Open Access Publishing

Max Planck Society is known nationally and internationally for its strong commitment to the ideal of Open Access. In addition to advocating Open Access, Max Planck Society is building up structures to support Open Access compatible publication by its scientists. In principle there are two options available for scientist to make their publications freely available: The Golden Road and the Green Road to Open Access. Max Planck Society is supporting both ways and it does not prefer one way to the other.

The Green Road: free accessibility via the secondary publication (Self-Archiving)
Meanwhile, many publishers of traditional toll access journals have a policy in place allowing the authors of the articles published in their journals to make the pre-/postprint and in some cases even the publisher's version of the articles freely available via the website or the institutional repository of the institution with which the author is affiliated. This policy might include an embargo period. The use of this option does not involve any charges!

A first orientation on self-archiving policies by publishers is given by the SHERPA/ROMEO list.

Support for the Green Road
Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) is operating eDoc, the central institutional repository of the Max Planck Society. Publishing articles via eDoc greatly enhances their visibility and secures their long term preservation. eDoc will gradually be replaced by PubMan, a more sophisticated solution for Publication Management. PubMan will include new features which are especially designed to make self-archiving more comfortable, e.g. the option to insert embargo periods or save author contracts in the same dataset as the corresponding articles. Availability (in its different nuances between internal only to public) of all articles in eDoc/PubMan is determined by the author only!

The Golden Road: free accessibility of the primary publication
This is achieved by either publishing an article in a genuine Open Access journal or a hybrid journal. In so-called hybrid journals only some articles are freely available whereas genuine Open Access journals have a policy to allow free access to all of their articles. Frequently, in both cases a publication fee is charged from the author.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is giving an overview on genuine Open Access journals.

Support for the Golden Road
Since 1998 Max Planck Society publishes several genuine Open Access journals: the Living Reviews journal family which has constantly been growing over the years. For more information please refer to the Living Reviews Journal Portal. No charges are asked to publish there!

'''Furthermore, Max Planck Society has concluded agreements with a number of publishers/journals in order to relief the authors and their institutes of the financial and bureaucratic burden to pay individual publication fee to journals. Please refer to the current list below for details.'''

When publishing in a journal of the publishers listed below Max Planck scientists are asked to identify themselves as affiliated with Max Planck Society. They will then not be billed for making their article freely available. All agreements except the one with Springer limit the availability of MPDL-funding to articles which have a corresponding author affiliated to Max Planck Society.

List of Publishers with MPS-OA agreement
The current list of central MPS Open Access agreements can be found here:

https://www.mpdl.mpg.de/en/services/service-catalog/oa-goldpublishing

For Max Planck employees there are further information on the Open Access Wiki:

http://oa.mpdl.mpg.de/wiki