The FID Political Science - Pollux supports political science researchers in Open Access publishing. On this section you will find a compact, practical overview with subject-specific information, tools and advice on the topic.
The open-access.network provides detailed information on Open Access.
Information and Advice
Identify & Verify Open Access Publications
Publication of Preprints
Secondary Publication at SSOAR
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us:
We will be happy to assist you.
Free access to research results in open access increases the quality of research, raises society's effectiveness and is therefore demanded by science policy. The German Science and Humanities Council emphasises, for example, that open access publications can be received, reviewed and reused more quickly and more widely by other researchers. Therefore, the publication system must change so that scientific works are immediately available free of charge and under an open licence (CC BY).
Open access is also becoming more and more established in political science. Pollux aims to promote Open Access in political science with its services and is particularly committed to so-called ‘Diamond Open Access Publishing’. The German Political Science Association (GPSA) also emphasises in its statement on Open Access and Open Science the importance of Diamond Open Access in cooperation with independent publishers or with non-profit research infrastructure institutions as an important precondition for the success of the Open Access transformation.
Open Access (OA) means making scientific publications freely available for reuse via the Internet. (see Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003)).
Maximum visibility
Your research can be found worldwide – without paywalls.
Higher citation probability
Studies show that OA publications are cited more frequently.
Is the open access citation advantage real? A systematic review of the citation of open access and subscription-based articles.
Langham-Putrow, A., Bakker, C., & Riegelman, A. (2021)
The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles
Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018)
Good scientific practice and consistency with funding guidelines
Research funding organisations such as the DFG and Horizon 2000 of the European Commission expect the results of publicly funded research projects to be published Open Access.
Tooltipp: ROARMAP
Overview of Open Access policies and mandates of funding organisations, research institutions and repositories
There are several ways to publish Open Access:
Gold Open Access
First publication directly in Open Access. Publication fees are required (e.g. Article Processing Charges, APC, or Book Processing Charges, BPC).
Green Open Access (self-archiving)
Secondary publication (usually free of charge) from restricted-access journals or books in open access repositories (e.g. Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR)).
Tooltipp
ROAR – Registry of Open Access Repositories international directory of open access repositories.
OpenDOAR – Directory of Open Access Repositories quality-checked, global directory of open access repositories.
In Germany, the following applies: : Even if you have published with a commercial publisher, you can often republish your work (usually the postprint) after an embargo period. (§38 Abs. 4 UrhG).
Tooltipp: Open policy finder
Overview of the policies of numerous magazine publishers
Hybrid model
Publication in a restricted-access journal with optional Open Access activation for a fee.
Diamond Open Access
Free of charge for both readers and authors (no APCs or BPCs), often scholar-led and non-commercial.
Publication possibilities:
Not everything that is open access is of high quality. So-called “predatory journals” are journals that use aggressive advertising and a supposedly professional appearance to encourage academic authors to publish articles in return for payment of a publication fee, but do not organise any or only deficient quality assurance measures (see also: open-access.network: predatory journals).
Pay attention to:
Tooltipp
Use the tool Think. Check. Submit. to verify journals. You can also find suitable journals with B!SON and the OAfinder.
For individual advice we recommend contacting the Open Access team at the library of your home institution or the oa.helpdesk.
Monographs, collected editions or conference papers can be published directly as open access e-books as first (Gold OA) or secondary (Green OA) publication. Pollux is funding, for example, the transcript open library Political Science, in which approximately 20 books have been published annually in open access since 2016.
More detailed information on open access books can be found at open-access.network.
Tooltipp
OA Books Toolkit informs authors about how open access works for books and supports them in publishing.
DOAB includes references of academic books published in open access.
For individual advice we recommend contacting the Open Access team at the library of your home institution or the oa.helpdesk.
When publishing in open access, it is essential to know and secure your own rights:
Detailed information on copyright, rights of use and various licences is available at open-access.network.
