Information about Open Access

There are various forms of Open Access (OA). We provide a brief overview below. Further information can be found on the information platform open-access.network.

Diamond Open Access

Diamond Open Access (DOA) refers to publications and publication platforms that do not charge readers or authors. DOA is the simplest and fairest form of OA for everyone involved, as no one is prevented from participating in scientific discourse by payment barriers. DOA infrastructures are often operated at scientific institutions or financed via memberships. The topic of DOA has close links to scholar-led publishing.

The University of Göttingen's Open Access Policy encourages university members to take responsibility for OA publication channels and particularly supports OA publication infrastructures that do not incur any costs for the authors.

The SUB Göttingen is involved in projects and committees to formulate criteria for DOA journals (Operational Diamond Open Access Criteria for Journals) and contributes to the standardization of DOA (The Diamond Open Access Standard - DOAS). It is also involved in setting up DOA infrastructures for the Göttingen Campus. This includes the possibility of first publishing via GRO.publications and the development of a journal service. External DOA infrastructures are also supported via memberships.

Green Open Access

Green Open Access is also referred to as the green way or self-archiving. Green OA refers to the secondary publication of a publisher's publication in an institutional or subject-specific repository. The secondary publication can take place parallel to the publisher's publication or subsequently or after a time embargo has expired. The possibility of secondary publication is regulated by the policies of the publishers, the licenses used and the statutory secondary publication right.

The University of Göttingen's Open Access Policy calls on university members to publish their publications in GRO.publications, the University of Göttingen's publication management system.

In addition to the operation of GRO.publications, the SUB Göttingen supports green OA with an advisory service.

Gold Open Access

Gold Open Access refers to direct publication in OA, for example in OA journals or OA books. The publication is thus directly accessible to everyone free of charge. As a rule, these publications are provided with open content licenses (e. g. Creative Commons licenses), which allow both read-only access and subsequent use of the content.

The University of Göttingen's Open Access guidelines recommend OA publication and thus the greatest possible public availability of one's own results.

The SUB Göttingen supports gold OA with its own publication services (GRO.publications, GRO.journals, Göttingen University Press) as well as the publication funds and publishing agreements.

 

INTEGRATE VIDEOS (TO DO)

Brinken, H., Hauss, J. & Rücknagel, J. (2021). Open Access in 60 seconds. open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/50831.CC BY 3.0 EN

There are many reasons in favor of Open Access publication:

• Free and fast access to scientific information
• Easy to find and permanent access
• Good supply of information
• Greater visibility and better subsequent use (e. g. citations)
• Many research funders and institutions recommend open access publication in their guidelines
• Retention of rights for authors through the use of open licenses
• Collaboration and networking through freely accessible research results
• Efficient research and innovation
• New methods and new knowledge (e. g. improved automatic text analysis through open access)
• Fair and transparent use of public funds

The information platform open-access.network offers a checklist for open access publishing.

 

INTEGRATE VIDEOS (TO DO)

Brinken, H. (2021). 10 reasons for Open Access. open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51995.CC BY 3.0 DE

In addition to many good reasons for OA publishing, there are also reservations and doubts about OA. The information platform open-access.network has compiled a list of these reservations and counterarguments.

• Lack of reputation: 
  This was a justified reservation in the early days of OA, because many OA publication organs were new and therefore did not yet have a reputation. In the meantime, OA has become such a widespread access model that it no longer has any influence on the reputation of a publication organ or publisher.
• Lack of quality assurance: 
  Differences in quality can occur regardless of the business model and also occur in publications behind a paywall. In addition, OA has led to the development of further quality assurance procedures (e. g. open peer review). Nevertheless, authors are required to consider the quality assurance and reliability of the selected publication medium, regardless of whether the publication is OA or not.
• Poor findability and lack of long-term archiving: 
  The responsibility for this lies with the publishers and repository operators. In order to ensure good findability, standards have been developed in recent years in the area of recorded metadata. In addition, OA publications are often given persistent identifiers with which the publication can be found again even after the URL has been changed. To ensure long-term archiving, there are cooperations with national libraries and long-term archiving services.
• Legal reservations regarding exploitation and usage rights: 
  Copyright law also applies to OA publications, with so-called open content licenses regulating the permitted subsequent use. Authors usually retain their full exploitation rights in OA because they only have to grant publishers or journals simple rights of use.
• Financial viability and high publication fees: 
  The financing of information provision and publishing in OA is currently complex and not without conflict. Profit-oriented publishers in particular charge high prices for OA, while at the same time there are low-cost or free (see DOA) publication options of comparable quality. With OA, however, there are always no costs for reading access and the costs of providing restricted access. In order to control the price increases in commercial OA, libraries form consortia and can thus negotiate more favorable conditions with publishers. Research funders also support funding. The increased activities in the field of DOA and scholar-led publishing should help to reduce the costs of OA in the long term.
• Time required: 
  OA has expanded the publication options for scientific research results, so that the selection of the publication medium and the publication process have become more complex. The SUB Göttingen supports you in your publication project with a comprehensive range of advisory services.

 

INTEGRATE VIDEOS (TO DO)

Strauß, H., Hauss, J. & Rücknagel, J. (2023). Open Access myth check open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/62321.CC BY 3.0 DE

The free choice of publisher is guaranteed by academic freedom. However, when submitting manuscripts, authors should pay attention to the reputiability and quality assurance of publishers, journals and publication platforms in their own interest.

The OA publication market is highly competitive in the for-profit sector. As a result, even established publishing groups are launching new ventures with inadequate scientific quality assurance, and there are publishers offering dubious or even fraudulent products. The latter are often referred to as predatory publishers and cannot always be identified as such straight away. For example, a website may contain fake journal impact factors or list people on the editorial board who are not even active there. Aggressive advertising measures, extremely short payment periods and similar practices are also not uncommon.

The following checklists can help you recognize problematic publishers:

• Checklist journals (Initiative Think - Check - Submit)
• Checklist books (Initiative Think - Check - Submit)
• Checklist for journals (information platform open-access.network)

Please be especially careful with publishers and platforms you are not familiar with. You are also welcome to contact us if you are unsure about the assessment.

A number of free publication channels have now been established for OA first publications that guarantee quality assurance, such as

• Open Library of Humanities: platform for journals from the humanities and cultural sciences
• SciPost: platform for journals from various subject areas
• Open Book Publishers: publisher of OA books that are free of charge for both authors and readers
• Language Science Press: OA books in the field of linguistics with a peer-review process
• Open Research Europe (ORE): Freely accessible, free and high-quality publication platform for scientific papers. The platform offers fast publication and open peer review for research papers produced within the framework of European funding programs such as Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe.

This and other publication platforms are based on the Diamond Open Access model. The SUB Göttingen supports DOA platforms through institutional memberships. Furthermore, institutional repositories, subject-specific repositories and preprint servers offer the opportunity to make research results available and visible worldwide free of charge.