OpenAccessInitiativen

OpenAccessInitiativen is a term used to describe networks, associations, and campaigns that promote open access to scholarly outputs, including research articles, data, and educational resources. These initiatives aim to make research freely accessible, revisable, and redistributable, expanding visibility and impact across disciplines and borders.

The initiatives operate at national, regional, institutional, or disciplinary levels and seek to remove paywalls, support the development of open repositories, and encourage the use of licenses that permit reuse, such as Creative Commons. They often work to strengthen infrastructure, policy, and capacity building, while coordinating with stakeholders to align practices with broader open science goals.

Key actors commonly include libraries, universities, research institutes, funding agencies, scholarly societies, publishers, and civil society organizations. Activities encompass advocacy and policy development, creation and funding of repositories, governance of OA journals, organization of events, and provision of guidance on licensing, rights retention, and metadata standards. They may also offer training on open access workflows and quality assurance.

OpenAccessInitiativen relate to various OA models, such as Green OA (repositories), Gold OA (open access journals, sometimes with article processing charges), and Diamond OA (no author fees). Licenses typically emphasize reuse, with CC BY often prioritized. Initiatives also strive to harmonize national policies with international standards and declarations, including the Berlin Declaration and funder-driven plans like Plan S.

Challenges include sustainable funding, quality control, licensing complexity, and regional disparities in access. Despite these concerns, OpenAccessInitiativen have contributed to greater accessibility, discoverability, and collaboration in scholarly communication.