Open Access
Open Access (OA) refers to an alternative form of academic publishing and aims to ensure that academic works are accessible worldwide free of charge without technical or legal barriers as soon as they are published on the Internet. OA publishing is intended to accelerate the scientific communication process, improve the visibility of research results, promote international and interdisciplinary networking and thus increase research efficiency. The exploitation rights for OA publications remain with the authors. By granting open content licences (including Creative Commons licences), usage rights can be defined and the further processing and use of OA publications can be regulated.
The "Budapest Open Access Initiative" declaration published in 2002 is the first of numerous international and national initiatives calling for free access to scientific information. The "Berliner Erklärung über den offenen Zugang zu wissenschaftlichem Wissen" (2003), published in 2003 and signed by Paderborn University on 1 September 2022, is considered a milestone in the OA movement.
In its "Open Access Policy " published on 20 February 2023, Paderborn University recommends that its academics publish their research results open access and thus make them available to the global academic community as well as the general public. It is a co-signatory of the "Open Access-Strategie der Hochschulen des Landes NRW" adopted in August 2023.
The University Library promotes OA publishing with a range of measures and supports authors at the university with a range of services and offers for OA publishing.
Open Access Publishing at Paderborn University
In this section you will find everything you need to know about open access publishing.
- Gold Open Access: First publication with publishers
The first publication of academic works in pure Open Access journals, Open Access monographs or in Open Access edited volumes or conference proceedings is referred to as Gold Open Access.
> more on Open Access publishing with publishers
> Funding opportunities through the University's Open Access Publication Fund - Green Open Access: Secondary publication
Publications that were not first published Open Access by a publisher are made available worldwide free of charge and usually published under an Open Content licence.
> more on secondary publications - PublicationService
The University Library's Publication Service is a platform through which members of the University and its institutions, as well as persons and institutions associated with the University, can publish research results and other documents in the spirit of Open Access.
> more about the Publication Service - Retrodigitisation
In its digitisation centre, the University Library digitises and indexes books and journals that are in its collection or in the collection of cooperating libraries and that are copyright-free or from which the University Library has acquired permission for digitisation, and makes them available as open access publications for free and worldwide use via its 'Digital Collections'.
> more on retrodigitisation
Courses and introductory events
Advice and contact
For fundamental questions on open access publishing and the Open Access Publication Fund:
E-mail: openaccess(at)ub.uni-paderborn(dot)de
Tel: +49 5251 60-2020 (Anna Nickel, Open Access Officer at Paderborn University)
Video: Open Access in 60 seconds
Brinken, Helene; Hauss, Jonas; Rücknagel, Jessika: Open Access in 60 seconds. open-access.network, German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), 2021. doi.org/10.5446/50831
Further information: