Senckenberg Open Access

Open Access at Leibniz Association

Since April 2018, Senckenberg Open Access publications (from publication year 2017) will be gradually added to the Leibniz Association’s Open Access platform:

Leibniz Open

Open Science and Digitization at Leibniz Association

Open Access Publication Fund of Leibniz Association

Leibniz Open Access Policy (pdf)

Open Access Publishing

Open Access in life sciences

Checklist Think – Check – Submit

Open Access publishing with DEAL Wiley

Open Access publishing with Taylor & Francis Leibniz PaR 2021 & 2022

Frequently-cited Open-Access-Journals

Copyright

Overview on copyright in academic work (pdf)

Creative Commons Copyright Licenses

Information on secondary publication rights

https://leibnizopen.de/leibniz

https://open-access.network/en/information-on-open-access/legal-issues/legal-issues-in-germany/copyright

https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/faces/ViewItemOverviewPage.jsp?itemId=item_2956897

As creators, authors always own all rights to their work, but they usually transfer so-called exploitation rights to a publisher in publishing contracts. As an author, you can choose between the following rights of use: 

Simple / non-exclusive usage rights
A simple right of use allows the work to be used in the approved manner, without excluding any use by the authors themselves or by third parties.The result: a publisher to which you have only transferred the simple right of use cannot prohibit you or third parties (e.g. the SGN) from further use. 

Exclusive / exclusive usage rights
If you grant the exclusive right to your work, the publisher can use it to the exclusion of all other persons.The result: A publisher to whom you have transferred the exclusive right of use can, for B. forbid to publish your work on your own homepage. 

Deletion of restrictive exploitation rights
In the case of new publishing contracts, only grant the simple rights of use for the electronic version of the document. In the simplest case, delete restrictive wording such as “exclusive” or “all” rights of use or “exclusive rights” for online publication from your publishing contract. In many cases, these changes are accepted by publishers. 

Contract amendments
As an alternative to deletions in the contract text, authors can add an addition to the publishing contract in order to obtain the simple right of use for publication e.g., to be published in the SGN repository. This addition must be countersigned by the publisher in order to be legally valid. The best-known contract addendum is the “Author’s Addendum” of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). 

Example: “For an online publication of the work, the publisher is granted a simple right of use. The author is free to place a digital copy of the document on a publicly accessible non-profit academic server for an unlimited period of time before / during / after the publication by the publisher. ” 

Recommendation
Give a publisher the exclusive rights (if any) for print products only. If you only assign simple rights for electronic publication, you can also publish your work in parallel on the SGN repository!