Open Access / Open Science

Open Access strategy of the universities of the state of NRW (in German only)

With this Open Access Strategy, the member universities of the Digital University NRW (DH.NRW) reaffirm their commitment to the complete transfer of the state's research results to Open Access. To this end, it formulates the following goal:

Open access (OA) and the comprehensive usability of scientific publications should be standard in NRW – regardless of the respective publication type.

This strategy identifies the challenges that arise in the realization of this goal and makes recommendations on how these can be addressed.

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).

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