Open Access Week 2024 – Change my mind!

The panelists agree on the fact that “Open Access is important and the right way” – but not at all costs.

Adherents of Chemnitz University of Technology on the fields of research and teaching, junior scientists and students met the Open Science Team last week within the International Open Access Week

On Monday, Magdalena Lemke from the Open Science Initiative of the Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences started within an event of the student initiative “Critical Introduction Days” (KRETA) with a sceptic question and a reflected answer: “Science for All? Open Science and capitalist structures”. Within the workshop, not only interesting information about objectives of Open Science, the history of Open Access and current developments were presented – but also critical topics like high publication charges and the re-emerging monopoly position of some publishers were intensively discussed.

The day after, the Open Science Team made the more or less provocative assumption “All research results shall be open to the public. CHANGE MY MIND!”. This statement provoked discussions – some were immediately convinced, others questioned this assumption and talked about barriers and doubts. In that way, a valuable exchange resulted enabling a mutual insight in the publication culture and practice of different subjects on the one hand and in the (Open Science) services of the Library on the other.

On Thursday, the Open Science Team met with invited speakers and interested persons for a controversial discussion. The contributions included criticism towards excessive charges for Open Access articles as well as the partly deficient quality of peer review-procedures applying to Open Access- as well as to Non-Open Access-journals. In particular, the business practices of the Open Access-publisher MDPI was criticized. The mass sending of emails to authors inviting for publication, editorial activities or reviews were judged as especially annoying. However, the publisher also includes recognized journals with high impact and DOAJ-Seal (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) as quality label. For this reason, a particularly comprehensive check of the respective journal is recommendable.

Extremely high article processing charges such as raised by Nature may exclude certain user groups from publication. In this context, the publishers argue with their high editorial expenses. Research results may be made openly accessible currently also without costs on preprintservers. However, in general they are not reviewed. In addition, publishers and/ or Academies of Sciences may offer scientific publications of particularly high quality in the form of special editions or generate added value by abstracts. The particularly challenging publishing conditions for doctoral students were aborded as well. Severe time constraints may force for selection of publishers with short review delays. A comment from the audience addressed also cumulative academic works which have to be published in compliance with legal regulations. In the end, the interesting discussion had to be terminated for the moment due to time restrictions. The event was a successful start for a mutual exchange which has to be continued in any case.

The dedication of awards to Open Access-pioneers at Chemnitz University of Technology was the conclusion and the highlight of the activities within the Open Access Week. Awards in different categories rewarded the engagement on different paths to Open Access: the Green Way (publications in repositories, 2023), the Golden Way (publications in Gold-Open Access-journals, 2023) and the Diamond Way (management of the Open Access-journal “Journal for Semiotics”) being published as print by Stauffenburg Publishing. The editors, Professur Fricke and Dr. Siefkes, were awarded for their successful negotiations for time-shift Open Access-publishing of the editions.

Awarded as well was the first University Library-funded Open Access monograph “Deutsche Jüd_innen in Chile: Bürger:innenwerdung im Kontext von historischen Verflechtungen und Rassismusinformationen“ by Dr. Ana Maria Troncoso. This book will be shortly available at Transcript Publishing with the license CC BY 4.0.

We thank all participants for the interesting conversations, opinions and discussions and are looking forward to jointly further promote and enhance Open Science.