OA-Takeaways 6: Trends zu Open Access und Publikationsgebühren - Open Access Brandenburg

Anyone who has been involved in the development of Open Access for some time and remembers the early discussions about the 'colors' - especially gold versus green - as well as the general future prospects of the approach itself, will probably view the triumphant advance of Open Access in the scholarly journal sector with mixed feelings. Around 2003, for example, the Institute of Library Science at Humboldt University in Berlin encountered skeptical positions alongside the early Open Access euphoria, which received an enormous discursive and ideational boost from the Berlin Declaration: Open Access will not prevail because it cannot be financed, was one objection. Institutional repositories will only be relevant for otherwise barely publishable dissertations and incidental protocol notes, because such publication venues, which are poor in reputation, are death zones for any scientific career. Secondary publications, i.e., Green-OA, were considered an inordinate amount of work, and scientists* who have time for them may generally have too much time on their hands. 

A good twenty years later, some things have changed. Repositories may not be a successful model everywhere, but they have become a natural component of the scientific information infrastructure.