What is Open Access?

The goal of Open Access is to make scientific literature and materials freely accessible and reusable. As demanded in the Berlin Declaration , a key aspect of Open Access is maximizing the dissemination of scientific information. THM has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities and thus supports the global Open Access initiative.

The advantages of open access content include immediate access, visibility, the best possible attention for the results of scientific research (impact), and the possibilities for further use in accordance with the usage licenses.

More information about Open Access

What publication pathways does Open Access offer?

The first step in any publication process is deciding how the research results should be published.

Basically, two different open access strategies can be distinguished: the gold and the green route.

The golden route refers to the initial open access publication in journals, as a monograph, or as a contribution in an edited volume.

The green route (also known as self-archiving) refers to secondary publication on interdisciplinary or subject-specific repositories.

Where and at what price can you publish in open access journals?

If you want to publish your manuscript Open Access in a journal – but don't know exactly which one – then the checklist on the quality of Open Access journals help you with your decision-making.

B!SION uses semantic and bibliometric methods to suggest suitable open-access journals. To do this, enter information from your manuscript, such as the abstract or DOI, into the form.

The oa.finder helps you find out which open access journals are available. From over 55,000 journals, the oa.finder shows you which ones are Gold Open Access and what their impact is. It also indicates whether and how much Article Processing Charges (APCs) are levied. In the form, select your publication type "Journal Article," your role in the submission process, and "Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen" as your research institution.

If you would like to apply for reimbursement of your APC costs, please fill out our grant application for open access publications .

In which repositories can you publish?

Basically, repositories are divided into interdisciplinary and subject-specific repositories.

Both types of repositories make publications permanently and freely available, thus increasing their visibility. Furthermore, repositories are integrated into search engines and subject portals. Generally, you can deposit your publications in multiple repositories, provided you have the necessary usage rights.

Under the leadership of the university library, THM operates a cross-disciplinary repository with its publication server , in which all members of THM can store their documents.

CERN manages and develops the ZENODO. Zenodo is a free, interdisciplinary repository. It is part of a Europe-wide open access infrastructure.

Search platforms for other repositories include:

• The German Network Initiative for Network Information (DINI) offers a list of German repositories .
• The Open Access Network initiative provides a list of interdisciplinary repositories.