As the author, you possess all rights to your scientific text until you sign a publication contract, with which you relinquish some of these rights to the publisher. How much you retain can be shaped actively before signing, and at least checked after signing.

Before signing: negotiate an author addendum

If you do not want to or cannot publish in an Open Access journal for any reason, agree an author addendum with the publisher – an author's addition to the standard contract that defines or changes the contractual conditions.

This enables you to protect important rights: for example, that you may publish your own articles and works on your personal website or in a digital repository, use them for teaching, or use them as the basis for future research. This makes it possible to use the green route of Open Access in the context of secondary publication, so you can at least make your publication freely available after an embargo period through self-archiving.

In Germany, there are also increasingly framework contracts for subscription journals that allow immediate publication in Open Access – for example the DEAL contracts with the publishers Wiley and SpringerNature.

Get in touch with the Open Access officers of your institution if you need help: they are experienced in applying author addenda that enable you to retain some or all of your rights.

After signing: what is already permitted?

Couldn't agree an addendum, or already signed? You typically still retain certain rights. Your publication contract may contain guidelines from the publisher on self-archiving, listing which version (preprint, postprint or final/published) you are allowed to share and which restrictions apply, such as embargo periods.

If your contract contains no such explanation, look for your publisher's self-archiving guidelines, or search for your journal in the Open policy finder for an overview of the relevant conditions. See also our post on Legal Issues for Open Science.

Irrespective of the rights granted to a publisher, in Germany you are entitled under the scientific right of self-archiving to make contributions from a collection appearing at least twice a year, such as a research journal, at least half of which were produced through publicly funded research, publicly accessible again as a second publication after twelve months.