heiDOK – Open Access

The Open Access Initiative

Since the early 2000s, Open Access has established itself as a new publishing model in many initiatives. In 2003, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge was signed by leading scientific organizations. The main funding organizations, including the DFG and the European Commission, strongly support the Open Access Initiative. Open Access refers to the free access to scientific publications on the Internet and their unlimited reusability. This guarantees the widest possible dissemination of publications.

Publishing models

The goal of making scientific publications freely accessible on the Internet leads to alternative publication models. Academic institutions such as research centers, universities and libraries provide resources and infrastructure to facilitate the production and distribution of publications. Meanwhile, two practices have been established: the Golden and the Green Road.

The Golden Road means primary publications in Open Access publishing houses, Open Access journals or on publication servers (repositories). Famous examples are the journals of the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and of BioMedCentral. Quality control measures apply the same to Open Access publications as to publications in the traditional subscription model. Research organizations and sponsors provide funds to finance the so-called publication fees (or article processing charges) in the process of publishing.

The Green Road refers to access to publications which have already been published in repositories. We differentiate between institutional and disciplinary repositories, which make the publications of a scientific institution or a scientific discipline accessible. The infrastructure is provided by the research institutions, the universities and libraries. The publications are normally uploaded by the authors themselves (self archiving). The authors entitle the scientific institutions with a so-called single right for online delivery (see Jur. Issues). Other rights remain with them or the publishing house where the publication was published for the first time.

Open Access in Heidelberg

Heidelberg University Library supports open access publishing, in particular through Heidelberg University Publishing (heiUP).

With heiDOK, the Heidelberg document server, members of Heidelberg University have access to another publication platform for making scientific works available in accordance with open access principles. This applies to university publications such as dissertations (see separate conditions) on the one hand, and to the secondary publication of scientific works (see legal issues) on the other.

Documents published on heiDOK are archived with standardised addresses (URN) and metadata (OAI-PMH) so that they can be cited permanently. This means that they can be searched worldwide using popular search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, subject-specific search engines and various library catalogues.

Further information you will find on Electronic Publishing – Open Access.