Open Access means that academic literature is permanently accessible on the internet without financial, technical or legal barriers. Research findings can be read, saved and reproduced in full text. Some research funding organisations have already established Open Access publishing as the standard across the EU and support OpenAire (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe), an information system that aggregates research metadata.
Open Access encompasses various publication models that differ in terms of when the scholarly works are made freely available.
The gold pathway refers to immediate open access publication in journals or as a monograph, which are subject to a quality assurance process comparable to that of conventional forms of publication.
The green pathway refers to the subsequent open access provision of already published works in institutional or subject-specific repositories after an embargo period has expired. The Open Policy Finder offers authors the opportunity to look up the licence terms of many publishers and check whether and under what conditions secondary publication (e.g. on the OPUS Passau repository) is permitted.
The Open Access Network provides an overview of the pathways to open access.
Pure open-access journals contain only articles that are freely accessible and reusable worldwide, without restriction, immediately upon publication of the journal (the ‘gold’ model of open access). Articles in such journals are typically published under a Creative Commons licence chosen by the authors. Publication in Open Access leads to greater visibility of research results and a higher citation rate.
Hybrid open access refers to the combination of closed-access and open-access content in journals that initially follow the traditional subscription model, but at the same time allow authors to ‘unlock’ their articles in return for the payment of APCs. This usually results in dual financing of the content.
Occasionally, particularly in the case of monographs, the term is also used to refer to the parallel publication of a (fee-based) print version and a (purely open access) online version.
Publish-and-Read agreements (also known as PaR) are a means of funding academic journals. Under this model, university libraries pay not only for access to the content (‘read’), as is the case with traditional subscription journals, but also for the open-access publication (‘publish’) of their university staff’s work.
The DEAL project negotiates transformative publish-and-read agreements on behalf of German academic institutions in order to strengthen the information infrastructure nationwide and enable open access publishing. To this end, contracts have already been concluded with the largest academic publishers: Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier.
This gives members of the University of Passau access to these providers’ e-journal portfolios, whilst publications in hybrid journals are funded on a flat-rate basis and settled centrally. Discounts are granted for publishing articles in pure open-access journals.
Publishing in open-access journals may incur fees known as Article Processing Charges (APCs). Similarly, for monographs and edited volumes, there are Book Processing Charges (BPCs).
The University of Passau supports its academic staff by covering publication fees (in full or in part) using funds from the Open Access Publication Fund and through existing publish-and-read agreements with publishers. This support applies to articles in peer-reviewed journals and monographs published under open access terms.
As well as articles, open-access publications also include entire monographs and other formats such as research data. When it comes to articles and monographs, the question arises as to the most suitable publisher or journal, whereas research data is predominantly published via repositories.
The OPUS Passau repository offers all members of the university the opportunity to publish academic works digitally.
The oa.finder is a useful tool for searching for suitable publishers and journals.
The DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) provides a reliable overview of quality-assured open-access journals; alternatively, the Think.Check.Submit checklist offers a way to verify the legitimacy of journals. Publishers offering quality-assured publication of open-access books can be found in the DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) and in the OAPEN Library.
All members of the university community have the opportunity to publish their academic work digitally and free of charge on the OPUS Passau repository. PhD students can fulfil their publication requirement by uploading their thesis to OPUS.
Zenodo is a suitable subject-independent repository for publishing academic papers and research data. There are also numerous subject-specific repositories. The re3data Repository Finder can help with this. Open-access repositories can also be found in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR) and the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR).
Some publishers exploit the concept of open access by offering no quality assurance process, or one that is inadequate, whilst still charging APCs. Research outputs are thus published directly without meeting academic quality standards (e.g. peer review or indexing). This predatory publishing can damage the reputation of authors and their affiliated institutions.
We therefore recommend a thorough check before submitting a manuscript, particularly in the case of lesser-known open-access journals.
The following indicators suggest that an open-access journal is of assured quality:
Further guidance is available on the Think. Check. Submit. website. A presentation by Forschungszentrum Jülich provides a more detailed insight into the topic: Predatory Publishers - Experiences and recommendations (Wintermeier, M., 2018).
Persistent identifiers are used to assign a permanent address to objects on the internet. The main identifiers used for this purpose are DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and URN (Uniform Resource Name) for publications, and ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) for individuals. Persistent identifiers enable a unique mapping and linking between articles, individuals and institutions.
One advantage of open-access publications is that authors no longer have to transfer all rights of use to the publisher. Instead, the terms and conditions governing the reuse of publications by third parties are set out in detail through the granting of an open-access-compliant licence. By granting usage rights via free licences, readers are enabled to reuse and repurpose copyright-protected content.
You can find information on the widely used Creative Commons licences (CC licences) at: https://network.creativecommons.org/ or in the Open Access Network's information video "Creative Commons licenses for Open Access".
The Creative Commons CC-BY licence permits commercial use of the publication provided that the author is credited. This prevents individuals from gaining a monopoly, and authors retain full control over their publications. Furthermore, a CC licence maximises the reach and impact of the research. Further informationen can be found at https://deal-konsortium.de/en/why-ccby.
