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
• Digital Peer Publishing NRW
• (PLOS) Public Library of Science
• Hindawi
• Copernicus Publications
• Directory of Open Access Journals
• OpenDOAR
• Open J-Gate

Open Access and funding tracks available in Bremen

• Open Access und Forschungsförderung durch die DFG
• DFG-Förderprogramm Open-Access-Publizieren (Hinweise zur Nutzung über die SuUB Bremen)
• Beschluss des akademischen Senats Nr. 8073 vom 15.06.2005: "Open Access" / Integrierte Kommunikations- und Publikationsplattform an der Universität Bremen (PDF)
• Electronic Library Bremen (E-LIB) Repository

Legal framework and copyright issues

• Open-Access.net: Legal issues
• Open-Access.net: Securing rights to one's own work (includes information about parallel publishing on repositories, primary publications in Open Access journals, and licensing documents published under Open Access)
• Open Access self-archiving policies
  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).

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 3.5 million OA media published through selected external archives are currently indexed on the SuUB Bremen search engine (catalog) (for more details, please see the E-LIB project description). A far more extensive range of OA documents can be accessed through 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.