Welcome

Welcome to our self-learning course "Open Access Publishing for Doctoral Students"!

This is a translated and updated version of our German course from 2025  "Open-Access-Publizieren für Promovierende".

This course and all its content are accessible to guest visitors. Due to technical reasons, registration and enrollment in the course are necessary if you would like to participate in the three tests and acquire a certificate of attendance.

The course is designed for doctoral students finishing their dissertations in Germany, as well as for those who work in publication consulting. You'll discover the advantages of open access publishing and different forms of dissertations. You'll be able to grasp what you must pay attention to when publishing, including choosing the right licences, securing funding and finding a suitable journal as well as a publisher.

It takes approximately 45 minutes to complete the course.

The course was published in 2026 under a CC BY 4.0-License. Please feel free to reuse the content. Authors of the German version are Carolin Becklas (TIB, ORCID) and Helene Strauß (TIB, ORCID). Graphics used in the course are created by Jonas Hauss and are also available for reuse under CC BY license. Translated by Katharina Schicketanz and Wenxin Shangguan in 2025.

The course was created as a part of the open-access.network 2 project, funded by Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR, formerly BMBF) 2023-2025.