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Freie Universität Approves Open Access Strategy

Increased free online access to scholarly literature

Mar 07, 2018

Freie Universität Berlin was the first university in Berlin to adopt an open access strategy for free access to scientific findings.

Freie Universität Berlin was the first university in Berlin to adopt an open access strategy for free access to scientific findings.
Image Credit: Istockphoto / FrancescoCorticchia

Freie Universität Berlin was the first university in Berlin to adopt an open access strategy for free access to scientific findings. It is intended to give all members of the university an opportunity to anchor open access publication in their day-to-day research. The new policy takes into account the publication cultures of the individual subjects. It aims to ensure that scholarly and scientific standards are met and high-quality publications are published

The strategy encompasses six fields of activity. They include projects of the Executive Board of Freie Universität, open access communication and dissemination, and networking among the stakeholders. Further steps include the expansion of services via the so-called green road, or self-archiving, by depositing a work published in a closed-access journal or with a closed-access publisher in an openly accessible institutional or disciplinary repository, as well as the expansion of activities via the gold road, which refers to the primary publication of scientific and scholarly works as articles in open access journals. The aim of these steps is to create sustainable structures for researchers in order to maximize the spread of open access by 2020 and to ensure the widest possible free access to scientific findings.

The strategy builds on Berlin’s open access strategy from 2015 and aims to significantly increase the proportion of open access journal publications by 2020. The aim is to achieve this by intensifying information and communication measures, in particular through increased networking of open access players and through clear expansion and the continuous development of existing open access infrastructures.

Freie Universität has been committed to free access to scientific and scholarly publications for more than a decade. In 2006 the university was a signatory to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. In 2008 Freie Universität adopted an open access policy defining key guidelines for dealing with open access publications. The Open Access Bureau of the Berlin Senate has been based at Freie Universität since 2017.

Further Information

Dr. Christina Riesenweber, Open Access Representative, Freie Universität Berlin, and Dr. Agnieszka Wenninger, Open Access Officer, Freie Universität Berlin, University Library, Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS), Email: open-access@fu-berlin.de