Open Access in the Helmholtz Association
The Helmholtz Open Access Policy
Open Access, the unrestricted access to scientific publications and cultural heritage, is an ongoing and future trend in the scientific landscape worldwide. Research publications and other digital objects such as research data will thus be publicly available on the internet.
The Helmholtz Association was one of the initial signatories of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities” in 2003. This commitment towards open access was then formally approved on by its Assembly of Members (assembly of the directors of the Helmholtz Centres): ”Publications from the Helmholtz Association shall in future, without exception, be available free of charge, in so far no conflicting Agreement with the publishers or others exists.” (Agreement of the Assembly of Members, 27.09.2004).
The Helmholtz Open Access Project
Since 2005 the Helmholtz Open Access Project supports the scientists as well as the respective Helmholtz Centres in the realisation of Open Access. The project´s Newsletter and the Helmholtz Open Access Workshops are only two examples of how the project informs and advises employees about new developments, strategies, and ideas.
One example of the project’s success is that most Helmholtz Centres now run institutional repositories. These open accessible databases contain a significant and steadily growing share of the scientific output of the Helmholtz Association.
Regularly organised workshops support the establishment of a Helmholtz Open Access community. This community includes dedicated scientists who act as editors and/or members of the Review Board of Open Access Journals and who, in addition, continue to develop the idea of open access in their individual Research Centres.
The open access to research data will in the future be an indispensable part of scientific culture and will generate a considerable added value to science. Even today, “data sharing” already has a high relevance for the many Centres within the Helmholtz Association. A growing number of data centres with open access - including two of a total of three ICSU-World Data Centres in Germany - are run by Helmholtz Centres. Helmholtz scientists are actively involved in national and international initiatives related to open data.
Open Access in Helmholtz Centres
The "green road" to open access
Most of the 15 Helmholtz research centres run institutional repositories, which are often closely related to the centre´s publication database and provide an OAI-PMH interface. In some research centres, scientists are explicitly requested to deposit the final drafts of their publications in the repository, given that copyright regulations with publishers are not infringed. To prevent the latter, Helmholtz scientists are asked to retain the respective copyrights when publishing with a traditional, non-open access publisher. Besides repositories for text publications only, an increasing number of data-repositories are established by Helmholtz centres.
The "golden road" to open access
Helmholtz scientists are active as founders, editors and reviewers of open access journals and closely collaborate with the Open Access Project. Furthermore, many centres support open access journals through institutional memberships and Helmholtz centres play an active role in the pioneering „Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP³)“. The publication of peer reviewed research data is strongly promoted e.g. by the innovative journal „Earth System Science Data (ESSD)“, which is supported by Helmholtz scientists.
Open access to research data
Provision of and access to research data is of high priority for Helmholtz centres, not at least because many centres run internationally well reputed large research infrastructures and devices. In spite of positive experiences in eg. the geo- and life sciences, there are many technical, organizational and cultural challenges in respect of open data. One of these challenges is to guarantee finding, trustability, and persistence of research data. Model licenses to protect usage- and copyright on the one hand and to maximize societal benefit on the other hand are still to be developed in most cases.
An important and worldwide recognized project is „Publication and Citation of Scientific Primary Data“ (STD-DOI), funded by the German Science Foundation and pushed forward by Helmholtz centres, among others. Its aim is to make primary scientific data citeable as publications. Results from this project were integrated in PANGAEA, the prize-winning „Publishing Network for Geoscientific & Environmental Data”, a database run mainly by AWI, the Alfred-Wegener-Institut for Polar- und marine research.
Further Helmholtz centres provide open access to research data: GFZ, the German research centre for geosciences, hosts the "Scientific Drilling Database", where data from the International Continental Drilling Project (ICDP) are published using Creative-Commons-licenses. Moreover, two of a total of three ICSU-World Data Centres in Germany are run by Helmholtz Centres.
For employees of facilities of the Helmholtz Association
For employees of facilities of the Helmholtz Association further information on Open Access in the Helmholtz Association is available.
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Letzte Änderung: 31.03.2009
