Publishing Open Access

As part of its Open Access Policy and the Excellence Strategy, RWTH supports the Open Access model in accordance with the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. In particular, RWTH has concluded a number of open access agreements with academic publishers (esp. as part of the DEAL initiative), from which you as readers and authors can benefit. Since 01.01.2024, an open access publication fund is available, which can be used to cover the costs of open access publication. Furthermore, in many cases authors are additionally relieved by central invoicing to the University Library. You can find more detailed information on this, esp. on the possiblities of cost coverage, on the University Library website. The service is available to all authors who are employed at the Faculty of Medicine or the University Hospital.

The DFG also expressly supports Open Access and participates in the financing of the publication fund.

Information on a large number of Open Access journals can also be found in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Open Access journals that fulfill a number of quality criteria are included in this database after application. This quality assurance also offers a certain degree of protection against predatory journals.

If you would like to find out about the open access policies (e.g. embargo periods and costs) of journals, e.g. about the framework conditions for secondary publication, you can do this using the Sherpa Romeo tool.