Open access is the unrestricted and free access to scholarly information as well as its use and dissemination, while maintaining and correctly attributing authorship.
According to the Berlin Declaration, open access means unrestricted and free access to scholarly information as well as its use and dissemination, while maintaining and correctly attributing authorship. In contrast to publication based on the traditional subscription or licensing model, open access publications are immediately available online without financial or technical barriers. The following objectives are associated with open access:
- Free universal access to scholarly information
- Free and unrestricted access
- Maximum dissemination of scholarly information
- Best possible recognition for scholarly research
- Fast publication and timely access
- Optimal use of scholarly information
- Transparency and quality assurance
The University Library is the point of contact for all members of the university in matters relating to open access. The University Library offers advice and support on the following topics:
- Electronic publishing: Advice and service for first and second publications on the OPUS publication server
- Funding of OA publications via the OA Publication Fund, OA memberships, and transformation agreements such as the DEAL agreements
- individual and subject-specific information and advising services relating to open access
- Research in open access portals, open access journals, open access e-books, etc.
- Legal questions; e.g. publishing contracts, copyright law
At the 14 December 2016 meeting, the Dean's Office of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar approved an open access policy. The University Library supports members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in the publication of scholarly works in electronic and open access form. Electronically generated, qualified documents can be published free of charge on the OPUS publication server.
Open Access Publication Fund
Open Access Publication Fund
Since 2019, article processing charges (APC) for articles in Open Access journals have been financed at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar via the DFG-supported fund within the limits of the available funds. For funding of OA monographs, see here.
Funding criteria
Funding is available if:
- You are a member of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and are responsible for paying the publication processing charge (APC) as "corresponding author" of the planned publication.
- The article is to be published in a purely OA journal whose articles are accessible in Open Access free of charge immediately after publication. Such journals are usually listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The journal meets the scientific quality criteria applicable to the respective subject. The publication is subject to a recognised, strict quality assurance procedure (peer review procedure) in the respective subject.
- The Open Access release of individual articles in journals otherwise subject to subscription is not eligible for funding, unless these journals are part of a transformation contract with Bauhaus-Universität Weimar that meets the criteria of the ESAC initiative. In this case, please contact the Open Access team.
- The article appears under an established open content licence, preferably CC-BY 4.0. There is no charge for granting this licence. Explanations of the CC licences can be found here.
- The articles receive a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). Authors are recommended to register and use an ORCID-iD.
- Publication costs of up to 2,000 euros gross (including VAT) per article will be covered in full. If the total costs for the individual article exceed 2,000 euros gross, the amount exceeding 2,000 euros gross must be covered by the authors' own budget or third-party funds. In order for the university library to be able to take over the invoice processing, it is necessary to specify a cost unit (Abrechnungsobjekt) for the share that the authors pay themselves.
- Costs such as submission charges, colour charges, page charges, title page appearance fees or administrative fees are not eligible for funding.
- Authors who publish results from externally funded projects undertake to check whether the publication costs can be covered by third-party funds earmarked for this purpose (e.g. the DFG's flat-rate publication costs allowance) and to make use of these, if available.
- Please acknowledge the funding in the acknowledgements with the note: "We acknowledge support for the publication costs by the Open Access Publication Fund of Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)."
- Following publication of your article, you must undertake to make the publisher version of the article available on OPUS Weimar, the publication server of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
Application Procedure
How to apply for funding from the Open Access Publication Fund of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar:
1. Please first check whether you meet the funding criteria.
2. Please use the online form.
We will get back to you as soon as possible regarding the formal eligibility of your application. The review generally only takes a few days.
3. Send all invoices for publications costs to:
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Universitätsbibliothek
Medienbearbeitung
Steubenstraße 6
99423 Weimar
Germany
Please include your full name and the publication title in the invoice. You must also indicate the VAT identification numbers of both the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (DE150125131) and the publisher. If you are publishing outside of Germany, please issue a net invoice.
Please send the invoice per email directly to nadja.schuster[at]uni-weimar.de.
If the total costs for the individual article exceed 2,000 euros gross, please specify a cost unit (Abrechnungsobjekt) for the share that you, as the author, assume yourself.
4. Please acknowledge the funding in the acknowledgements with the note: "We acknowledge support for the publication costs by the Open Access Publication Fund of Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)."
5. Following publication of your article, you must undertake to make the publisher version of the article available on OPUS Weimar, the publication server of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
List of funded publications
Open-Access Monographs
Funding for open-access monographs and anthologies
Since 2019, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar’s open-access publication fund has been providing (co)funding within the scope of the available resources to cover open-access publication costs (book processing charges, BPCs) for previously unpublished open-access monographs and anthologies. The funding, which comes from the Thuringian Ministry of Economy, Science and Digital Society (TMWWDG), is administered by the University Library.
Since 2023, monographs or anthologies resulting from DFG-funded research projects can be supported with up to €5,000 gross per book under the DFG funding programme "Open Access Publication Costs".
Proposals are processed and approved in the order that they are received until all the funds have been used up. A decision-making body rules on whether funding is to be awarded. Publications must reference this funding when published.
Funding criteria
The requirements for funding are as follows:
Eligibility to submit an application
The author of a monograph or editor of an anthology must be a member of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. The affiliation of the publishing party must be clearly visible in the publication.
Funding is normally provided to initial publications, i.e. open-access monographs and anthologies that have not previously been published. The open-access publication can also be published in print (associated costs will not be covered).
Scope of funding
Open-access publication fees will be reimbursed up to a maximum of €2,000 (plus VAT) per open-access book.
Monographs or anthologies resulting from DFG-funded research projects can be supported with up to €5,000 gross per book. Please acknowledge the funding in the acknowledgements with the note: "We acknowledge support for the publication costs by the Open Access Publication Fund of Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)."
This funding can be combined with other funding resources.
The funding is limited to two book publications per author per year.
The funding commitment is for a period of 12 months. If publication has not taken place by the end of this deadline, the funding application must be resubmitted.
Only open-access publication fees will be funded. Printing costs, setting costs, surcharges for colour or scope etc. are not eligible for funding.
Open access
The publication will be made freely available online without any financial, legal or technical obstacles. The open-access publication must be released at the same time as any parallel print version (with no restrictions).
The publication must be identified as open access and must have a free licence (we recommend Creative Commons Attribution CC BY).
All monographs and anthologies that receive funding will be made available online and permanently archived on OPUS Weimar, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar’s online publication portal.
Publishing houses
The publication must undergo a standard quality assurance procedure for its particular discipline (e.g. peer review) before being published. The quality assurance process must be described and confirmed by the publishing house if required.
If the publication is based on a thesis, then it must have been awarded at least a ‘magna cum laude’.
Funding is only available to publications via publishing houses if they transparently communicate the costs of open-access publication. The proportion covering open-access costs should be shown separately.
The publishing house must be listed as an open-access publisher, e.g. in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) or as a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
For publication exclusively on OPUS Weimar without collaboration with a publishing house, publication costs are covered up to a maximum of €1000 (plus VAT) for elements such as layout, PDF generation, proofreading, editing or similar, undertaken by student/research assistants or external service providers. Proposals such as these must be justified with a detailed description of the content of the publication project. This should cover the following criteria: publication content and criteria, quality assurance procedure, sustainability and particular importance to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, strengthening national and international visibility and awareness of research and projects undertaken at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
Advice and application
We provide you with advice before you submit the application and are able to review the publishing contract in advance.
Please send your application with information about the publication (authorship, title, year, publishing house, DOI if relevant, open-access publication fee amount) and confirmation that you meet the funding criteria to: openaccess[at]ub.uni-weimar.de
DEAL Agreements
The Projekt DEAL aims to conclude nationwide licensing agreements for the entire portfolio of electronic journals published by major scientific publishers. The participating scientific institutions are to be relieved financially, and access to scientific literature for science is to be improved on a broad and sustainable level by implementing an Open Access component. The DEAL agreements are essential building blocks in the transformation process in which the scientific publishing system is currently undergoing. In place of a subscription-based licensing model, the Publish & Read model will in future see the costs of such contracts derived from publication-based billing. The Weimar University Library is responsible for the organization and annual financing of the DEAL contracts at the Bauhaus University Weimar.
DEAL agreement with Wiley
By resolution of the Presidential Board on March 27, 2019, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar joined the DEAL contract with the publisher Wiley. During the contract period of three years (until 2021), members of the university will receive unlimited access to all of the publisher's approximately 1,700 subscription-based or hybrid journals via the Wiley Online Library publishing platform. Importantly, articles by University scholars as submitting / corresponding author in these journals are accessible worldwide via open access free of charge. A 20 percent discount on APC list prices applies to scholarly articles in the more than 100 Gold Open Access journals published by Wiley. APCs are funded centrally through the University Library. Published articles are also made available through the OPUS Weimar online publication system.
The complete and continuously updated list of Wiley journals that are part of the DEAL contract can be viewed here.
DEAL agreement with Springer Nature
In spring 2020, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar also joined the DEAL contract with the publisher Springer Nature. During the contract period of three years (until 2022), all members of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar will receive unlimited access to the publisher's approximately 1,900 journals via the SpringerLink publishing platform. If you are a submitting / corresponding author, your articles will be published online free of charge in these journals as soon as they appear worldwide by way of open access. For publications in the approximately 600 Gold Open Access journals of the publisher Springer Nature, a discount of 20 percent on the APC list prices will apply from August 1, 2020. APCs will be funded centrally by the university library. At the same time, the published articles will be made accessible via the online publication system OPUS Weimar.
The complete and continuously updated list of Springer Nature journals that are part of the DEAL contract can be viewed here.
What you need to know as an author:
- Submitting / corresponding authors from participating institutions are eligible.
- When submitting your articles as a submitting / corresponding author, please include your Bauhaus University Weimar email address. This will ensure eligibility for funding through Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
- Always indicate your eligible institution upon submission and in the manuscript itself.
- If you belong to more than one eligible institution, then you must choose one institution at the time of submission, which will then cover the costs. Multiple institutions may be indicated on the manuscript.
- Projekt DEAL aims to establish CC BY as the standard license for open access publishing. CC BY is the freest type of license, allowing you to grant the greatest possible reuse opportunities for your work and ensuring that you are credited as the author of the original work.
- For more important information for authors, see the FAQs.
Memberships and Agreements
ACM OPEN
Scientists at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar can publish their articles Open Access with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in the ACM Digital Library as corresponding authors at no additional cost. This applies to submissions from 01.03.2021. The ACM Open agreement is initially valid for five years.
Here you can find the list of ACM titles in which articles can be published Open Access.
The corresponding publication costs are centrally funded by the Weimar University Library according to the agreement. When submitting your articles, please make sure to correctly indicate the affiliation and use your institutional email address.
Cogitatio Press
Since February 2018, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar has an institutional membership with the open access publisher Cogitatio Press.
Founded in 2014, the open access publisher Cogitatio Press is oriented towards the humanities. Its portfolio currently includes four journals: Media and Communication, Politics and Governance, Social Inclusion, and Urban Planning. All journals are listed in DOAJ and are published under the CC-BY license.
If you meet the Open Access Publication Fund eligibility criteria above, the Publication Fund will cover the publication fees and you do not need to submit a grant application.
As a "corresponding author" or "submitting author," submit your article directly to one of the four Cogitatio Press journals as usual. Membership attribution will be based on your email address. So please use the e-mail address of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Through the membership, billing is handled centrally by the Weimar University Library. In addition to the publication in the journal, the author makes the article accessible via OPUS Weimar, the publication server of the Bauhaus University.
Copernicus Publications
Since January 2020, members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar can publish as corresponding author in the journals of the Open Access publisher Copernicus Publications without the billing of APCs. The publishing agreement signed by the University Library with Copernicus Publications includes annual prepayments and centralized payment processing of APCs for publications in the publisher's journals, beginning January 1, 2020, as part of a two-year APC consortium. The prepayments are made from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar's Open Access Publication Fund and are settled with the publisher at the end of the year. The Open Access journals of Copernicus Publications can be found here.
MDPI
The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) is a pure Open Access publisher with around 200 peer-reviewed scientific Open Access journals from different scientific fields. As part of their membership with MDPI, authors at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar receive a discount on the current publication fees for all MDPI journals ("Institutional Open Access Program", IOAP). The discount is 10 percent.
When submitting your article, indicate that you are entitled to the IOAP discount as a member of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Use your institutional e-mail address as proof.
At the same time, please submit an application to the Open Access Publication Fund to support APC costs up to a maximum of 2,000 euros incl. VAT.
sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung
Since January 2019, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is a member of the open access journal sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, which allows all university members to publish in this journal free of charge.
sub\urban is a scholarly journal that promotes German-language and interdisciplinary debate in critical urban research as well as exchange between different disciplinary approaches to urban research. The journal is listed in the DOAJ. Articles are published under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
If you meet the Open Access Publication Fund eligibility criteria above, the Publication Fund will cover the publication fees and you do not need to submit a grant application.
As a "corresponding author" or "submitting author," submit your article directly to one of the four Cogitatio Press journals as usual. Membership attribution will be based on your email address. So please use the e-mail address of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Through the membership, billing is handled centrally by the Weimar University Library. In addition to the publication in the journal, the author makes the article accessible via OPUS Weimar, the publication server of the Bauhaus University.
Related Information on the subject of open access
The OPEN.ACCESS.NET platform provides up-to-date and comprehensive information on open access for German-speaking countries.