Open Access Event at Empa

Open Access refers to providing free online access to research articles. Last Monday, researchers at Empa were invited to discuss the challenges and opportunities of Open Access publishing. Gian-Luca Bona gave an introduction to the seminar Open Access publishing: How should Empa-researchers respond?. He also announced the recent signing of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. As a signatory, Empa encourages its researchers to publish Open Access.

In their presentation, Lothar Nunnenmacher & Jochen Bihn, gave an overview of the strategies to achieve open access (self-archiving in repositories – «green OA», publishing in Open Access journals – «gold OA»), topics that are currently under discussion in Open Access, and the trends in Open Access publishing worldwide and at Empa.

→ Presentation Slides Nunnenmacher & Bihn (PDF): Open Access at Empa – Current Developments and Challenges

Stefan Reimann shared his experiences with publishing in an Open Access journal. He explained the «Public Peer Review» process practiced by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics published by the Open Access publisher Copernicus Publications and pointed to some possible advantages and disadvantages of this variant of peer review.

→ Presentation Slides Reimann (PDF): Experiences with open-access publication

The lively discussion afterwards was moderated by Andrea Ulrich at Empa Dübendorf, Peter Wick at Empa St Gallen, and Johannes Michler at Empa Thun.

Open Access is becoming increasingly important in the scientific publishing landscape. In this context, Eawag, Empa, PSI, and WSL are considering a joint policy on Open Access. The launch of an institutional repository later this year will allow scientists at Empa to self-archive their publications («green» Open Access). Even today, Empa supports publication in Open Access journals. Details about the conditions for financial support are available on our webpage on Open Access.