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Open Access on the move: New association strengthens access to science!
The University of Konstanz coordinates the open access platform, promotes the exchange of knowledge and supports long-term networking for open science.
Open Access on the move: New association strengthens access to science!
The open-access.network platform, which has been operated by the since 2007 University of Konstanz has recently taken a significant step towards long-term support for Open Access in Germany. On September 17, 2025, the association open-access.network e.V. was founded, the aim of which is to promote the exchange of information and networking in the area of open access and to create further training opportunities. This initiative will be financially supported by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) until the end of 2025.
The new association is intended to give scientists, libraries and interested parties access to freely accessible materials and training courses. An important part of this support is the teaching of practical skills that focus on organizational, legal and technical issues related to open access. This is particularly relevant in a rapidly changing publishing environment.
Founding and board of directors
The founding meeting took place as part of this year's 19th Open Access Days University of Konstanz which took place from September 17th to 19th, 2025. Over 400 participants came together to discuss the motto "Mission Accomplished? Open Access and the reproduction of inequality in scientific publishing". This event was the largest German-language conference on Open Access and was organized by several institutions, including the KIM, the University of Technology, Economics and Design (HTWG) Konstanz and the Thurgau University of Education.
Anja Oberländer, who works at the KIM at the University of Konstanz, was elected as the first chairwoman of the new association. Marco Tullney from the TIB Technical Information Library takes on the role of second chairman. Other board members are Christoph Bruch as treasurer, Daniel Beucke and Maike Neufund as assessors. The next general meeting is planned for the first quarter of 2026.
Open Access and its advantages
Open Access refers to open access to scientific publications, which means that they are published free of charge and under open licenses such as Creative Commons. Such licenses allow the use of the works under certain conditions, such as attribution of the authors and non-commercial use. A crucial aspect of Open Access is that it distinguishes between publications with and without access restrictions.
As the German National Library (DNB) reports, publications without access restrictions can be used online freely and regardless of location, while those with access restrictions can only be viewed in the DNB reading rooms in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main. The DNB also provides machine-readable data sets as well as digital object collections for text and data mining.
The advantages of open access are clear: scientific work is accessible not only to students and researchers, but also to the general public. This helps spread knowledge and support an informed society. The association open-access.network e.V. is intended to further advance this development and help expand the possibilities of free access to scientific resources.