Questions & Answers
Publishing Open Access offers numerous advantages - for you as an author as well as for your readers and the scientific community. You can find a detailed overview of the advantages on the Open Access information platform. The main benefits from the author's point of view include
- Your publication is available immediately and free of charge all over the world.
- Your publication will therefore be better recognized, i.e. the visibility and impact of your research will increase.
- You retain greater freedom in managing the copyright of your publication - in contrast to conventional publishing contracts, in which you generally assign all rights of use.
- Your publication is archived long-term and permanent access to it is ensured by assigning persistent identifiers (such as DOI or URN). This means that your publication can be clearly referenced or cited.
![[Translate to English:] 10 Gründe für Open Access](/fileadmin/HTW/Hochschule/4_Organisation/7_Bibliothek/Bilder/Open_Access/Infografiken/10GruendeOA.jpg)
In principle, the quality of a journal is not determined by its business model. This is because Open Access journals also have an interest in publishing articles of the highest possible quality, as this increases the journal's attractiveness to a wider range of authors. Conversely, low-quality articles would be at a competitive disadvantage.
The peer review process is therefore also the most common method of quality control in Open Access journals. In addition, Open Access publications are read more frequently and their content is therefore discussed more critically. The Open Access movement has also given rise to new quality assurance procedures such as Open Peer Review or Altmetrics.
When assessing the quality of an Open Access journal, the same questions need to be answered as for a Closed Access journal, among others: What specific quality assurance procedures are used? Are scientific and technical standards met? Is the journal trustworthy and is the relationship between performance and potential costs transparent and fair? Use the checklists from e.g. Think. Check. Submit. or the open-access.network to better assess the quality of a journal.
Further answers to the question of where and how to find a suitable journal can be found in our publication guide under "Step 2 - Find the right publication venue!".
No, this criticism dates back to the early days of Open Access and is no longer true. Numerous Open Access journals have now published several volumes and have a correspondingly good reputation. Most established Open Access journals are also listed in the InCites Journal Citation Reports database from Clarivate Analytics. If Open Access journals cannot provide evidence of impact factors, they are often newly founded - because impact factors are not assigned until the third year of publication at the earliest. As impact factors provide information about the citation frequency of an article, publication in an Open Access journal can be advantageous compared to publication in Closed Access due to better visibility.
In addition to free access to scientific literature, the ability to reuse these publications extensively is a fundamental part of Open Access. In contrast to Closed Access publications, authors of Open Access publications retain the rights of use to their work. It is therefore the authors themselves who determine the conditions under which their work may be reused. This is usually done via licenses.
Creative Commons licenses are the most commonly used copyright licenses in science and research. They are open and free to use. Thanks to various license attributes that can be combined with each other, authors have the opportunity to regulate the licensing individually according to their requirements.
In the spirit of the definition of Open Access, only the BY ("by attribution") and SA ("share alike") license attributes guarantee unrestricted reuse.
Answers to further questions on the subject of CC licenses can be found on the Creative Commons website and in the video portal of TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library in Hanover.
![[Translate to English:] creative commons lizenzspektrum](/fileadmin/_processed_/b/1/csm_Creative_Commons_Lizenzspektrum_DE_15f0f18e07.jpg)
Members of HTWD can apply via the library for (partial) funding of the costs for the publication of a monograph up to a maximum of 3,000 euros or the publication of a contribution in an anthology up to a maximum of 1,500 euros. The publication of a dissertation can also be funded, provided the work was graded "magna cum laude".
The following conditions must be met for funding:
- There must be no other third-party publication funding available.
- The publication is previously unpublished.
- The publication is completely Open Access. This also applies to edited volumes.
- The publication is under a CC BY or CC BY-SA license.
- The publication is listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).
- The publication contains a reference to the funding in the imprint.
- The print edition of the publication may only appear at the same time or later.
- The publisher must provide a transparent calculation of the publication costs.
The funds are provided by the Consortium of Saxon University Libraries from the State Digitization Programme of the Free State of Saxony.
If you are interested, please contact the HTWD Open Access team.
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