Open Access
As one of the signatories to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in 2003, the Max Planck Society (MPG) is committed to the goal of providing free and open access to all publications and data from scholarly research. “Free and open access” means that anyone can read, download, or print research output.
As part of the MPG, the MPIfG is likewise committed to the principles of open access and supports its researchers in using open access publishing models. A distinction is generally made between "gold open access" (gold OA) and "green open access" (green OA).
Gold
Gold OA makes articles published online in open access journals freely available on publication.
Authors have two main options for the gold OA route. In the MPIfG Discussion Papers series, which features articles that originate in current research projects and usually go on to be published in scholarly journals, the papers are freely available as soon as they are published online.
The other option is the central service offered by the Max Planck Digital Library, which has cooperation agreements with a number of publishers and provides financial support with publication.
Green
The green open access route refers to when an article that has already been published in a subscription journal is published ("second publication") on a private homepage, a research institution's website, or on a freely accessible publication server. In the Max Planck Society's institutional repository, MPG.PuRe, the MPIfG implements the green route wherever possible, which helps to significantly raise the visibility of its publications.
The MPIfG Books series is published by Campus and includes monographs and collections that are intended for a wide specialist readership. PDF versions of the works published in the series become freely available after an embargo period of generally three years.