In order to raise the visibility of project results and enable use or re-use of DFG project reports, the DFG encourages funding recipients to publish the public part of their final report in open access.

The DFG recommends the use of openaccess repositories as a long-term, quality-assured publication option that is free of charge.

Open-access repositories

A general distinction is drawn between:

1. Institutional repositories, where members of a scientific institution can place their primary and secondary publications in open access. These publication platforms are usually maintained and quality-assured by the library or another information facility which belongs to the institution in question.
2. Specialised repositories that address specific scientific communities and are often overseen by an editorial team that is specialised in the subject. These may be run by central specialised libraries, specialised information services or scientific societies, for example.
3. Preprint servers on which publications are mainly made available for the purpose of scientific dialogue, either prior to peer review or without peer review. These usually have a subject focus, too, and tend to be operated by information facilities, though they may also be provided by publishers.

For an overview of various quality-assured publication infrastructures in Germany, see DINI e.V. (German Initiative for Network Information): List of publication services – Deutsche Initiative für Netzwerkinformation e.V. (dini.de). DINI e.V. has developed a certificate that sets quality standards for open-access publication services. Many repositories follow the quality criteria of the DINI certificate even if they are not currently certified.

DFG whitelist for subject-specific repositories

Based on the quality characteristics defined by DINI e.V., the DFG has compiled a list of subject-specific publication platforms that are particularly recommended for open-access publication of project reports. This provides broad subject coverage based on the DFG subject classification system.

• Whitelist for download

It is also possible to use institutional repositories or the multidisciplinary repository Zenodo, which is funded by the European Commission:

• Zenodo - Research. Shared

Notes on the publication of final reports

The publication platforms listed are tailored to various subject-specific needs. What is more, the technical and organisational basis of the repositories may vary. For this reason, it is not possible to provide a universally valid publication guide here; this would also duplicate existing information pages. From the DFG’s point of view, the following information on the publication process is relevant to all authors of final reports:

1. Report authors choose a suitable publication platform from a subject-specific or institutional point of view.
2. They contact the platform operators and submit the part of the final report intended for publication on the platform in question. Depending on the platform, this can be done by e-mail or by means of a web-based submission process.
3. The reports are to be provided with metadata, either by the report authors themselves or by the operators of the publication platform. In addition to any information on authors, project, reporting period, etc., keywords should usually be assigned to make the report easier to find. Where possible, the project number should be included as a separate metadatum so as to allow for improved assignment of the project and publication.
4. In order to ensure legally secure publication, a publication agreement is often concluded between the platform operators and those publishing the report. This agreement also sets down the legal conditions of publication. The DFG recommends that authors grant a simple right to use their publication and use open licences (e.g. CC-BY) wherever possible.
5. When a report is published on an OA platform, the operators assign it a permanent identifier (PID) which makes it uniquely citable and accessible at any time. By feeding the PID into the DFG database GEPRIS, it is possible to link the project dataset to the place of publication of the project report. Funding recipients are therefore requested to submit the PID of their published report via an interface that will be available on the DFG’s elan portal as of summer 2023.
6. The metadata of the published report are provided by the platform operators on library research portals and (subject-specific) search engines or subject databases.

Further Information

• FAQs: End of project and final report

Contact

If you have any questions about the final report, please contact the department responsible for your project.