Open Access Policy at Leibniz University Hannover

Leibniz University Hannover supports the demand for open access to scientific knowledge as laid out in the "Berlin Declaration" of October 2003. In this way, Leibniz University Hannover is helping to ensure that research results are available in order to provide the greatest possible benefit to science, industry and society. Open access increases the visibility of scientific publications and makes it easier to check publication quality. With its Open Access Policy, Leibniz University Hannover adheres to the maxim of its namesake, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: "theoria cum praxi - All action should be directed towards the common good."

The Open Access Policy supplements the valid versions of the Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice, the Publication Guidelines and the Guidelines for Handling Research Data.

1. Leibniz University Hannover encourages its members to publish their scientific publications Open Access. Leibniz University Hannover recommends first publication as an Open Access publication under a free licence (preferably CC BY; text only available in German). This applies not only to journal articles, but also to other publication types such as monographs or proceedings.
    
2. Leibniz University Hannover encourages its members to retain the right to further use of their works when concluding publishing agreements and to transfer only simple rights of use.
    
3. Pure Open Access journals are to be preferred to those which publish only a part of the articles freely accessible, provided that the quality is guaranteed. In the case of publications, attention should be paid to the highest level of excellence.or authors should be supported in their publishing activities and the visibility and long-term availability of their research publications should be improved.
    
4. Leibniz University Hannover calls on university members to exercise their secondary publication rights and to additionally publish copies of their publications in parallel in the university's open access repository.
    
5.  Leibniz University Hannover calls on its members to actively participate in the transformation of the publication system towards Open Access. It expects all university members to evaluate their own activities in the context of reviewing, editing or publishing publications accordingly. It asks its members to use their own position to advocate for the Open Access transformation in publishing houses and professional societies. Commitment to non-commercial offerings is particularly advocated.

In its role as a university library, TIB supports the members of Leibniz University Hannover in Open Access publishing. Together with the university, it is committed to the transformation of scientific publishing to Open Access. University members are supported by an advisory service, an institutional full-text repository, a publication fund and by OA agreements with publishers. An Open Access platform is available for the publication of journals and proceedings.

Further information on the subject of Open Access is provided on the TIB website Publishing and Archiving.

Leibniz University Hannover is introducing Open Access monitoring to support a transparent, open and sustainable redesign of the scientific publication system.

Leibniz University aims to increase the share of OA publications in its total publications. It would like to quantify its efforts and thereby make them verifiable. The OA share of Leibniz University Hannover's publication volume is recorded using the research information system. Leibniz University Hannover also aims to increase the transparency of its decentralised publication costs.