Open Access-Strategies

Gold Open Access

The golden road of open access refers to those publications that are originally published in genuine open access journals or open access monographs. The scientific articles or contributions are subject to the same quality assurance mechanisms (peer review) as in "closed" journals or monographs. Gold Open Access journals, however, are financed by an alternative business model in which the corresponding authors (or their institution) usually pay a so-called Article Processing Charge (APC). In return, all publications of this journal (or monograph) are accessible to an unlimited number of people free of charge and in full text. They can be read, downloaded, saved, linked or printed without further costs. Libraries, for example, do not have to pay subscription fees to provide access to users.

In addition, those papers are often published under a Creative Commons license, which grants the publisher only non-exclusive rights of use.

Do you want to submit an article to a genuine open access journal? The following tools can help you find the right one:

B!SON - Journal Recommender of the Technischen Informationsbibliothek Hannover (TIB)

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

Research funders increasingly expect publications from funded projects to be published directly in open access, while authors retain certain rights to the work (see, for example, Horizon Europe, Model Grant Agreement, p. 95). This can be achieved by using golden Open Access. It therefore makes sense to already plan for corresponding financial resources in the proposal of a project. Average Article Processing Charges (APC) can be found at the OpenAPC initiative, which aggregates and evaluates voluntarily reported payment data for open access publications.

We are happy to help you determine average APC fees for your project proposal! library@aip.de

Green Open Access

Green Open Access is the secondary publication of a publication originally published by a regular publisher on an institutional or disciplinary repository (document server). In most cases, authors of closed access journals cede all rights of use and exploitation to the publisher by signing an author agreement (also known as a copyright transfer agreement or similar). However, many journals themselves, as well as restrictions in the German Copyright Act (more), allow simultaneous or delayed parallel publication on an open-access repository. Various restrictions often apply:

• No use of the original PDF (version of record), but use of the pre- or postprint
• Citation of the reference of the original publication
• Embargo (e.g. 6-12 months after original publication)

The SHERPA/RoMEO list provides a good initial overview of the wide range of publishing guidelines. Since this list cannot always be kept up to date, it is also advisable to take a look at the respective publisher websites. We will be happy to help you verify the applicable rules: library@aip.de

For the AIP, the use of Cornell University's arXiv repository (Astrophysics collection) has proven successful for the purpose of secondary publication:

arXiv - Sammlung Astrophysics

Other suitable repositories for the secondary publication of your work can be found here, for example:

Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)

Hybrid Open Access

If an usually subscription-based journal offers authors the option of publishing individual articles in open access in return for payment of a fee (APC), this is referred to as hybrid open access. The publishers themselves call this option "Open Choice," "Online Open," or "Paid Open Access," among others. In some cases, the term "Gold Open Access" is also used in advertising, which can lead to misinterpretation by authors. The option of hybrid Open Access should only be chosen in justified exceptional cases, because:

• often a secondary publication in the sense of Green Open Access is possible - without costs
• compared to the average APC of genuine open access journals, hybrid open access is usually disproportionately expensive
• there is a risk of "double dipping" where the institution pays twice (APC + library subscription for actual journal access)

Hybrid open access publications under transformation agreements are a special case.