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.
Bye Bye Open Access
21. October 2024
Dear Open Access supporters, dear colleagues,
After more than 20 years, I have decided to leave the Max Planck Society (MPG). This also means that I will no longer be working in the field of Open Access policy.
My involvement with Open Access goes back quite a long way which I realized again while preparing for my departure:
As a former member of the board of the German Physical Society, I was involved in the founding of the open access journal ‘"New Journal of Physics’ as early as 2002. That is why I was invited by the MPG to the first Berlin Open Access Conference – which was not even called that in 2003. There I was able to witness 19 organisations sign the ‘Berlin Declaration’. Since then, that number has grown to almost 800!
From 2004, I was responsible for open access policy issues at the Max Planck Society. Since then, I have organised several ‘Berlin Open Access’ conferences and also initiated the first open access conference for students and early career researchers, which took place in Berlin in 2013. I think that was one of my best ideas!
From the outset, I was also involved in the planning and implementation of eLife, the open-access journal founded in October 2011 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA), the Wellcome Trust (UK) and the MPG.
The ten years during which I had the privilege of chairing the Science Europe Open Access working group were probably the most ‘international’ time for me. Together with colleagues from the other member organisations of Science Europe, a number of important position papers on open access were developed and adopted by Science Europe. The published results of this work range from the 2012 position paper „Principles for the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications“to the „Briefing Paper on Open Access Monitoring“, with which this working group ended in 2021.
At the national level, I co-chaired for many years the Open Access working group of the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany, together with Johannes Fournier (DFG) and others. That, too, was a time I look back on fondly.
But the most important thing was certainly the cooperation within the MPG!
The MPG's commitment to open access, which has now lasted more than 20 years, would not have been possible without the ongoing committment and backing of Presidents Peter Gruss and Martin Stratmann. One of the most forward-looking and far-reaching decisions was the founding of the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) on 1 January 2007. MPDL’s Ralf Schimmer consistently promoted the transformation to open access in Germany and internationally. I don't think there was an explicit motto, but in my view these activities can be characterised as ‘making open access possible’. Together with the libraries at the Max Planck Institutes, an impressive open access ‘landscape’ has been created: on the basis of agreements with genuine open access publishers and so-called ‘transformative’ OA contracts (including DEAL), authors from the MPG can choose from more than 12,500 journals if they want to publish open access. The associated costs are covered centrally by the MPDL.
The open access activities also have a major international impact. This is due in no small part to the series of Berlin Open Access Conferences and is manifested, among other things, in the OA2020 Initiative, which is being driven forward by Colleen Campbell. This shows how important it is for science organisations worldwide to agree on common goals, share experiences and coordinate their actions.
I would like to express my wholehearted thanks to all those I have mentioned by name here, and to all the others with whom I have had the pleasure of working during this time at the various levels and in different contexts.
Unfortunately the rise in geopolitical tensions, which for many are at odds with the concept of openness in general, are also a threat for the growing momentum of open science. Nevertheless I very much hope that the MPG will continue to actively participate in the development of a science-friendly, transparent, inclusive, sustainable and financially fair open access publication system in the future, in line with the final sentence of the ‘Mission Statement’, which was formulated ten years after the ‘Berlin Declaration’:
“It is time to return control of scholarly publishing to the scholars.”
Goodbye and good luck!
Achievements of the First DEAL Agreement Phase
Between 2019 and 2023, more than 105,000 publications from German scientific institutions were published under the DEAL agreements, 97 percent of which are Open Access.
In a new publication, the German-wide DEAL consortium presents the key achievements of its first contract phase with the publishers Wiley and Springer Nature. The newly published infographic brochure provides a comprehensive insight into the background, objectives and results of the DEAL initiative.
Since the start of the first contract phase in 2019, DEAL has made great progress in the area of open access publishing and the provision of scientific information to German institutions. The brochure provides detailed key figures and developments over the last four to five years to show how the DEAL contracts have successfully achieved the consortium's objectives.
The brochure also highlights how DEAL has expanded reading opportunities for participating institutions while reducing the overall cost of scientific publications. This is a major breakthrough in the face of ever-increasing expenditure on scientific journals.
With over 500 participating institutions, DEAL has become a strong community and an important infrastructure in the German academic and library landscape. The review of the first phase of the contract highlights not only its considerable achievements, but also DEAL's contribution to promoting the visibility and reach of German research worldwide and to shaping a more sustainable scholarly publishing system.
DEAL contracts entered into force
Institutions that together are responsible for about 90% of the total number of publications from Germany in the journals of the publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley based on the figures for 2022 are participating in the contracts.
Collectively, the DEAL agreements have the potential to shift around half of German research output in scientific journals to Open Access every year over the next five years. This will make research results from Germany immediately freely available, accessible free of charge worldwide and re-usable. It will also give hundreds of institutions in the country, and their researchers and students, maximum access to publishing platforms and content that is not yet openly accessible.
The DEAL agreement with Elsevier was subject to a 70% participation rate. The impressive participation rate of 90% means that a further contractual agreement will now come into effect: a 2% reduction in the agreed publish and read fee. This means that the fee for the first year of the contract will be €2,500 instead of €2,550.
Institutions that have not yet signed up can do so at any time during the five-year contract.
