Library

Open Access and Open Science - what?

Have you ever heard the term Open Access or Open Science and know little about it? You want to know what the Berlin Declaration is all about? What about Open Access and Open Science in the scientific community, as in the Helmholtz Association? Does Open Access stand in contrast to quality assurance when it comes to publications?

More detailed information on Open Access at the Centre can be found at our internal page.

Open Access Network

Basic information can be found on the pages of the Open Access Network, a Germany-wide project for information about OA, continuing education, and networking in the process.

Open Access publishing in ACS journals now free of charge for HZB authors

For publications in journals of the American Society of Chemistry, the open access fees (CC BY licence) will be financed centrally by the library with the help of a new HGF consortium agreement from the acceptance date of 1 January 2023.

ACS offers a short info page on this, there you will find the conditions and circumstances for publication.

The corresponding author (must be from the HZB) should select the HZB as the institution in the ACS Paragon Plus portal and use an HZB email address. Then complete the Journal Publishing Agreement there. The specification of the ORCID is highly recommended. After confirmation by the HZB library, the publication will be made available by ACS under the CC BY 4.0 licence.

Not only do the authors save a lot of time, but our administration is also relieved of the invoices and the associated work. As a result, avoidable delays are avoided and more transparency is created for all involved.

Open access in hybrid journals free of charge for HZB corresponding authors

With the DEAL project, all articles in the hybrid journals of the publishers Wiley, Elsevier and SpringerNature are published free of charge for the corresponding authors of the HZB under the CC BY Open Access licence. The cost centres of the organisational units are charged a discount for the papers in their Gold Open Access journals.

Through separate agreements, this also applies to hybrid journals from RSC, ACS, ECS and AIP.

Please note the affiliation to the HZB as corresponding author and the correct licence information in the publishers' author systems. Only Creative Commons by Attribution (CC BY) meets the requirements of our funders and guarantees the best possible reuse and reach.

The costs are paid centrally from the library budget. Cover pages and printing costs are not covered by this and are undesirable.

New pages for authors in Project DEAL journals

Authors are offered newly compiled information on the DEAL project (Open Access for all articles in Wiley, Springer, Nature journals, Elsevier).

Publications in Gold Open Access journals will continue to be funded decentrally at the HZB, but will be managed and accounted for centrally.

Journal Checker Tool to easily check your Open Access options

When selecting the journal for publication, please use the Journal Checker Tool to fulfil your obligations to the financiers. For HZB-funded publications, you can enter e.g. "Eur" as the funder.

Open Access and Open Science

Further information can be found at the Helmholtz Open Science Office and on the open-access.net website.

An up-to-date list of Open Access journals can be found at

https://oa2020-de.org/pages/frequentlycitedoajournals/

From the Berlin Declaration: Open Access means that literature should be free of charge and publicly accessible on the Internet, [...] without financial, technical or legal barriers.

It is about literature, about your literature, which should be quality-assured and freely available in a permanent format, without barriers other than those connected to the Internet itself. In particular, your literature should be freely available and usable by anyone. It is about the reception of your works and the frequency of citations. It concerns also you!

All research data (even those that have not led to publication) should be available to the public after an embargo period. The HZB has issued Data Policy for this purpose.

The entire concept runs under the term Open Science and is coordinated by the organisation Helmholtz Open Science Office for the HGF.die HGF.

Obligation to file in the HZB repository

Every publication with reference to the HZB must be deposited in the HZB repository by the authors.

With the amendment of copyright law in 2013, a non-excludable second publication right for publications for authors in institutions with predominantly public funding was introduced in Section 38 UrG (4).. It allows articles to be made publicly accessible in the accepted manuscript version (not in the publisher's version) 12 months after publication in journals published at least twice a year (so-called Green Open Access). The HZB repository is available for this purpose.

The authors have the right to do this. The publication regulations of the HZB give the HZB a simple right of use.

All authors with reference to HZB are obliged to deposit corresponding versions in PASTA. The embargo period is automatically observed by the system. Attention: The publisher's version may not be used for this purpose! The HZB has committed itself in the HGF to provide all publications at least as Green Open Access until 2026.

Gold Open Access

For publications in EU projects a shortened embargo period of 6 (instead of 12) months must be agreed with the publisher. Often it is then easier to make the publication as Gold Open Access (one-off payment of a fee to the publisher, publication under CC BY licence). Pure Gold Open Access journals are preferable.

CC BY (Creative Commons By Attribution) should always be used as the licence.

For the publishers Wiley, SpringerNature, Elsevier, RSC, ACS, ECS and AIP, HZB has concluded contracts (known as Publish&Read agreements) which allow for a free Gold Open Access publication for articles with HZB main authors (corresponding author) in their subscription-based journals (so-called hybrid journals) as standard. For these publishers, the HZB library is automatically included in the process if you mention HZB as your affiliation. Be sure to use your HZB email address and your ORCID ID. You have to select the correct license CC BY (Creative Commons By Attribution).

For publications in pure Gold Open Access journals from Wiley, SpringerNature and Elsevier a reduced fee is charged to us centrally, but this fee must be paid internally by the OUs.

Paid publications have to be handled by the HZB library.
Contracts with publishers, with the exception of the author contract, may only be concluded by the HZB library. It will take over the handling with the publishers.

Payment of costs for so-called Cover Pages or Colour Figures should be refused, as they do not add value for HZB and cause avoidable costs.

If in doubt, please ask the HZB library before signing the Author's Contract!
Some author contracts are also Gold OA contracts, which have to be handled by the HZB library.
We have a lot of experience in this field and can considerably facilitate and shorten the necessary process for all parties involved, also by accelerating payment.

Gold Open Access publications must also be deposited in the HZB repository.

Open Science: Research Data

In the future, it will also be about free access to scientific research data/primary data (Open Science). This is something to be talked about, also in our house. Please talk to us!

Stay informed: Helmholtz Open Science maintains a Newsletter.