Open Access: What You Need to Know

The term Open Access is used to describe the practice of providing free online access to scholarly literature and other materials. Publishing a scholarly document under the Open Access model grants other users the unrestricted right to read, download, save, print and link to the document and to use it free of charge. Authors can also publish documents under a Free Content license, which grants users a range of other usage rights including the right to use, copy, distribute and modify content (© Wikipedia).

The open-access.net information portal

The DFG-funded information portal www.open-access.net offers a comprehensive overview of Open Access publishing practices and detailed information on their application across a range of subject areas and disciplines.

Other video clips:

II. What Rights do Scholars and Scientists have?
III. Who's got Access to Scholarly Information?
IV. Academics for Sale?
V. The Green Road to Open Access

About Open Access

• Open-Access.net: Open-Access.net: What is Open Access? - a brief introduction to Open Access and gold and green strategies
• Budapest Open Access Initiative
• Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
• Open Access Webliography von Adrian K. Ho, Charles W. Bailey, Jr. - a comprehensive collection of sources on this topic

Examples of Open Access platforms

• Biomed Central
• (PLOS) Public Library of Science
• Hindawi
• Copernicus Publications
• Directory of Open Access Journals
• OpenDOAR

Open Access and funding tracks available in Bremen

• Funding of Open Access publishing by the University Library (SuUB)
• Electronic Library Bremen (E-LIB) Repository

Legal framework and copyright issues

• Open-Access.net: Legal issues
• Open-Access.net: Authors
• Self-archiving in repositories
  Many academic publishers now permit authors to make previously published research articles freely accessible online (self-archiving).
  Policies on self-archiving vary from publisher to publisher. An overview of self-archiving policies was created and published online within the framework of the RoMEO project (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving) (please note that the information provided at these sites does not constitute legal advice – authors are advised to consult with their publishers).
  The self-archiving policies of many scientific yournals are availabe via the electronic library (E-LIB) Bremen's journal metadata as well (see e.g. Journal of Physics / D, Applied Physics).

Searching for Open Access documents (OA repositories and standards)

The addition of Open Access documents held in university archives (repositories / document servers) to library catalogs is yet to become standard practice. Approximately 30 million OA media published through selected external archives are currently indexed on the SuUB Bremen search engine (in cooperation with BASE – a special database operated by Bielefeld University Library). 

• Certified document servers for OA media at German universities (German Initiative for Network Information (DINI) certification)
• The SuUB Bremen is a member of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), a global initiative that brings together the operators of university document servers to enhance document searchability through the implementation of common standards (for a list of archives which subscribe to OAI standards, see here).

Please note that any content displayed on this page is presented here for information purposes only and is neither intended as nor constitutes legal advice.