Deposit Publications

Please make sure you have the rights to make your document openly available electronically: all authors need to consent, and in case of a pre- or postprint the publisher needs to agree to the publication on an institutional publication server. If the publisher "reserves all rights", because you granted the publisher exclusive rights, you need negotiate non-exclusive rights retroactively. Many commercial publishers refuse this or grant it only for a preprint version of your text. Particularly for journal articles, querying the Sherpa/RoMEO database can be helpful since it documents standard author agreements of many publishers. In addition, make sure that you have the rights to make elements created by others (images, graphics, illustrations, etc.) openly available electronically, in case you want to include them in your document. If necessary, proof of this must be provided (e.g. documentation of the correspondence with the rights holders).

In order to enable unambiguous referencing, it is recommended to include the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) ​​reserved by us in a suitable place (in the imprint, on the first page, in the header or footer) in the document.

Central documents of the Open Access movement such as the "Berlin Declaration" advocate for open licensing. A reference to the chosen licence should be included in the language of the text or imprint of the document. For a Creative Commons licence, please use the following sentence (adapted to your chosen licence):

"This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"

If your document is part of a higher-level work, a corresponding bibliographical reference must also be included.

We can assist you creating a suitable cover sheet!

Individual contributions in collections can be made more visible by uploading them separately to pub.mdw.

For every publication published on pub.mdw that does not already have a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), we will assign one. The DOI enables unambiguous and long-term referencing of the publication. The unambiguity is also the reason why we do not assign a second DOI for the same publication. Additionly, the system always assigns a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), which is visible in the address bar of your browser when you open the pub.mdw upload. This URI is important for long-term archiving.

Licences clarify the possible uses of pub.mdw publications. Creative Commons (CC) is the most widely used licensing system for openly accessible resources on the Internet. In the case of pre- or postprints, please clarify whether the publisher holds exclusive rights on your publication, because then, only the publisher can decide on CC licensing. Individual elements of your publication (images, illustrations, tables, etc.) can also be licenced separately.

For open access publications, some research funders demand the most open licence, CC BY (e.g. FWF, also see Plan S). Under CC BY, the work can be used by anyone for all purposes – provided the authors are named – whereby any changes, so-called derivates, must be clearly marked (if a derivate is unacceptable to you, you can request not to be named). The licence conditions of CC BY are clear and hardly need any interpretation.

The Creative Commons licensing system offers the possibility to add restrictions to CC BY:

1. Choose a licence variant with "ND – NoDerivates" if you want prevent others from creating a derivate or want to be consulted before a derivate is created. Please keep in mind that it is not possible then for others to use parts of the work in teaching, translations or transferring to another technical format, e.g. for archiving, without this consultation. Please make sure that you can be reached, e.g. by specifying your ORCID in the publication, and always store your current contact information in your ORCID profile.

2. With the restriction to "NC – NonCommercial" you prevent others from benefitting commercially from your work. Distribution, for instance, via common social media platforms, blogs financed by advertising and in printed materials offered for a charge, e.g. readers for students, is then only possible when you explicitely permit these usages in each individual case. Should you nevertheless wish to restrict the usage to non-commercial use, please always make sure that you can be reached for enquiries.

3. Licence variants with "SA – ShareAlike" specify that the same licence is used for derivates. This way, you can ensure that your publication is not used under conditions that are more restrictive or more open than you prefer. In some contexts, especially artistic ones, however, certain other licences are required. Additionally, only works with the same licences can then be combined, which is very restrictive. Because it is difficult to anticipate usage scenarios, please make sure here, too, that you can be reached for enquiries.

The publisher's version/version of record went through the publisher's peer review process; in the case of the PDF version, the layout is complete and the final page numbers are added (this version can also appear in other file formats on the publisher's website). The publisher's version is preferred for referencing, but not all publishers allow this version to be published on a publication server (more information can be found here).

Preprints are submitted manuscript versions that are intended for publication in a journal, but have not yet been assessed and accepted for publication.

Postprints are peer-reviewed manuscript versions that have been accepted by the publisher, but which have not yet been transferred to the final appearance/layout of the publication medium.

Many publishers set so-called embargo periods which need to pass before an open access publication is permitted. Please ensure that no embargo periods are violated if you want to publish on pub.mdw.

No, it is currently not planned to publish access statistics.

​ Yes. The "FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship" were published in 2016 introducing guidelines to improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse of data.

• Findable: both humans and computers can easily find and uniquely identify data using standardized metadata.​
• Accessible: data is stored for long term use and can easily be accessed with well-defined access conditions for the metadata record and the actual data itself.
• Interoperable: data and metadata can be exchanged and related with other data easily by both humans and computers using standardized metadata sets and controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies.
• Reusable: data is available to be used by the respective audiences, e. g. researchers, students, or musicians; thus new research can build upon existing research and outputs; this requires content to be available under open licences and provenance information (ensuring the usability of the data). ​

pub.mdw's goal is to provide open access publications according to the FAIR guidelines. Please consider FAIR principles from the very start of your research project. For further information on the FAIR principles please see the Go FAIR website.