Open Access refers to the free access to scholarly literature on the Internet in order to make it freely accessible and reusable for everyone, free of charge and ideally without any technical or legal barriers. Open licences such as Creative Commons licences guarantee reusability.
As a signatory to the Berlin Declaration, TU Wien is committed to providing open access to scientific knowledge and promotes open access publishing under the strategic guidelines of its open access policy.
At TU Wien, the library and researchers are the main agents in the implementation and promotion of open access. In addition to providing infrastructures and technical services, consulting and promoting open access publications in journals, TU Wien Academic Press also supports the open access publishing of monographs and book series.
Impact of open access
An extensive meta-study on the impact of open access (Hopf, D. et al. 2022) found that
- open access leads to greater use (significantly higher downloads and page views) and a professionally and geographically more diverse audience,
- open access publications contribute more to knowledge transfer than traditionally published research results,
- most relevant studies confirm a citation advantage for open access publications.
Maximum reception through open access e-books and print edition
TU Wien Academic Press uses open access e-books as the standard format to assist all researchers in disseminating their scientific publications in the best way possible in accordance with TU Wien’s open access policy.
Publication as an e-book (Diamond Open Access), which is free of charge for authors and editors, offers an attractive publication opportunity for all members of TU Wien – be they doctoral students, project staff or members of the academic and artistic staff. The production of book publications that are made available for download for free and that are protected by license guarantees the authors a maximum probability of reception and citation. Print versions of books are available as an additional option where they play a role depending on the subject or publication.