal Zeitschrift für Soziologie (ZfS) makes articles available in open access on its website two years after publication; the same goes for the journal Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (WuG) . The journal Historical Social Research (HSR) automatically makes articles available in open access in the disciplinary repository Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR) after an embargo period of six months. 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 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 1,019 titles under the subject "sociology" , and the online library OAPEN listed around 1,264 titles under "sociology" . The publishing landscape in the book-friendly social sciences is extremely heterogeneous, broad, and fragmented. However, the publishers Springer VS , Nomos , Barbara Budrich , Routledge , transcript , Campus , and LIT are particularly worthy of mention ( Graf et al., 2020, p. 22; Projekt OGeSoMo, n.d. ). Open access publishing faces diverse challenges in book-friendly disciplines such as sociology. To make it more attractive, a suitable infrastructure for and trust in the quality of open access books must be established. Especially worthy of mention in this connection are the quality standards for open access monographs and edited volumes formulated by the consortium of university presses AG Universitätsverlage (Arning et al., 2022). Furthermore, several business models for open access books have become established in recent years ( OAPEN, 2020 ). Disciplinary Repositories For German-speaking sociology, the disciplinary repository Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR) is particularly important. At an international level, a leading role is played by the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) , which, besides sociological literature, also hosts research papers from economics , political science , anthropology, and many other disciplines. The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) provides an overview of relevant repositories. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Offerings The Specialised Information Service (SIS) Sociology is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is operated jointly by the University and City Library of Cologne, GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, and the Research Data Center (RDC) Qualiservice . With over 3,300 registered members, the collaboration portal SocioHub serves as a central platform to promote research communication and improve the supply of scientific information in sociology. The focus is on a combination of collaboration, open science, and research data management. In addition, users can search for subject-specific literature, research data, groups, and persons. The development and implementation of the services of the SIS Sociology take place in close consultation with the Scientific Advisory Board and are supported by the German Sociological Association (DGS) and the Academy of Sociology Open access offerings of the SIS Sociology: Classics of Sociology – From Comte to Weber : 100 works from the sociological canon are available as open access full texts. The collection comprises original editions in German, English, French, and Italian and covers the period from 1826 to the 20th century. SSOAR : As GESIS’s open access repository, SSOAR is integrated in the SocioHub index, its content can be accessed directly via SocioHub. In addition, registered SocioHub users can upload documents directly to SSOAR without having to log in again. Preregistration in the Social Sciences : With the module “Preregistration in the Social Sciences”, SocioHub offers an innovative way of preregistering sociological research projects and thus making them known. This enables early contact between similar projects and an intensification of scientific exchange, thereby possibly avoiding the duplication of work. The substantive concept and technical implementation of the module was developed by the SocioHub team and is based on a standardised template for preregistrations provided by the Open Science Framework (OSF) . Journal hosting : The SIS Sociology supports the founding of new and the migration of existing open access journals of sociology. With the help of the open source software Open Journal Systems (OJS), the entire digital publishing process – from submission to publication – is technically supported. SOCIOS : A satellite project of SocioHub, SOCIOS is a publication platform for collaborative writing and open peer review in the social sciences. The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now also provide open access content of relevance to sociology. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) enables subject-specific searches for digital full texts. Sociological content can be browsed using the Dewey Decimal Classification Code 301 . Within the framework of the project OGeSoMo – Förderung von Open-Access-Publikationen in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften mit dem Schwerpunkt Monografien [Promotion of Open Access Publications in the Humanities and Social Sciences with a Focus on Monographs] , which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, numerous flyers with comprehensive information on open access publications in the humanities and social sciences were produced. In the successor project, AuROA - Autor:innen und Rechtssicherheit für Open Access [Authors and Legal Certainty for Open Access] a contract generator was developed with which modular sample contracts for open access book publications can be individually and interactively generated. The project ENABLE! aims to bring together in a network the individual players in the open access publishing system in the humanities and social sciences to promote open access publishing and develop new publishing models, among other things. Open Science in Sociology The services provided by GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences give sociologists extensive possibilities of making data, methods, and software available in open access: datorium enables the assignment of citable Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) . da|ra offers the possibility of registering research data for the purpose of DOI assignment – even if the data are hosted by the institutions themselves. In the area of qualitative data, particular mention should be made of the Research Data Center (RDC) Qualiservice , the successor of the Archive for Life Course Research (ALLF) . Qualiservice archives qualitative social science research data from various disciplines and makes them available for scientific reuse. In addition, it offers personalised and study-specific advice. Open Research Data Open research data are highly valued in the area of sociology. In its Code of Ethics, the American Sociological Association (American Sociological Association, 2018) encourages sociologists to make their research data available: Sociologists generally make their data available after completion of a project or its major publications, except where proprietary agreements with employers, contractors, or clients preclude such accessibility or when it is impossible to share data and protect the confidentiality of the data or the anonymity of research participants . Closed-access US journals, such as the American Sociological Review and Sociological Methodology , refer to this Code of Ethics in their submission policies, and encourage their authors to make their research data available. The open access journal Demographic Research also has such a policy, but it applies also to computer code. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References American Sociological Association. (2018). Code of ethics . https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/asa_code_of_ethics-june2018a.pdf Arning, U., Bargheer, M., Meinecke, I., Putnings, M., Schobert, D., Tobias, R., & Winkler, M. (2022). Qualitätsstandards für Open-Access-Bücher . Arbeitsgemeinschaft Universitätsverlage. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7075761 Graf, D., Fadeeva, Y., & Falkenstein-Feldhoff, K. (Eds.). (2020). Bücher im Open Access: Ein Zukunftsmodell für die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften? Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.17185/DUEPUBLICO/72237 Graf, D., Burovikhina, V., & Leinweber, N. (2019). Zukunftsmodell Monografien im Open Access. Aus der Praxis von Bibliotheken, Verlagen, Wissenschaft und Lehre im gemeinsamen Projekt OGeSoMo. O | Bib. Das offene Bibliotheksjournal , 6 (4), 164–177. https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/2019H4S164-177 OAPEN. (2020, September 29). Business models for open access book publishing . OAbooks-Toolkit.Org. https://oabooks-toolkit.org/lifecycle/10944589-planning-funding/article/10432084-business-models-for-open-access-book-publishing Projekt AuROA. (2023). Publikationsdienstleistungen und die Qualitätsfrage. Erkenntnisse aus dem Projekt AuROA zu Leistungen und Qualitätssicherung im Open-Access-Publikationsprozess. osf.io/65rzp Projekt OGeSoMo. (n. d.). Zwischenergebnisse. Written, submitted, published: Wo publizieren die UDE-Autoren? https://www.uni-due.de/ogesomo/zwischenergebnisse Further Reading Biela, J., Stalla, M., Hohmann, L., & Holzer, A. C. (2024). Kartierung und Beschreibung der Open-Access-Dienste in Deutschland. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11121906 Breznau, N. (2021). Does sociology need open science? Societies , 11 (1), 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11010009 Herb, U. (2015). Open Science in der Soziologie. Eine interdisziplinäre Bestandsaufnahme zur offenen Wissenschaft und eine Untersuchung ihrer Verbreitung in der Soziologie . Werner Hülsbusch. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.31234 German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. (2023). Open access in Germany – Joint guidelines of the Federal Government and the Länder . https://www.bmbf.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/FS/772970_Open_Access_in_Deutschland_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4 Herb, U. (2014). Open Science in Soziologie-Journalen aus deutschsprachigen und nicht-deutschsprachigen Ländern, Daten und Auswertungen einer Journal-Stichprobe . Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10786 German Science and Humanities Council (WR). (2022). Recommendations on the transformation of academic publishing: Towards open access . https://www.wissenschaftsrat.de/download/2022/9477-22_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=22 Content editors of this page: Maike Lang and Yannik Hampf, Specialised Information Service Sociology (Last updated: December 2024)....