What is Open Access?

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) refers to a publishing and distribution model for scholarly communication that makes research information available to readers online at no cost, rather than the traditional model of charging readers for access. 

A key motivation for the development of the OA concept was that scholarly literature should be publicly available on the Internet free of charge, so that anyone interested can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, and use full texts in any other conceivable legal way, without encountering financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those associated with Internet access itself.

The Max Planck Society is one of the founders of the international Open Access movement. The publication of the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" on October 22, 2003 and the subsequent annual conferences initiated a process that has raised awareness of the issue of access to scientific information. 2023 thus marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of the Berlin Declaration.

20th anniversary of the Berlin Declaration

20th anniversary of the Berlin Declaration

With the 16th Berlin Open Access Conference, organized by the OA2020 Initiative and hosted by the Max Planck Society, participants will return to the setting where the Berlin Declaration originated. There, they will refine and renew our approaches to achieving the vision for an open information environment in the service of science and society, with a particular focus on transformative agreements.

Open Access 2020

https://oa2020.org/
The OA2020 Initiative was established at the 12th Berlin Open Access conference in 2015, where thought leaders in the global Open Access movement came together to deliberate on concrete actions that would finally offer an incisive, feasible and rapid path toward an open information environment.

Open Access Ambassadors

Open Access Amabassadors
PhDnet in collaboration with Max Planck Digital Library are restarting the Open Access Ambassadors (OAA) program. A conference with leading experts and interactive workshops for Max Planck Society’s early career researchers will be held 10-11 December 2019 at Harnack House in Berlin. The OAA program follows a train-the-trainer concept aiming at enabling early stage researchers to promote open access and open science at their respective institutes.

News

Transformative agreement with PNAS

Transformative agreement with PNAS

The three-year pilot agreement, which runs from May 1, 2023 through April 30, 2026, enables corresponding authors affiliated with the Max Planck Society to publish their research articles open access in PNAS without paying individual article processing charges (APCs). The agreement also includes access to PNAS content for all Max Planck Society researchers.
Open Access Books: New contract with Springer Nature
Max Planck Digital Library Signs Open Access Book Contract with Springer Nature

New Open Access agreement with IoP Publishing
The Max Planck Digital Library has established a new transformative open access agreement with Insitute of Physics Publishing

The DEAL / Wiley Agreement

The DEAL / Wiley Agreement

October 28, 2021
Results of the publication year 2020

Go to Editor View