Open Access is component of Open Science and denotes a digital form of publication that allows free access to academic information and cultural heritage without legal, technical or financial barriers.

Open Access is an extension of publicly accessible information.
Open Access offers you many advantages, among others:

• The visibility of works is increased.
   
• The exploitation rights remain usually with the creator.
   
• Library catalogues and search engines ensure good searchability.
   
• Publicly financed research results are thus accessible to all interested parties free of legal, technical or financial barriers.
   
• A long-term availability of the works is assured.

For a comprehensive explanation of Open Access please visit the platform open-access.net.

Another component of Open Science is Open Data. While the ways of Open Access described below relate to scientific publications, Open Data offer the same advantages for artistic objects. However, the infrastructure here is still under construction.

Please also note our legal information.

The UdK's Open Access (German only) policy was unanimously adopted by the Academic Senate on 04.12.2019 and published in the Anzeiger der Universität der Künste (German only) on 20.12.2019. The terms relating to Open Access are explained in the glossary (German only).

Publishing in open access is possible in a variety of ways and it is as diverse as the publications themselves.

For text-based publications, the already established methods of first and second publication apply. UdK members can use the document server of the Universität der Künste Berlin provided by the university library as an institutional repository for their publications free of charge, provided that these fulfil the guidelines of good academic practice of the UdK. For further information on the publication process, please refer to our checklist.

The structures for non-text-based publications are still under construction. For this matter please also note our information on data management and platforms.

A first publication with an open access publisher or in an open access journal can be either specialist articles or monographs and anthologies. The quality assurance processes in the form of peer review or editorial review procedures correspond to those of traditional publications.

In addition to access free of charge, open access publications differ from traditional publications primarily because of their different financing models.

Depending on the respective model, the costs of the publication are covered either by the authors themselves, their institution or by open access consortia.

For the first model, institutions often offer publication funds from which publication fees such as APCs (article processing charges) for journal articles or BPCs (book processing charges) for monographs are financed. The UdK does not currently have a publication fund.

The second model operates independently of the funding possibilities of the institutions and is financed by the institutions joining forces. Authors are funded independently of their institution.

The University Library supports open access consortia in order to enable authors without an institutional publication fund to publish with open access.

A secondary publication is the re-publication of a publication that has already been published by a publishing house or journal. This should be done on institutional or publicly supported disciplinary document servers (so-called repositories). The publication takes place here either at the same time as the original work or with a time delay and is subject to a free license, for example a Creative Commons license. Before a publication is re-published in open access, the legal requirements must be met. It must be clarified whether third-party rights, such as for photos, quotations or sound recordings, are to be observed.

Please also note our general legal information including links to further sources and the legal helpdesk of NFDI4Culture.

The following information refers explicitly to legal issues in the context of Open Access publishing.

In accordance with the German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz), authors have the right to utilize their works.

As authors, they can grant exclusive or non-exclusive usage rights to third parties. In the case of the transfer of non-exclusive usage rights, the full usage of your work remains permitted and you can subsequently also allow other third parties to use it. This, for example, gives you the opportunity to republish your work. If you publish in a journal, you should only assign non-exclusive rights of use to the publisher.

Publishers will demand the exclusive usage right if a work is to be published. Most publishers return some rights to the authors upon request. Often this will be a right to a secondary publication. The secondary publication is thus permitted under certain conditions. These conditions vary from publisher to publisher.

When finalising a publishing contract in which you are to assign exclusive rights of use to the publisher, you should secure the right of secondary publication by means of an annex to the contract. Further information and sample contracts are offered by the AuROA project.

For works published after 01.01.2014, the secondary publication law according to § 38 para. 4 of the Copyright Act (UrhG) applies. Under very strict conditions, authors have the indispensable right to make their contributions available in Open Access via a secondary publication.

However, they must fulfil three conditions in order to claim this secondary publication right: 

• It is a academic contribution. 
• The contribution is the result of an at least half publicly funded research activity.
• The contribution is been published in a collection that appears at least twice a year.

In addition, there are some restrictive regulations.

Further information, including options for works published before 01.01.2014, can be found here (German only).

As the author of open access publications, you can specify for these open content licenses. A common model is the standardized license agreements of the non-profit organization Creative Commons (CC), with which you can release the usage rights to your works selectively and at different levels. There are six different models: from very restrictive use to free use and editing. If you publish your publication in open access, the publisher often specifies a specific open content license. Please keep in mind that Creative Commons licenses are irrevocably granted. We recommend that you inform yourself comprehensively in advance.

Further information on the licenses and the license agreements themselves can be found here.