Open Access
Open access is the unrestricted and free access to scholarly information as well as its use and dissemination, while maintaining and correctly attributing authorship.
According to the Berlin Declaration, open access means unrestricted and free access to scholarly information as well as its use and dissemination, while maintaining and correctly attributing authorship. In contrast to publication based on the traditional subscription or licensing model, open access publications are immediately available online without financial or technical barriers. The following objectives are associated with open access:
- free universal access to scholarly information
- free and unrestricted access
- maximum dissemination of scholarly information
- best possible recognition for scholarly research
- fast publication and timely access
- optimal use of scholarly information
- transparency and quality assurance
The University Library is the point of contact for all members of the university in matters relating to open access. The University Library offers advice and support on the following topics:
- electronic publishing: advice and service for first and second publications on the Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen
- funding of Open Access publications via the Open Access Publication Fund, Open Access memberships, and transformation agreements such as the DEAL agreements
- individual and subject-specific information and advising services relating to open access
- research in open access portals, open access journals, open access e-books, etc.
- legal questions; e.g. publishing contracts, CC licensing and copyright law
At the 14 December 2016 meeting, the Dean's Office of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar approved an open access policy. The University Library supports members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in the publication of scholarly works in electronic and open access form. Electronically generated, qualified documents can be published free of charge on the Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen. The Satzung zur guten wissenschaftlichen und künstlerischen Praxis an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Statutes concerning Good Scientific and Artistic Practice at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar) must be observed. According to this, authors are required to carefully select the publication medium - taking into account its quality and visibility in the respective field of discourse.
Open Access Publication Fund
Open Access Publication Fund
Since 2019, article processing charges (APC) for articles in Open Access journals have been financed at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar via the DFG-supported fund within the limits of the available funds. For funding of OA monographs, see here.
Funding criteria
Funding is available if:
- You are a member of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and are responsible for paying the publication processing charge (APC) as "corresponding author" of the planned publication.
- The article is to be published in a purely OA journal whose articles are accessible in Open Access free of charge immediately after publication. Such journals are usually listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The journal meets the scientific quality criteria applicable to the respective subject. The publication is subject to a recognised, strict quality assurance procedure (peer review procedure) in the respective subject.
- The Open Access release of individual articles in journals otherwise subject to subscription is not eligible for funding, unless these journals are part of a transformation contract with Bauhaus-Universität Weimar that meets the criteria of the ESAC initiative. In this case, please contact the Open Access team.
- The article appears under an established open content licence, preferably CC BY 4.0. There is no charge for granting this licence. Explanations of the CC licences can be found here.
- The articles receive a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). Authors are recommended to register and use an ORCID-iD.
- Publication costs of up to 2,000 euros gross (including VAT) per article will be covered in full. If the total costs for the individual article exceed 2,000 euros gross, the amount exceeding 2,000 euros gross must be covered by the authors' own budget or third-party funds. In order for the university library to be able to take over the invoice processing, it is necessary to specify a cost unit (Abrechnungsobjekt) for the share that the authors pay themselves.
- Costs such as submission charges, colour charges, page charges, title page appearance fees or administrative fees are not eligible for funding.
- Authors who publish results from externally funded projects undertake to check whether the publication costs can be covered by third-party funds earmarked for this purpose (e.g. the DFG's flat-rate publication costs allowance) and to make use of these, if available.
- Please acknowledge the funding in the acknowledgements with the note: "We acknowledge support for the publication costs by the Open Access Publication Fund of Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)."
- Following publication of your article, you must undertake to make the publisher version of the article available on the Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen
Application Procedure
How to apply for funding from the Open Access Publication Fund of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar:
1. Please first check whether you meet the funding criteria.
2. Please use the online form.
We will get back to you as soon as possible regarding the formal eligibility of your application. The review generally only takes a few days.
3. Send all invoices for publications costs to:
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Universitätsbibliothek
Medienbearbeitung
Steubenstraße 6
99423 Weimar
Germany
Please include your full name and the publication title in the invoice. You must also indicate the VAT identification numbers of both the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (DE150125131) and the publisher. If you are publishing outside of Germany, please issue a net invoice.
Please send the invoice per email directly to nadja.schuster[at]uni-weimar.de.
If the total costs for the individual article exceed 2,000 euros gross, please specify a cost unit (Abrechnungsobjekt) for the share that you, as the author, assume yourself.
4. Please acknowledge the funding in the acknowledgements with the note: "We acknowledge support for the publication costs by the Open Access Publication Fund of Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)."
5. Following publication of your article, you must undertake to make the publisher version of the article available on the Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen.
List of funded publications (until 2023)
Open-Access Monographs
Funding for open-access monographs and anthologies
Since 2019, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar’s open-access publication fund has been providing (co)funding within the scope of the available resources to cover open-access publication costs (book processing charges, BPCs) for previously unpublished open-access monographs and anthologies. The funding, which comes from the Thuringian Ministry of Economy, Science and Digital Society (TMWWDG), is administered by the University Library.
Since 2023, monographs or anthologies resulting from DFG-funded research projects can be supported with up to €5,000 gross per book under the DFG funding programme "Open Access Publication Costs".
Proposals are processed and approved in the order that they are received until all the funds have been used up. A decision-making body rules on whether funding is to be awarded. Publications must reference this funding when published.
Funding criteria
The requirements for funding are as follows:
Eligibility to submit an application
The author of a monograph or editor of an anthology must be a member of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. The affiliation of the publishing party must be clearly visible in the publication.
Funding is normally provided to initial publications, i.e. open-access monographs and anthologies that have not previously been published. The open-access publication can also be published in print (associated costs will not be covered).
Scope of funding
Open-access publication fees will be reimbursed up to a maximum of €2,000 (plus VAT) per open-access book.
Monographs or anthologies resulting from DFG-funded research projects can be supported with up to €5,000 gross per book. Please acknowledge the funding in the acknowledgements with the note: "We acknowledge support for the publication costs by the Open Access Publication Fund of Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)."
This funding can be combined with other funding resources.
The funding is limited to two book publications per author per year.
The funding commitment is for a period of 12 months. If publication has not taken place by the end of this deadline, the funding application must be resubmitted.
Only open-access publication fees will be funded. Printing costs, setting costs, surcharges for colour or scope etc. are not eligible for funding.
Open access
The publication will be made freely available online without any financial, legal or technical obstacles. The open-access publication must be released at the same time as any parallel print version (with no restrictions).
The publication must be identified as open access and must have a free licence (we strongly recommend Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0).
All monographs and anthologies that receive funding will be made available online and permanently archived on the Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen.
Publishing houses
The publication must undergo a standard quality assurance procedure for its particular discipline (e.g. peer review) before being published. The quality assurance process must be described and confirmed by the publishing house if required.
If the publication is based on a thesis, then it must have been awarded at least a ‘magna cum laude’.
Funding is only available to publications via publishing houses if they transparently communicate the costs of open-access publication. The proportion covering open-access costs should be shown separately.
The publishing house must be listed as an open-access publisher, e. g. in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) or as a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
For publication exclusively on the Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen without collaboration with a publishing house, publication costs are covered up to a maximum of €1000 (plus VAT) for elements such as layout, PDF generation, proofreading, editing or similar, undertaken by student/research assistants or external service providers. Proposals such as these must be justified with a detailed description of the content of the publication project. This should cover the following criteria: publication content and criteria, quality assurance procedure, sustainability and particular importance to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, strengthening national and international visibility and awareness of research and projects undertaken at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
Advice and application
We provide you with advice before you submit the application and are able to review the publishing contract in advance.
Please send your application with information about the publication (authorship, title, year, publishing house, DOI if relevant, open-access publication fee amount) and confirmation that you meet the funding criteria to: openaccess@ub.uni-weimar.de
DEAL Agreements
The Projekt DEAL aims to conclude nationwide licensing agreements for the entire portfolio of electronic journals published by major scientific publishers. The participating scientific institutions are to be relieved financially, and access to scientific literature for science is to be improved on a broad and sustainable level by implementing an Open Access component. The DEAL agreements are essential building blocks in the transformation process in which the scientific publishing system is currently undergoing. In place of a subscription-based licensing model, the Publish & Read model will in future see the costs of such contracts derived from publication-based billing. The Weimar University Library is responsible for the organization and annual financing of the DEAL contracts at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
DEAL agreement with Wiley
By resolution of the Presidential Board on March 27, 2019, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar joined the DEAL contract with the publisher Wiley. During the contract period (currently 2024-2028), members of the university will receive unlimited access to all of the publisher's approximately 1,700 subscription-based or hybrid journals via the Wiley Online Library publishing platform. Importantly, articles by University scholars as submitting / corresponding author in these journals are accessible worldwide via open access free of charge. A 20 percent discount on APC list prices applies to scholarly articles in the more than 100 Gold Open Access journals published by Wiley. APCs are funded centrally through the University Library. Published articles are also made available through the Digital Library of Thuringia.
The complete and continuously updated list of Wiley journals that are part of the DEAL contract can be viewed here.
DEAL agreement with Springer Nature
In spring 2020, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar also joined the DEAL contract with the publisher Springer Nature. During the contract period (currently 2024-2028), all members of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar will receive unlimited access to the publisher's approximately 1,900 journals via the SpringerLink publishing platform. If you are a submitting / corresponding author, your articles will be published online free of charge in these journals as soon as they appear worldwide by way of open access. For publications in the approximately 600 Gold Open Access journals of the publisher Springer Nature, a discount of 20 percent on the APC list prices will apply from August 1, 2020. APCs will be funded centrally by the university library. At the same time, the published articles will be made accessible via the Digital Library of Thuringia.
The complete and continuously updated list of Springer Nature journals that are part of the DEAL contract can be viewed here.
DEAL agreement with Elsevier
Since January 1, 2024, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar has also been a participating institution in the DEAL contract with the publisher Elsevier. During the contract period (currently 2024-2028), all members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar receive unlimited access to almost the entire Elsevier journal portfolio via the ScienceDirect publishing platform. If you are the responsible corresponding author, your articles in these journals will be published online free of charge worldwide via Open Access as soon as they appear. For publications in Elsevier's Gold Open Access journals, a discount of 20 percent or 15 percent on the APC list prices will apply from January 1, 2024. The APCs are financed centrally via the University Library. The published articles are made accessible via the Digital Library of Thuringia.
The complete and continuously updated list of Elsevier journals that are part of the DEAL contract can be viewed here.
What you need to know as an author:
- Corresponding authors from participating institutions are eligible to submit articles.
- When submitting your article as a corresponding author, please provide your Bauhaus-Universität Weimar e-mail address. This will ensure eligibility for funding via the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
- Always indicate your eligible institution upon submission and in the manuscript itself.
- If you belong to more than one eligible institution, then you must choose one institution at the time of submission, which will then cover the costs. Multiple institutions may be indicated on the manuscript.
- Projekt DEAL aims to establish CC BY 4.0 as the standard license for open access publishing. CC BY is the freest type of license, allowing you to grant the greatest possible reuse opportunities for your work and ensuring that you are credited as the author of the original work.
- When publishing Gold Open Access articles in the DEAL publishing houses, an application must be submitted to the Open Access Publication Fund in advance. Once the application has been submitted, partial financing (currently max. 2,000 euros gross per article) can be approved. Any additional costs must be covered by the author's own budget or third-party funds. In order for the university library to handle invoice processing, authors must declare a cost unit (Abrechnungsobjekt) for the share they cover themselves. Please also read the funding criteria of the Open Access Publication Fund.
- Further important information for authors can be found in the FAQs of the DEAL consortium for authors.
Please also read the special newsletter on the Open Access transformation at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar from January 2024.
Open Access Agreements
The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar also supports Open Access publishing through special agreements with publishers or within the framework of consortial models to promote Diamond Open Access initiatives. Below you will find a list of current agreements.
ACM OPEN
Scientists at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar can publish their articles Open Access with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in the ACM Digital Library as corresponding authors at no additional cost. This applies to submissions from 01.03.2021. The ACM Open agreement is initially valid for five years.
Here you can find the list of ACM titles in which articles can be published Open Access.
The corresponding publication costs are centrally funded by the University Library according to the agreement. When submitting your articles, please make sure to correctly indicate the affiliation and use your institutional email address.
Cogitatio Press
Since 2018, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar has an institutional membership with the open access publisher Cogitatio Press.
Founded in 2014, the open access publisher Cogitatio Press is oriented towards the humanities. Its portfolio currently includes five journals. All journals are listed in DOAJ and are published under the CC-BY-license.
As a corresponding author submit your article directly to one of the five Cogitatio Press journals as usual. Membership attribution will be based on your email address. So please use the e-mail address of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Through the membership, billing is handled centrally by the Weimar University Library. In addition to the publication in the journal, the author makes the article accessible via Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen.
Copernicus Publications
Since 2020, members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar can publish as corresponding author in the journals of the Open Access publisher Copernicus Publications without the billing of APCs. The publishing agreement signed by the University Library with Copernicus Publications includes centralized payment processing of APCs for publications in the publisher's journals. The Open Access journals of Copernicus Publications can be found here.
When submitting your articles, please ensure that you correctly state the affiliation and use your institutional e-mail address.
KOALA
Since 2023, the University Library has been supporting fair open access by participating in the KOALA project (Konsortiale Open-Access-Lösungen aufbauen). A total of six journals and publication series from the media and social sciences, including the open access journal sub\urban, which the University Library has supported as part of an institutional membership since 2019, are jointly financed by almost 70 different institutions for three years. The University Library is one of the supporters and thus enables the journals and publication series to operate sustainably at no cost to authors and readers.
As a member of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and responsible author, you can publish in the journals and series of the Media and Social Sciences bundle free of charge in open access. When submitting your articles, please ensure that you correctly state the affiliation and use your institutional e-mail address.
MDPI
The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) is a pure Open Access publisher with around 300 peer-reviewed scientific Open Access journals from different scientific fields. As part of the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) with MDPI, authors at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar receive a discount in the amount of 10 percent on the current publication fees for all MDPI journals.
When submitting your article, indicate that you are entitled to the IOAP discount as a member of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Use your institutional e-mail address as proof.
At the same time, please submit an application to the Open Access Publication Fund to support APC costs up to a maximum of 2,000 euros incl. VAT.
Taylor & Francis
Since 2024, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar has been a participating institution in the transformation contract with the publisher Taylor & Francis. With this contract, we have expanded reading access to include two Taylor & Francis Collections. The Social Science & Humanities Library provides access to around 1,490 journal titles and the Science & Technology Library to over 500.
Members of the University publish as corresponding authors Open Access in all (over 2,000) Taylor & Francis Open Select Journals. For publications in the Gold Open Access journals, a discount of 15 percent is granted on each APC.
When submitting your articles, please ensure that you correctly state your affiliation with the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and use your institutional e-mail address.
Quality-assured Publishing
It is only when scientists publish their research results that their findings become visible and can be recognized and cited accordingly. The possibility of electronic publications and, above all, open access has created a large number of alternative publication options. Up-to-date and comprehensive information on scientific publishing in open access can be found at open-access.network.
In the Satzung für gute wissenschaftliche und künstlerische Praxis an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Statutes concerning Good Scientific and Artistic Practice at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar), authors are asked to carefully select the publication medium - taking into account its quality and visibility in the respective field of discourse. A key criterion is whether the publication medium has established quality assurance procedures.
Checklist on the quality of Open Access journals (created as part of the BMBF-funded project open-access.network)
Think.Check.Submit. supports researchers in finding trustworthy journals and publishers for their research.
Think.Check.Attend. supports the selection of a trustworthy conference.
B!SON uses semantic and bibliometric methods to help researchers find a suitable open access journal. The information on the journals comes from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
The oa.finder shows which journals are Gold Open Access, what impact they have, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. It also provides information on whether publication costs can be covered via a transformation agreement or the publication fund.
Important information on the topic of Predatory Publishing can be found in this information sheet.
Here you will find information on so-called mirror journals that are not eligible for funding.
The Sherpa Romeo directory helps researchers to choose a suitable journal and provides an overview of the open access guidelines of a large number of journal publishers. The database can be used, for example, to find out whether a secondary publication of a scientific text in a repository is permitted.
Open Access Research
Tools for researching open access literature
Numerous search engines specialize in Open Access. Here is an overview of how to find open access literature.
Open Access journals
Open Access books
Repositories (selection)
- Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)
- Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
- arXiv
- Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen - Publication Service of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
- Zenodo
Position Statements and Initiatives
Open-Access-Declarations
- Budapest Open Access Initiative
- Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
- Berliner Erklärung über den offenen Zugang zu wissenschaftlichem Wissen
Policies and Guidelines
- Open-Access-Policy der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
- Leitlinien zur Sicherung guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
- Statutes concerning Good Scientific and Artistic Practice at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
- Recommondations on the Transformation of Academic Publishing: Towards Open Access of the Wissenschaftsrat (WR)
- DFG-Positionspapier: Wissenschaftliches Publizieren als Grundlage und Gestaltungsfeld der Wissenschaftsbewertung: Herausforderungen und Handlungsfelder
Initiatives