Public Access Week: How do we do it in Germany?

Starting this week, papers submitted from NIH-funded research have to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after publication. But what is the current situation in Germany, especially mandatory Open Access?

The Berlin Declaration from October 2003 was a strong statement of support for Open Access and was signed by all major research and funding organizations, including Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG), Helmholtz-Gesellschaft, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and Leibniz-Gemeinschaft. In contrast to the new NIH public access policy (and the Welcome Trust and Howard Hughes Medical Institute), there is no mandatory Open Access in any of these organizations.

The German Publisher Springer, one of the largest STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publishers, has a Springer Open Choice option. Authors who pay for this option will retain the copyright of their paper and the article will be made available with full Open Access.