What is Open Access? Open access means that scientific literature should be publicly available, free of charge on the Internet so that those who are interested can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, refer to and, in any other conceivable legal way, use full texts without encountering any financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those associated with Internet access itself.
 

"The Max Planck Society is committed to the principle that the findings of fundamental research should be accessible to all. It was in this spirit that the Berlin Open Access Declaration was drawn up. I would strongly encourage you to also publish your own research according to open access principles, thereby participating in the establishment of a globally accessible platform of scientific and scholarly knowledge!" (Peter Gruss, former President of the Max Planck Society).

The Max Planck Society is a co-founder of the international Open Access movement. The publication of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" on 22 October 2003, and the subsequent annual conferences, heralded the introduction of a process that heightened awareness around the theme of accessibility to scientific information.

OA MPG

• Mission Statement at the Berlin 11 Open Access Conference of the Max Planck Society
• Open Access at the Max Planck Society
• Open-Access-Rechte in Allianz- und Nationallizenzen. Eine Handreichung für Repository-Manager, Bibliothekare und Autoren
• Open Access Publishing (MPDL)
• Open-access.net—the common German information platform
• Edition Open Access Flyer

There are many reasons to publish open access. These include:

• publicly funded research should be made available to the public immediately at no cost
• improved access to results of publicly promoted research
• enabled quick discussion of actual results of the research
• supported international collaboration
• increased visibility and accessibility of research results
• increased findability via search engines and reference services
• long-term availability of documents
• increased usage, citation rates, and impact of publications
• access barriers for interdisciplinary research and scientific communication are decreased
• larger grants (e.g., Horizon2020) and grant allocating institutions (EU, DFG, NIH) have already implemented OA publication of the results as a funding requirement or are currently changing their policies towards this goal
• author’s position becomes strengthened: in Open Access publishing, usage rights often remain with the authors and not with the journal, as is conventionally the case
• subscription costs for scientific journals may be reduced in the long run
• researchers, students, medical doctors, teachers, journalists and other individuals with an interest in scientific literature from around the world (including developing countries) have the opportunity to get free access to the scientific knowledge base, without having to face a so-called paywall for reading an article (price per article of a non-subscribed journal in our field is usually around 35USD)

There are two main methods of OA publishing.

Golden Road

• also known as gold OApublish in a genuine peer-reviewed Open Access Gold journal, which makes all articles in the electronic issue freely accessible on the internet (no subscription charges for the reader)
• a Creative Commons license is often used
• the Open Access Gold business model often relies on Article Processing Charges (APC),which vary considerably and might be up to 5000 USD per article
• few Open Access journals are financed by other means (donations, scientific societies etc.), sometimes referred to as "Platinum Road"

  Current APC solutions for OA Gold

• the MPG centrally covers APCs for some OA Gold journals
• the MPG also has discount agreements with other OA journals
• some newer grants (e.g., Horizon2020) and large funding institutions (EU, NIH, DFG, etc.) have a requirement to publish results in OA—if you apply for such a grant, you may include the APCs in your grant application in advance
• in individual cases, the departments might be interested in covering your APCs

Green Road

• also known as self-archiving or green OA
• "parallel publishing" or "self-archiving" on private homepages, institute webpages, or repositories
• electronic second publication of already appeared publications in digital repositories
• authors make a copy of their work, which was published in a subscription journal, available free of charge (e.g., peer-reviewed post-prints)
• but note: Green OA publishing must be in compliance with the individual contract between the author and the journal, otherwise it is considered as copyright fraud
• most publishers allow the authors to use the manuscript version after an "embargo period" of six or 12 months
• publishing work with a brief time delay in an institutional repository usually meets requirements of funding organizations as NIH, DFG, or EU institutional repositories (e.g., MPG.PuRe) support the visibility of the research

How to Publish Green OA

• the default publishing conditions (information on embargo etc.) for many journals can be found here
• before signing the contract with the journal, the author has the right to negotiate with the journal the conditions, f.i. by adding an amendment to the copyright transfer agreement (an example of such an addendum can be found here)
• PubMan is the repository of the Max Planck Society, where you might upload your work to make it freely available (work quickly gains visibility and remains permanently accessible)
• over 2,500 other repositories are also available to authors, listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)

What Are Open Access Secondary Publication Rights?

• secondary publication rights became applicable in Germany on January 1, 2014 (Article 38 Contributions to collections, Paragraph 4)
• holders of secondary rights would be entitled to make their published work openly accessible after a 12-month post-publication embargo period
• offers the possibility to make your manuscript version publicly accessible on the Internet, e.g., on institute websites or repositories
• this is not a duty—every author can exercise this right himself
• strengthens rights of scientific authors against publisher
• regulations take effect for all articles, which have been published since January 1, 2014
• embargo period guarantees that the publishers can continue economical work
• researchers have the option to decide on the visibility of their research results

What to Take into Account

• for scientific publication an article must have appeared in Germany in a professional journal
• secondary publication must take place in Germany, nationality and residence of authors are not important
• scientific article must be from a periodical or collection, which appears at least twice a year
• the right can be exercised no earlier than a year after first publication
• the source of the first publication must be declared
• secondary publication is allowed in an “accepted manuscript version”
• publication with publisher layout and logo only with the permission of the publisher
• can be done more than once
• should not be a source of commercial profit
• author has to seek approval from any co-authors

The following links provide information on copyright laws and copyright transfer agreements in Germany:

• German copyright law (Deutsches Urheberrecht—geltendes Recht)
• Federal archival law (Bundesarchivgesetz)
• Information for authors (OA MPG)
• SHERPA-RoMEO—Publisher copyright policies and self-archiving
• Copyright management for scholarship (SURF)
• creativecommons.org
• de.creativecommons.org

• Catalogue of Conduct to be Regarded as Scientific Misconduct—Appendix
• Guidelines and recommendations for publishing and using copyrighted material
• Guidelines for working with images in publications
• Regeln zur Sicherung guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 2009)
• Rules of good scientific practice (Max Planck Society, 2009)
• Hinweise und Regeln zum verantwortlichen Umgang mit Forschungsfreiheit und Forschungsrisiken
• Max Planck Society Guidelines and Rules on a Responsible Approach to Freedom of Research and Research Risks
• Verfahrensordnung bei Verdacht auf wissenschaftliches Fehlverhalten
• Rules of Procedure in Cases of Suspected Scientific Misconduct
• Satzung der MPG
• Statutes of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science