All WZB researchers are welcome to contact us (openaccess [at] wzb.eu), for customized individual advising on various aspects of Open Access publishing.

Prior to scheduling an advising session, you may want to look at the comments and information below, which provides answers to general and frequently asked questions.

The best online resource for detailed information and many practical tips on all aspects of Open Access is the information platform open-access.net.

The platform's oa.finder shows the open access status of over 57,000 journals, their impact, whether they charge APCs and how high these are, as well as whether institutions such as the WZB cover these publication costs via a transformation contract or publication fund.

First search for the WZB, for example, under “My organization”.
Since the agreements of the selected organization with individual publishers are taken into account in the database, please deactivate the preset filter “oa_status=”Gold Open Access”. However, a thematic preselection under “Subject” can be helpful.

In general, journals can be filtered by subject area and keywords, or searched by publisher and ISSN.

Open Access to publications and data in FP7 and Horizon 2020

Open Access to peer-reviewed scientific journal articles is mandatory in "Horizon 2020". In some areas of "Horizon 2020", research data should be made publicly available, too. Moreover, there is EU funding for FP7 post-grant Open Access publishing.

There are several online resources with more information about "Open Access" an "Horizon 2020" and FP7:

• The EU Commission has published a fact sheet with useful information about Open Access in "Horizon 2020". This document can be downloaded here.
• Moreover, OpenAire provides a web service and FAQs concerning
  FP7 post-grant Open Access publishing funds.

Social science Open Access journals

The number of Open Access journals for the social sciences is growing. Those social science journals which are listed in the DOAJ meet certain quality criteria. According to the DOAJ, most of these journals do not levy publication fees.

Moreover, the Forschungszentrum Jülich provides a list of social science Open Access journals which are listed both in the DOAJ and in the Social Science Citation Index, a part of the Web of Science. These journals have to meet even more selective quality criteria.

Predatory (open access) publishers

Some WZB employees have already been contacted by publishers (e.g. InTech, Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP)) pretending to promote the open access publication of WZB research results by making them available online - if a fee is paid for this service by the respective authors. Although those publishers usually keep their promise, doubts about the quality of those publishers and the sustainability of their publication models seem to be more than appropriate.

Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, has tried to create a list of those "predatory" open-access publishers. You can find the list online at http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers. Moreover, have a look at the following presentation by Anne-Wil Harzing, Professor in International Management at the University of Melbourne: http://www.harzing.com/download/predatoryoa.pdf.