Open access publishing

What does open access mean?

Open access is an alternative form of scientific publishing and aims to ensure that scientific works are accessible free of charge on the Internet without technical or legal barriers.  In particular, "author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now)," Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, 2003.

Open access publications are accessible worldwide free of charge immediately upon publication, thus accelerating the scientific communication process, promoting international and interdisciplinary networking as well as research efficiency, and the visibility of research results. In contrast to closed-access publications, the exploitation rights for open-access publications remain with the authors themselves. For more information on copyright and licensing rights for open access publications, please visit our Copyright and open access page.

Gold Open Access

You can publish your publication on the Gold Open Access path. Gold Open Access refers to the first publication of scientific and scholarly works in pure open access journals, open access monographs or as contributions to open access edited volumes or conference proceedings. The works are usually quality-assured in the form of peer review or editorial review. Once published, the works are accessible worldwide free of charge and are usually published under a free license. Please note that Gold Open Access publications may be subject to a publication fee, the so-called Article Processing Charge (APC). A further development of the Gold Open Access model are publications in Diamond Open Access. In this model, scientific articles are published without authors being charged fees for processing and publication. If you are interested in funding opportunities to underwrite your APC, please see our Open Access Publication Funds and Publishing Agreements pages. You can find out how to find a suitable open access journal in the course of this page.

Hybrid Open Access

Hybrid Open Access  is another option to publish your work open access. In this case, some publishers offer to  publish individual articles open access in subscription-based closed-access journals. Please note that a publication fee, the so-called Article Processing Charge (APC), may also apply to Hybrid Open Access publication.

The University Library takes part in a number of transformation agreements.  This gives you as a member of the University of Erfurt the option to publish Hybrid Open Access in numerous subscription-based journals from various publishers free of charge. For more information, please visit our Publishing Agreements page.

Green Open Access

Green Open Access is becoming increasingly established. The phrase Green Open Access refers to the secondary publication, parallel publication or self-archiving of your work, possibly after a certain embargo period, in an institutional or (inter)disciplinary repository or on preprint servers. Before attempting to make your publication accessible through  the Green Path, please verify that your publishing contract explicitly allows self-archiving in repositories or on preprint servers . Visit our Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen page to find out how to  realize secondary publication of your work in the institutional repository of the University of Erfurt .

Evaluate open access publication venues

Distinguishing trustworthy from dodgy journals and publishing offers is not always easy. For example, some publishers send unsolicited e-mails to scientists offering to publish their research (sometimes without paying publication fees). Journals and publishers that act in a dubious manner are also referred to as "predatory journals" or "predatory publishers".

To ensure that your research results will appear in reputable publication outlets,  please check for quality assurance before submitting your manuscript

• Checklist for valuation the quality of open access journals
• valuation trusted journals and publishers Think!Check!Submit!
• Publishers should be listed in the Directory of Open Access Books(DOAB) or OAPENor be members of the  Open Access Scholary Publishers Association(OASPA).

Please also refer to the DFG guidelines for ensuring good scientific practice