Open Access strategy of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Presidential Board of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and Executive Board of the University Medical Center Göttingen:
Following the statements by the Senate Commission for Information Management (KIM) on 04/04/2024, the Research Commission (FoKo) on 06/05/2024, the UMG Research Commission on 03/06/2024 and the Senate on 11/11/2024, the Presidential Board adopted the revised version of the Open Access Policy of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen on 14/11/2024 (including the University Medical Center Göttingen). The Executive Board of the UMG adopted the revised Open Access Policy on 14.01.2025 (after approval by the Faculty Council) (Section 41 (2) sentence 2 NHG; Section 63 h (2) sentence 1 in conjunction with Section 41 para. 2 sentence 2 NHG; § 37 para. 1 sentence 3 NHG; § 63 b sentence 3 in conjunction with § 37 para. 1 sentence 3 NHG)
Open Access Policy of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
(including the University Medical Center Göttingen)
Preamble
The Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the University Medical Center Göttingen (hereinafter: University) supports and promotes Open Access for scientific publications. It strives to make all its published research results available in Open Access.
Open Access publications can be used without access restrictions. This directly and sustainably promotes research and innovation processes in science, industry and society and applies to all types of publication.
Science funders such as the German Research Foundation and the European Commission demand and promote Open Access to scientific publications and research data. Mandates such as those of the European Commission and the European Research Council make the implementation of Open Access mandatory for all funded projects.
This guideline sets out a general framework of recommendations for Open Access at the University and supplements the guideline on research data adopted by the University. The University respects the principle of free choice of publication channels, which is protected by academic freedom. It recommends weighing up disciplinary publication cultures, the data protection requirements of the respective research subject and the individual career situation of the authors. However, researchers from all disciplines are advised to critically examine the quality assurance in the respective journals before publishing and to refrain from submitting to dubious journals and editors. This can damage your own career and that of the co-authors, as well as the publication lists and thus the chances of success of research projects.
and thus the chances of success of research consortia are weakened. It also supports a system that is primarily aimed at maximizing the number of publications without sufficient quality assurance.
Regulations
(1) Researchers at the University of Göttingen publish on their own responsibility in the University’s “Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice”, the “Affiliation Guidelines” and their disciplinary standards. This includes a careful selection of the publication medium based on subject-specific quality standards as well as striving for the greatest possible public availability of one’s own results, as realized in Open Access is realized.
(2) University institutions are required to engage with Open Access practices in their disciplines and to actively participate in the implementation of Open Access, for example by encouraging their members to take responsibility for Open Access publication channels or by making the institutions’ evaluation practices Open Access-compatible.
(3) When concluding publishing contracts, authors should not assign any exclusive rights of use. They should at least expressly secure simple rights of use for the distribution of their publications in Open Access.
(4) If possible, authors should provide the University of Göttingen with a copy of their publication at the time of publication and grant it the right to archive it in the publication data management GRO.publications and make it publicly available. This applies in particular to publications that are not yet available elsewhere in the final version in Open Access permanently and citable via an Open Access repository. 3These publication profiles can also be easily integrated into the university’s website via GRO.publications. 4When archiving, a version should be selected that can be made available Open Access without delay. This applies to all publication types.
(5) Authors are required to use the support of the University of Göttingen and funding organizations to realize Open Access.
(6) If costs are incurred for Open Access publication, these are to be included in the third-party funding projects (e.g. German Research Foundation, European Commission), covered from the budgets of the institutions or applied for via the University’s central publication fund.
Implementation
(1) The University advises and supports its researchers in the practical implementation of Open Access, in publishing contracts, licensing and copyright issues and compliance with publication-relevant requirements from third-party funded projects. These services are located at the Göttingen State and University Library (hereinafter referred to as SUB Göttingen). Further information and contact persons can be found on the SUB website.
(2) When publishing, the University recommends the use of established Open Access licenses (e.g. Creative Commons), if possible directly with the publisher’s publication or a copyrighted manuscript version on Open Access repositories.
(3)In addition, the University supports its researchers in exercising their secondary publication rights, subject to an embargo period of 12 months (Section 38 (4) UrhG). The academic secondary publication right applies to contributions that have appeared in a collection (e.g. journal) that is published periodically at least twice a year and that have been produced in the context of at least half publicly funded research.
(4)If publication costs are to be applied for in projects, the SUB Göttingen provides support in calculating the requirements. In addition to such decentralized publication funds, the University operates a central publication fund. 3The support is provided within the framework of the available funds and the allocation guidelines of the funding bodies.
(5) The University operates its own institutional and subject-specific Open Access infrastructures for the management and provision of publications and contributes to national and international infrastructures and standards. In particular, it supports open access publication infrastructures that do not incur any direct costs for authors (“Diamond Open Access”).
(6) The University operates the Göttingen University Press, which publishes books in Open Access and supports the establishment of Open Access series and journals.