General information about publishing
You can reach us again at the e-mail address hibs.oa (at) haw-hamburg (dot) de.
ORCID
ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is a recognised standard for identifying researchers. It makes it possible to clearly link a person with their publications and research activities. As of September 2020, it had over nine million users.
Here is a sample ORCID entry.
About ORCID
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ORCID is a non-profit organisation founded in 2010, the main goal of which is to create a system for clearly identifying authors so that contributions and affiliations can be securely linked to individuals – across disciplines, borders and time periods.
ORCID provides you with a permanent digital ID (the 16-digit individual ORCID iD), which is free of charge and which you alone possess and completely control. Your personal ORCID iD distinguishes you from other researchers and links you to your research activities throughout your entire career.
The ORCID iD solves the issue of incorrect attribution of publications to people with the same name, variants of the same name or name changes, or as a result of faulty transcription of umlauts and diacritics to other languages.
The ORCID platform displays a personal profile page under your ID which lists your research activities (publications, institutional affiliation, etc.) in accordance with the visibility settings you have selected.
The ORCID iD can be linked primarily to academic publications, but can also be connected to additional professional information such as memberships, scholarships or funding. You can also use your ORCID iD to share information with other systems (e.g. databanks such as Scopus, Google Scholar or ResearchGate).
An ORCID iD is increasingly being recommended for the identification of authors upon submission of articles to publishers, in proposals to funders, and when articles are uploaded to repositories.
Benefits of the ORCID iD
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- Personal ID that can be clearly linked to your own research activities
- Increased discoverability and visibility
- Enhancement of personal profile through name variations, academic CV, institutional affiliation, research projects, scholarships, etc.
- Complete control over your own information and the public visibility of the entries
- Permanent assignment and retention of the ORCID iD in the event of a change in name or institution
- Automated maintenance of publication list via data exchange (possible with Scopus, Web of Science, Crossref, Datacit, among others)
- Use of ORCID iD for identification upon submission of articles or proposals, or when uploading documents to repositories
- Contribution to the visibility and transparency of research activities
How do I obtain an ORCID iD?
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- You can register for your ORCID iD free of charge at ORCID.
- In the first step you only need to provide your name, a valid email address and a password.
- You can expand your profile at any time by adding additional information about publications, institutions, etc., as well as your individual visibility settings.
- To increase your visibility, you should at least link your publications to your ORCID iD.
Funding acknowledgements
Funding acknowledgements generally indicate the funding sources for research projects and the resulting publications. Through them, researchers make the financing of their research transparent and thus fulfil the frequently requested requirement to list the funding providers in publications. Additionally, the correct declaration of funding enables bibliometric analyses and assessments via databases such as Scopus or Web of Science.
In journal articles, information about funding sources is usually listed at the end under 'Funding' or 'Acknowledgements'. In monographs or edited books, the copyright page is often where funding information is listed. Depending on the funding institution, the provision of specific details about the funding may be required for publications – for example, in the case of the German Research Association (please see the list directly below for more information).
Making sure the funding acknowledgements are correct
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To make sure the funding acknowledgements in a publication are provided correctly, please note the following points:
- Please use your HAW Hamburg email account to communicate with publishers.
- In your publication, you should make clear which project or external funding ('research funding acknowledgement) it is the result of.
- 'Publication funding acknowledgements' indicate what financial support the authors have received to cover the costs of the publication process (e.g. DFG publication grants, printing-cost grants from foundations, etc.).
- Information about project-specific funding and the funding for the publication is often listed together in one section, which may be titled 'Funding' or 'Acknowledgements'.
- Please also specify your institutional affiliation to HAW Hamburg correctly so that it can be noted properly during the submission process and in bibliometric analyses and entries in databases (e.g. Scopus). The English name for the Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg is the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.
If you have questions, you can contact hibs.oa (at) haw-hamburg (dot) de anytime.
Notice of funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG)
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Publications supported by funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) are required to contain the following notice (see the DFG-Verwendungsrichtlinien [Guidelines for the use of funds]):
'Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – Projektnummer(n)'
In non-German publications:
'Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project number(s)'
The project number for the research project referred to is listed in the notice of funding or the GEPRIS project-funding database. If the publication stems from more than one project, the numbers need to be separated with semicolons.
Requirements for funding from the HAW Hamburg Publication Fund
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If funding has been received from the publication fund, this needs to be indicated in the article. Example sentences are as follows:
'Die Open-Access-Publikationsgebühr wurde durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg gefördert.'
In non-German publications:
'We gratefully acknowledge support for the article processing charge from the Open Access Publication Fund at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.'
Additional information about the publication fund is available here.
Reputable journals vs. predatory publishers
Journal and conference providers who intentionally ignore academic quality criteria are frequently referred to as fake or pseudo journals or predatory publishers. Their supposed disciplinary credibility is fake and they ignore established quality standards, ultimately to turn a profit from publication or conference fees. Open access publications are sometimes associated with these providers; however, predatory publishing is not a problem specific to open access.
Typical characteristics of disreputable publishers and conferences
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- Unsolicited, at times aggressive advertising of the offer via email
- Appearance of credibility through similarity of name to established journals and conferences as well as replication of visual brand
- No quality control processes such as peer review
- Editorial boards with unknown or fictional individuals and/or listing of members without their knowledge/permission
- Information about journal impact factor, publishers, board members that cannot be found in databanks or on the indviduals' personal websites
Think. Check. Submit.
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It is important to note that publishing your work with such dispreputable outlets is not in accordance with good academic practice and can negatively impact your academic career, as your contributions do not undergo a quality-control process.
DFG guidelines for good academic practice
When you are planning the publication of your research or attendance at conferences, you should always review whether the provider/organiser is reputable. There is usually not just one characteristic which makes it possible to recognise a lack of credibility. You can find various criteria that you should take into account when selecting a journal or publisher at thinkchecksubmit.org. A checklist for conferences is available at thinkcheckattend.org.
If you have questions or need support, please feel free to contact us: hibs.oa (at) haw-hamburg (dot) de
Copyright and publishing
The material contained in texts is generally protected by copyright and can only be used in a limited way. Academic institutions must reflect on the legal framework governing their own actions and create an infrastructure that provides their reading, researching and publishing members with free access to academic information.
Joint copyright, data privacy and embargoes
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In academia, texts are often published by more than one copyright holder, and all copyright holders generally have the same rights. If one of the authors wishes to publish a jointly written work, the other authors' consent is required. Accordingly, all of the copyright holders need to agree to the publication approach and any secondary publication, ideally in writing (see 'Secondary publications' below).
Beyond the text itself, authors also need to keep in mind which data are used. If the publication was generated in cooperation with a company, it could contain sensitive information that falls within the trade secrets category. In some cases, this information can only be published after a certain amount of time has passed. Confidentiality clauses and periods must also be observed for personal data.
The Act on Copyright and Related Rights (Urheberrechtsgesetzt) views edited collections as an exception. It prohibits further distribution of the contribution for one year (embargo) following publication in a collection. After this time, the copyright holders are permitted to publish their contribution elsewhere – for example, in an open access format. Detailed information is contained in Section 38 of the Act on Copyright and Related Rights.
Photos and graphics
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Photos and graphics are generally protected under copyright and can only be used with the photographer's consent.
The right to the protection of one's own image must also be observed. If it is possible to identify a person in a photo, they must consent to the publication. However, this does not apply to photos of large groups or if the person is in the background of a photo. When in doubt it is always better to obtain permission.
Open-content licences
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Open-content licences are standardised contracts with which the copyright holders provide rights of use to everyone. The licence serves to make the work accessible to as broad an audience as possible. An important question to consider here is whether you have already granted exclusive rights of use to a publisher.
There are different licence providers for open-content licences. Attribution of the copyright holders and the licence are almost always necessary. The biggest difference from a publisher contract is that only simple rights of use – rather than exclusive rights of use – are granted. The authors maintain a stronger legal position through an open-content licence.
Creative Commons licences
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Creative Commons licences are the most widely used open-content licences. The Creative Commons licences have three 'layers' of permitted usage, which can be applied for commercial use or non-commercial use. Attribution (Attribution – CC BY) is the simplest licence, and requires only that the copyright holders be credited. The next grade is sharing under the same conditions (Attribution-ShareAlike – CC BY-SA). This means that if you build upon the publication to create a new piece of work, the new work must be published using the same Creative Commons licence. The third licence, which is the most strict, permits reuse and distribution, but not adaptation (Attribution-NoDerivs – CC BY-ND). The additional letters 'NC' indicate that only non-commercial use is permitted.
Gold open access
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Gold open access refers to the initial publication of a text in an open access journal, monograph or collection. More on open-access publishing
These texts are usually published using a so-called free or open-content licence that stipulates which rights of use are granted and the requirements placed on subsequent users of the text.
The greatest advantage of gold open access is that copyright holders usually only grant simple rights of use. This generally takes place via an open-content licence, which is a standardised contract with which the copyright holders provide rights of use to everyone in order to make the work accessible to as broad an audience as possible.
The copyright holders' right to attribution and to acknowledgement of the work, as well as the guarantee that the work cannot be modified, remain in effect.
Green open access
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'Green open access' is also known as parallel or secondary publication. This means that the work has been published in a classical outlet with a publisher and is simultaneously published via an additional publication platform such as a repository or a website.
In this situation it is important to be certain which rights have been granted to the publisher – in particular the rights to reproduction and distribution. You should ensure that you still have the right to reproduce the work, and in what form. Most publishers give authors the right to publish pre-prints. Pre-print refers to the version of the text that does not contain the publisher's revisions and formatting. However, even this is not permitted by all publishers. Other publishers, in contrast, allow the distribution of the publisher version.
Important: Special agreements should always be obtained in writing to ensure legal certainty. For more information see the following section on secondary publications.
Secondary publications
When a text is published as a secondary publication, legal aspects also need to be taken into account. Copyright is the most important. It protects the copyright holders in terms of their intellectual and personal rights and how their work is used.
In contrast to publication with a publisher, which usually entails the granting of a wide range of rights of use to the publisher by the authors, open access publication means the rights of use remain with the authors. It is worthwhile not to grant exclusive or extensive rights of use to a publisher in the first place, or to negotiate an embargo period. The copyright belongs to the authors!
Publisher agreements
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Try not to give publishers exclusive rights of use. If you include the SPARC author addendeum with your publisher contract, you maintain simple rights of use for secondary publication using a repository. The addendum must be signed by the publisher in order to be legally valid.
Additional information about SPARC
You can find policies regarding parallel publications on publisher or journal websites, or you can use the howcanishareit.com website to find the secondary publication policies of the big publishers. SHERPA/RoMEO, a portal for comparing publisher contracts, makes it possible to research how individual publishers and journals normally handle authors' rights, as well as these publishers' positions on secondary publications.
If the results of your research are limited or unclear, it is worth contacting the publisher to clarify any outstanding details. You should communicate the following information to the publisher:
- Complete bibliographical information
- Purpose of your query
- Type of use (note the version you would like)
- Outlet of secondary publication and additional information on the (non-commercial) nature of the respository where applicable
- If the secondary publication will use a free licence, this information should be provided
If you are granted the necessary rights, secondary publication can take place. We recommend that you keep the affirmative response from the publisher on file.
Repositories and pre-print servers for secondary publications
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The Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) is a good place to search for open access repositories where it is possible to publish. It covers over 5,000 different respositories (as of September 2020).
You can find other repositories and pre-print servers listed under Outlets for open access publications.
Publications without full-text in REPOSIT
REPOSIT is online again. As a result of the cyber-attack, the verification process had to be changed. It is now possible to log in using your ORCID iD or a local account. You can contact us with questions anytime: openscience (at) haw-hamburg (dot) de.
REPOSIT is HAW Hamburg's new institutional repository and was developed as part of the Hamburg Open Science project. It includes, among other things, the data from the former Publication Database. This data is now being stored in REPOSIT in the collection of publications without full-text . This collection is a component of the Research Information System, which is currently administered by the Research and Transfer Department and the University Information and Library Service (HIBS). Please note that REPOSIT is currently in the beta stage.
'Publications without full-text' generally list only the information about the publication without an attachment containing the document/PDF (it is possible to link to external sources).
