Publishing in open access offers numerous advantages. In addition to worldwide access to research results, open access promotes the visibility of publications, increases the frequency of citations and accelerates scientific progress, as researchers worldwide can access and build on the latest findings. Open Access enables free access to publicly funded research results.
Authors retain the right to exploit their work themselves and have the opportunity to define its use and keep further publication options open. Finally, Open Access publications are easy to find and offer permanent access through the assignment of persistent identifiers (e.g. DOI).
These advantages make Open Access an attractive option for the dissemination of research results.
Gold and green – publication channels in Open Access
There is now a whole range of terms used to describe different variants of open access publishing. The best-known and now well-established publication paths are the green and gold open access paths.
The golden road refers to the publication of scientific papers in open access journals or platforms where the articles are immediately accessible free of charge. Publication is usually financed via APCs (Article Processing Charges).
The green route refers to the secondary publication of publications published by a publisher on specialist or institutional open access repositories. No publication costs are incurred. University members can make secondary publications via OPUS, the publication server of Hof University of Applied Sciences, provided that the agreement made with the publisher permits this. The visibility of the publication is increased by the proof in OPUS and permanent access is guaranteed.
Open Access publishing in the journals of the publishers Springer Nature, Wiley and Elsevier
As part of the DEAL project, Hof University of Applied Sciences was able to conclude transformation agreements with the three major scientific publishers Springer Nature, Wiley and Elsevier. This enables university members to publish Open Access in almost all journals published by the three publishers. In addition, the university library can provide reading access to almost the entire journal portfolio of the publishers.
Finding quality-assured open access journals
It is often difficult for authors to find the right quality-assured journal for the publication of a research paper among the constantly growing number of Open Access journals. The BISON and oa.finder projects offer a recommendation service for open access journals. The aim of both services is to compile a list of suitable journals sorted according to thematic relevance from the large number of available Open Access journals.
The University Library provides support for all questions relating to Open Access. Current information is also available on the library’s website under Publishing and Open Access.
