Open-Access-Transformation with DeepGreen: Lifting the (green) treasure

Abstract

The DeepGreen project, funded by the German Science Foundation since 2016, aims to support the open access transformation of German science by automatically transferring articles into the green path of Open Access, if allowed by licence. Therefore the project partners – the library consortia Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV) and Bavarian Library Network (BVB), the Bavarian State Library (BSB), the university library of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the university library of the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) and the Helmholtz Open Science Coordination Office at the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) – have prototypically developed a data hub based on existing software components: Participating publishers can provide metadata and deliver full texts cyclically via defined interfaces; data and full texts will be forwarded to authorized institutional repositories in accordance with legal requirements. As pilot partners, the publishers S. Karger and SAGE Publications were acquired, other publishers participated with delivering test data. In the project phase 2016-2017, DeepGreen focused on the so-called Alliance licenses, which have been negotiated between publishers and libraries since 2011. They contain specific regulations on green Open Access, which represent a huge added value compared to the usual “self-archiving policies” of publishers: Authorized authors and their institutions may generally put their publications (the published PDF-version) into a repository of their choice and make it publicly available directly or after a shortened embargo period. In practice, this option has not been used much so far, but DeepGreen aims to change this in the future. In addition, DeepGreen examines the possible extension of the system to other licensing models and new data reusers during the second project phase 2018-2020.