FAQ

The aim of open access is to offer free, unlimited access to academic literature via the internet. This free access achieves greater visibility, which in turn leads to a higher citation frequency. In practice, two different routes for the implementation of open access have taken root: the "green" route and the "golden" route.

The "green route" (external link) involves the self-archiving of academic papers on an institutional (e.g. Research Collection (external link)) or subject-specific document server (e.g. arXiv.org (external link)).

The "golden route" (external link) refers to the primary publication of academic papers via an open-access publisher. ETH Zurich supports this route by enabling its members to publish for free or with a discount in a series of open access journals.

ETH Zurich's goal is to render the research results obtained at the university accessible as fully as possible via the internet based on the principle of open access. In July 2008 the Executive Board agreed on an open-access policy for the university, which calls upon all academic members of staff at ETH Zurich to actively help implement open access.

A document server (also repository or publication server) is a database for publishing and archiving electronic publications. A distinction is drawn between institutional and subject-specific document servers:

An institutional (often interdisciplinary) document server (e.g. Research Collection) pools an institution's research results. A subject-specific document server (e.g. arXiv.org, bioRxiv), on the other hand, pools the research results of individual subjects across institutions and countries.

The Research Collection (external link) is ETH Zurich's repository for publications and research data. This service by ETH Library offers all members of ETH Zurich a publication platform outside traditional publishing.

Articles in open-access journals are usually funded via publication fees – so-called Article Processing Charges (external link) (APCs) – which are either paid by the authors themselves (e.g. from research or project funds) or covered via their own institution's membership.

For the right to access the full texts of a subscription journal, a licence fee needs to be paid to the publisher in question. The library covers the fee for a campus licence. By contrast, the contents of open access journals are freely accessible via the internet.

Hybrid journals are traditional subscription journals that allow authors to render individual articles freely accessible on the internet after paying a fee (APCs).

A preprint or non-peer-reviewed author’s manuscript is the version of a journal paper prior to the peer review process.

A postprint or AAM (Author's Accepted Manuscript) is the peer-reviewed author's manuscript. The postprint contains all changes and adjustments resulting from the peer review process. It is the manuscript most recently written by the author and accepted by the publisher for publication. The postprint is identical to the publisher's PDF in terms of content, but does not contain the publisher's layout or logo. It should be clearly marked as such and contain a link to the publication at the publisher, ideally by DOI (example).