Open Access Publication Funding / 2022-2024 / Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS GmbH

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Iris Pigeot
• Subject Area: Epidemiology and Medical Biometry/Statistics ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491079086

Open Access (OA) has been of increasing importance at BIPS over the past decade and now plays a predominant role in the publication culture of the institute. With the adoption of an OA policy in November 2016, BIPS demonstrated its commitment to the goals of OA. As a result, the institute library has continually expanded its advisory and information services regarding OA, contributing to steadily growing acceptance of OA at BIPS. The participation of the institute in transformation contracts such as DEAL and the publication fund of the Leibniz Association have also contributed significantly to the increase in the amount of OA publications at the institute. BIPS is confident that OA will continue to play a significant role in future scientific communication. However, a transformation process in the publication system towards OA is associated with considerable challenges, especially for comparatively small institutes and libraries (one person libraries—OPLs). It is very difficult to predict the necessary annual budget for OA publications and the researchers have a growing need for consultations and explanations. In addition, the constantly rising costs represent a major challenge.This project is intended to facilitate further progress in the transformation process of the publication system at BIPS in order to fully exploit the potential of OA for generating scientific knowledge. In particular, the processes for recording publication costs are to be further optimized in order to create the basis for a meaningful overall view of publication costs and to obtain more planning security with regard to annual publication costs. Furthermore, the information and consulting services offered by the library regarding the selection of the publication medium and appropriate licensing models will be expanded. BIPS recognizes the opportunity to contribute to the establishment of more transparency with regard to the costs of open access at research institutions, especially in the national context. This explicitly refers not only to the direct costs paid to publishers, but also to the increased workload for library staff due to the administrative as well as increasingly required advisory activities.

• DFG Programme: Science Communication, Research Data, eResearch (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)