Open Access / Open Science

Open Access at Bielefeld University

Bielefeld University pursues an Open Access strategy, the basis of which was laid in its Open Access Resolution in 2005. In this resolution, it supports the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" (2003). Publications based on the principle of open access refer to "original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials, and scholarly multimedia material". The authors and right holders of Open Access publications irrevocably grant all users the free, worldwide right of access to these publications.

Open Science

Open Science comprises strategies and procedures that aim at opening up all scientific processes. Steps, findings and results are communicated openly and transparently via the Internet, made comprehensible and reusable, and at the same time good scientific practice is promoted. Science, society and economy are opened up to new possibilities in dealing with scientific knowledge. The essential aspects of Open Science include Open Access, Open Data, Open Source, Open Peer Review, Open Methodology and Open Educational Resources.

With regard to research data management, Bielefeld University has already set important milestones with its principles on research data (2011) and the resolution on research data management (2013).

Operationalisation of the Open Access strategy

To support the Open Access strategy, infrastructure services have been and are being successively established and expanded.

The implementation is carried out by complementary measures such as:

• the provision and continuous development of the "PUB - Publications at Bielefeld University" service
  as a central point of reference for the publication of research results and examination papers

  • with freely accessible full texts: the Open Access share of the more than 77,000 references in PUB is around 18% (as of December 2021)

  • enables the integration of personal publication lists.

  • good visibility: by finding the documents in Google / BASE

  • assignment of identifiers (DOI, URN, ORCID...)

• the provision of an infrastructure for the publication of OA journals

• the establishment of a publication fund to support the publication of electronic journal articles, contributions to edited volumes, monographs and edited volumes in open access

• participation in the DEAL project

• the founding and development of the publishing house Bielefeld University Press with Open Access as a guiding principle

• participation in institutional memberships in support of Open Access and Open Science

• participation in the information platform open-access.network

• participation in the openaccess.nrw project

• events on the topics of Open Access / Open Science

With the support of the DFG (until the end of 2019) and the Rectorate of Bielefeld University, open access publications for a total of 767 journal articles were funded with a total of 1,093,545 euros between 2010 and 2020.

The following chart illustrates the distribution of costs and the number of articles funded among individual publishers.
Open chart on full screen.