Open Access Policy

Open Access Policy of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

In accordance with the mission statement of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin:

Humboldt's ideal of the coexistence of research and teaching has become a model for universities all over the world. Central to this model is the idea of research-oriented teaching and the transfer of knowledge from the spirit of research. Students and teachers are joined together in an endeavour to critically examine traditional bodies of knowledge and to actively advance learning. For this reason, the Humboldt-Universität promotes social and communicative competences among all of its members and supports their initiatives wherever it can. (paragraph 4)

the researchers of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin support the global open access initiative and in 2006 have endorsed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

Open access is understood to mean free and public digital access to scholarly results. Users should be able to read, copy, distribute, print, search, refer to and otherwise use the full texts in every conceivable legal way without encountering financial, legal or technical barriers. The copyrights of the authors are not affected, because for the users the reference to the authors is a self-evident obligation.

In accordance with our university's mission statement, open access is based on the principle that there should be free equal access for all people to the results of scholarly work. Open access publications achieve a high degree of general accessibility and availability. It has been shown that they are read and cited more frequently than publications with access barriers, so that the university's researchers and their output are more widely acknowledged.

Humboldt-Universität therefore strongly recommends to all its members to publish their research results open access. The following guidelines apply:

1. Humboldt-Universität recommends to publish research results under an open licence (preferably CC BY). The university supports publishing activities through general agreements or publication funds, among other things, if no third-party funding is available.

2. Humboldt-Universität calls upon its members to actively exercise their right of secondary publication and to publish all publications concurrently or after respective embargo periods via repositories, such as established subject repositories or the edoc-Server as the certified open access publication server of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The university guarantees the authenticity, integrity and unambiguous citability of the publications deposited on this server. This simultaneously ensures worldwide availability and long-term archiving.

3. Humboldt-Universität encourages its members to exercise their authors' rights and to transfer only non-exclusive use rights when entering into publishing agreements.

4. Humboldt-Universität recommends that its researchers act as reviewers or editors of open access publications.

5. In-house publications of Humboldt-Universität are published under an open licence (preferably CC BY), provided that there are no legal circumstances to the contrary.

6. Humboldt-Universität has appointed an Open Access Officer to implement the Open Access Policy. The University Library coordinates the open access activities of Humboldt-Universität and supports its members by providing appropriate services and support.

7. Humboldt-Universität supports free access to research data. The recommended handling of research data in accordance with the FAIR principles is determined by Humboldt-Universität's Research Data Management Policy and the supplementary guidelines.

8. Humboldt-Universität expressly recommends that university members use the open persistent identifier ORCID, which guarantees a unique link between individuals and publications and research data.

Alongside the effect of free and unhindered access to the results of creative work, the growing open access portfolio generates an impressive overall picture of Humboldt-Universität's scientific contribution.

First adopted by the Academic Senate of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on May 9, 2006. Updated and expanded version adopted by the Academic Senate on October 26, 2021.

Translated from the official German version by the University Library's Open Access team.