RUB Research School

Open Access to Research Literature

Open Access Publications

When developing your publication strategy, Open Access publications might become relevant for you. Open Access (OA) refers to free and unpaid access to scientific publications on the Internet. As a form of publication, Open Access is now established in many disciplines alongside traditional publishing with restricted access (closed access). Research funding bodies have also included open access in their funding guidelines, either as a mandatory requirement (EU) or as a recommendation (DFG, BMBF).

Open Access publications enable openly accessible, traceable, and free access to publications and are part of Open Science with the objective of making scientific processes transparent, public and reusable.

Advantages of Open Access publications are:

  • they are freely accessible worldwide immediately upon publication and thus more visible
  • they are cited more frequently
  • they can be found in numerous renowned databases
  • authors retain the right of use for their own publications

The University Library supports you with questions about open access publishing. RUB members can apply for funding for publication in Open Access journals (Golden Road of Open Access). It is possible to publish dissertations, habilitations and second publications in Open Access via the RUB document repository (Green Way of Open Access). Based on the open source software Open Journal Systems (OJS) and Open Monograph Press (OMP), RUB researchers have the possibility to publish Open Access journals and series.

Open Access & Open Science

Open Access is an important component of Open Science and aims to provide free and unpaid access to scientific publications for diverse readers.