What is open access?

Further Information

Open Access What is Open Access? Positions of the DFG Support for researchers Infrastructure funding DFG in working groups FAQ: Open Access Further information

Definitions

Open access is the term given to access granted to scholarly publications and other materials on the internet free of charge. A research document published under open access conditions may be read, downloaded, saved, linked to, printed and used by anybody at no cost. Content must be licensed for reuse in order to ensure that open access is legally compliant. Specific licenses (e.g. Creative Commons or CC licenses) grant users defined rights that regulate the possibilities for reuse, adaptation, reproduction, distribution and modification of documents, ensuring that the texts can be used for scholarly purposes.

When the first publication of research results is in an open access medium, this is referred to as “Gold Open Access”. This predominantly involves open access journals which employ a peer review procedure in the same way as conventional journals. “Gold Open Access” also includes initial publication of books and monographs in open access by a publishing house.

“Diamond Open Access” refers to a business model for "open-access first" publications in which neither authors nor readers are charged any fees. The publication infrastructure is provided by academic institutions or funded by subject-specific associations such as scholarly societies. See here for an overview of Diamond Open Access journals in Germany(externer Link).

“Green Open Access” refers to articles which have already been published are offered for parallel publication, secondary publication or self-archiving free of charge on private websites, the websites of institutions, publication servers or repositories. The authors additionally provide a copy of the article or monograph which they have submitted to the publishing house to one of the aforementioned infrastructure facilities in a way that is accessible to the public. Non-standardised self-archiving on private websites has increasingly been supplemented and ultimately replaced by archiving on repositories operated by institutions. Documents published on the green road are sometimes preprints which have generally not been peer-reviewed.

In order to ensure legally compliant and long-term access, both so-called gold and green publications should ideally be archived and made accessible via public infrastructures and granted an open access licence that allows for immediate and free access as well as reuse.

Diamond Open Access

The publication platform or journal is based at a public institution or is financed and maintained institutionally or cooperatively or by individual communities or scholarly societies. As a rule, no publication fees are charged here. Further use is clearly regulated based on the granting of licences.

Gold Open Access

The publication platform or journal exclusively offers the open access model. In some cases, fees are payable for publication. Further use is clearly regulated based on the granting of licences. Green Open Access is a variant in which publications that appear in subscription journals are made publicly accessible retrospectively after a set period of time. Here, further utilisation is generally not legally regulated and is therefore difficult. Preprints are often attributed to this route, but they are not Green Open Access because they are first publications.

Hybrid Open Access

Under this model, authors are free to publish their articles either in open access, but subject to an article processing charge (APC), or according to the subscription model. Other fees are often due in addition to or instead of OA fees (submission charges, page and colour charges, etc.). The fees for hybrid open access publications are higher on average than for Gold Open Access. Currently, some parts of hybrid publishing portfolios are being transferred to OA via transformative agreements (e.g. in Germany the portfolios of Wiley, Springer and Cambridge University Press). Due to the business model and the existence of transformative agreements, the DFG only supports this open access model if the charging of access and publication fees is handled through the agreements. For this reason, the distinction between gold and hybrid remains relevant in terms of funding.

Bronze Open Access

This enables content to be read but not be shared or put to further use because transfer is either technically restricted or legally prohibited. This form of access is not Open Access in the true sense of the word.

Source: DFG Position Paper: “Academic Publishing as a Foundation and Area of Leverage for the Assessment of Scholarship Challenges and Fields of Action”(Download), p. 18.

There are currently two different types of repository for the archiving of documents: institutional and discipline-based. Institutional repositories are operated by institutions (e.g. a universities) and mostly cover different subjects. Disciplinary repositories cover certain research areas but can be used by different institutions. A comprehensive overview of the conditions for (self-)archiving journal articles in open access repositories, including aspects such as embargo periods and permitted manuscript versions, is provided by the database Jisc Open Policy Finder(externer Link) (formerly: Sherpa Romeo), which allows searches by publisher or journal.

Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Access(externer Link).

Benefits to Research

The exchange of knowledge and the critical examination of results are vital aspects of research, so researchers must have access to the work of others and disseminate their own findings as widely as possible. High licence fees for electronic publications make this exchange of knowledge difficult, however. What is more, it is often impossible for the research data on which the published results are based to be presented via conventional media, or at least not in a form that is suitable for subsequent in-depth use. By contrast, open access publications which have an appropriate licence (generally a CC licence) can be received, disseminated and reused without any restrictions. Providing they are available as structured data (XML), these publications can also be used for novel research methods and for analyses such as text and data mining.

Recent experience suggests that open access publications are now cited more frequently than conventional publications and attract considerable attention from the academic community.

Caution: Predatory journals

Predatory journals(interner Link) are publications that lure researchers into submitting articles by means of aggressive advertising and a seemingly professional appearance, often mimicking established journals in their titles, layout and online presence. Although publication is subject to payment of a fee, the publishing house applies insufficient quality assurance measures or omits to carry out quality assurance at all. These publishers often entice submissions using bulk e-mails: these are often personalised, and specifically focus on a person’s previous publications in order to enhance the impact.

The operators of predatory journals claim to use the same publication fee-based business model as that used by many open access journals. However, in genuine open-access publishing, a peer review process is conducted before acceptance, and fees are not usually charged until after a paper has been approved. Predatory journals require payment upfront and do not offer the same services.