Germany

Germany currently numbers 347 Higher Education and over 250 public research institutions. Many of them run an institutional or subject-based Open Access (OA) repository, some of these centrally managed by umbrella organizations. Today, there are about 150 OA repositories in Germany: 124 OAI repositories according to OpenDOAR, plus those listed by DINI and OAI service providers (like BASE, OAIster, and Scientific Commons). The majority of German repositories are based on the OPUS software, followed by DSpace, MyCore, FEDORA and Eprints as well as locally developed software options. Over 40 repositories operate on platforms that are centrally managed by country-state library networks in Cologne, Berlin, Jena, Munich, and Constance.

In the federal environment of Germany, the strong competition among universities and research institutions is stimulating - but also challenging – to the development of Open Access publication strategies and digital repositories. At present, there is no OA mandate (compare ROARMAP), but some OA statements of German universities and research institutions/organizations are in place. The most prominent statement in use is the 2003 “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, signed by approx. 250 international research institutions/organizations (with >30 from Germany, including the German Rectors’ Conference which includes 258 universities and other HE institutions; the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft and the Wissensgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - together organizing public research institutions).

The main challenge is the re-organization and filling of repositories with scholarly content beyond theses and dissertations as this process is dependent upon the formulation of general rules allowing the electronic deposit of already published materials in the German Copyright Act. With the reform of this law at the end of 2007, the rights for the digitization of older materials (published before 1995) have changed: the right to publish digitized versions falls to the publisher by the end of 2008 if the author does not intervene to retain some electronic publishing rights. This has been applied in advocacy activities by several institutions to raise authors’ awareness and increase the use of OA repositories.

Enhancing the networking of digital repositories by supporting best practices and technical standards is another challenge in Germany (see the description of the DINI certificate below). At the European level, the situation in Germany would be best supported by a further improvement of the infrastructure enabling networks of digital repositories in combination with advocacy activities.

German research organizations and funders actively support OA projects and initiatives. For example, one project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) resulted in the development of the DINI network. Further projects and initiatives will be described below.

The Deutsche Initiative für Netzwerkinformation DINI (German Initiative for Network Information) is the most relevant organization in Germany for supporting a national repository infrastructure. DINI is organized in working groups for thematic fields like IPR, Standards and Electronic Publishing. DINI regularly organizes workshops and conferences for promoting the use and the quality of digital repositories. It has initiated several projects to support the technical development of a network of digital repositories and actively encourages the process of DINI certification. The DINI certificate was developed and is regularly updated by the Electronic Publishing working group. The certification process evaluates and improves the quality of publication services by referring to international standards and quality criteria. In consequence, the process improves data quality and conformity to enable services and the networking of repositories. Currently 21 German repositories have received the DINI certificate.

The DINI certificate is internationally renowned and has been translated into English and Spanish. Together with the DARE guidelines, the DINI certificate served as a basis for the DRIVER Guidelines for Content Providers. Therefore all DINI certified repositories comply with the DRIVER Guidelines.

In terms of OA initiatives, here are a few examples:

Information platform open-access.net

The information platform open-access.net is to provide detailed information about open access for scholars and other stakeholders. To do this, information about OA already available at different places has been reviewed, systematized and presented for different purposes/target groups. For example, scholars from different disciplines can find information about the OA culture in their respective communities, about OA journals and repositories, etc. Moreover, information is presented from different user perspectives: authors, librarians, OA publishers, institutions running OA repositories, and so on. They may access more general information, dedicated to the respective group/interests, by short articles, or via FAQs, providing answers for more practical issues.

The platform presents information about several OA initiatives, including the specific initiatives of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft and the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft. The platform is funded by the DFG and supported by the Volkswagen-Stiftung, the DINI network, the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, and several learned societies. Open-access.net integrates further OA activities from Germany, Austria and Switzerland into its platform. The project aims to develop a network of Open Access commissioners and is planning to provide an english version.

Network of certified Open Access repositories and related projects

In order to increase the worldwide perception and effect of the German Research contribution, the project "Network of certified Open Access Repositories” OA-Network seeks to intensify the national networking of repositories. It aims to virtually integrate all document and publication services with a DINI certificate and to increase the number of DINI certified repositories. These certified repositories easily blend in overall networks such as the DRIVER pan-European repository infrastructure (Repositories Infrastructure Vision for European Research).

Networking will not only be pushed forward organisationally, but also technically and infrastructurally. OA-Network therefore supports repository managers in the certification process and, at the same time, issues a number of services on its platform. Documents are accessible by full-text search, search via metadata and overall browsing. The platform will offer additional services, i.e. information about new documents (Alerting), export functions for common reference formats and the link-up of printing services (Print on Demand). Furthermore, the project integrates future developments from other electronic publishing projects such as user statistics and citation analysis.

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine - BASE

The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine BASE is a multi-disciplinary search engine for scientifically relevant web resources which was created and developed by Bielefeld University Library. It is based on search technology provided by FAST Search & Transfer, a Norwegian company. For the BASE project OAI metadata from scientific repository servers are collected by a so-called "harvester" and are indexed by means of FAST software.

BASE is a registered OAI service provider and contributes to the European project "Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research" (DRIVER) since June 2006.

In addition, according to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) there are 135 German OA journals. Some of these journals are hosted by OA journal platforms, but most are run individually by research institutions and learned societies.

In terms of fudning policies, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) has tied open access into its funding policy: “When entering into publishing contracts scientists participating in DFG-funded projects, should, as far as possible, permanently reserve a non-exclusive right of exploitation for electronic publication of their research results for the purpose of open access. Here, discipline specific delay periods of generally six to twelve months can be agreed upon, before which publication of previously published research results in discipline-specific or institutional electronic archives may be prohibited.” Other funders like the Volkswagenstiftung support OA publishing in financial terms (see the overview at open-access.net).

In terms of the status of publishers, the SHERPA/RoMEO database lists 10 German publishers offering self-archiving options, including Springer, Thieme, Copernicus, Klostermann, Lucius & Lucius, Wiley-VCH, and the university presses of Kassel, Karlsruhe and Göttingen.

Some German publishers offer OA options, most prominently Springer with its “Open Choice”. Recently Springer has agreed arrangements with the UKB (a consortium of all Dutch universities plus the Royal Library, Press Release June 2007), Goettingen University, PR October 2007, and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, PR February 2008). Within the terms of the contract all publications of “corresponding authors” will be made available within the “Open Choice” scheme.

Over the past decade, the landscape of scholarly publishing in Germany (and other parts of continental Europe) has seen a significant trend in the resurgence of not-for-profit university presses: Kassel university press in 1997, Hamburg university press in 2002, followed by the Universitätsverlag Karlsruhe and Universitätsverlag Göttingen in 2003, Potsdam 2004, Ilmenau 2006. Further new presses are in the course of formation such as Bamberg or Heidelberg. A common trait of these presses is their close relationship within the academic institutions, especially to libraries, and a strong commitment to Open Access publishing.

The Universitätsverlag at Goettingen University is participating in the project OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks), together with Amsterdam University Press, Manchester University Press, Firenze University Press, Presses Universitaire de Lyon, Museum Tusculanum Press, Amsterdam University and Leiden University. The OAPEN project aims to develop and implement OA publication models for peer reviewed books in the Humanities and Social Sciences on the basis of a OA publishing platform. The project reaches out to offer solutions to both publishers and other stakeholders, as authors, libraries, research funders, and policy makers.

The DRIVER wiki may be a useful source of further information.

Are there developments in this country that you would like to inform the DRIVER community about? If so, please visit the DRIVER wiki. There you will find guest editors' contributions to the countries pages. Information about the easy process of editing pages and how to obtain a password can be found on the wiki under "PmWiki Software". We look forward to your visit.

Last updated: 14-Nov-2008