Heidelberg Open Access Services
Open Access enables free availability of academic publications on the internet. The University Library is making Open Access available to Heidelberg University through two new services: Heidelberg University Publishing (heiUP) and heiBOOKS. Research Alumni can use these platforms to publish their own scholarly works, as well as to access academic literature and materials by former Heidelberg colleagues.
The mission statement of heiUP emphasises “Heidelberg University Publishing is to provide free availability open access to outstanding academic publications. We see the opportunities afforded by digital publishing as a way to advance the visibility of research output beyond the confines of academic disciplines.“ The publishers’ portfolios include primarily monographs, edited volumes/proceedings, and textbooks, but innovative technology has allowed them to make published scholarly illustrated books and multimedia objects available as well. In addition to these primarily electronic formats in Open Access, heiUP also offers high-quality printed versions available as usual from bookstores.
The option of publishing is also open to Research Alumni, given a positive peer review process: “It is not the affiliation with Heidelberg University which determines the inclusion of a manuscript in our publishers, but the quality of the publication”, explains heiUP Managing Director Dr Maria Effinger. Those who are interested in publishing their work with Heidelberg University Publishing are asked to send a book proposal, along with a table of contents (in draft form), a 5–7 page synopsis of the project, a CV (2 pages), and – if available – a sample chapter to heiup@ub.uni-heidelberg.de. The heiUP board determines whether an intended project fits the scope and focus of the press and, if so, suggests two peer reviewers. Authors will then be asked to submit the complete manuscript, which will be sent out for peer review. heiUP offers comprehensive support throughout the publication process, including high-quality language editing assistance for both English and German texts, as well as support for preparing images, audio, and other multimedia data, and handling of both the layout and cover design process.
heiBOOKS offers doctoral candidates as well as researchers holding a current contract with Heidelberg University a possibility to publish their works; Research Alumni can use this platform and access these publications as well as all heiUP publications for their own research free of charge. Authors can also upload media files such as pictures, graphics, videos, or audio files related to the publication to the multimedia database heidICON and make use of permanent archiving of their research data on the Heidelberger Forschungsdatenrepositorium heiDATA. These can be linked directly with their online publications on heiBOOKS. Thus, all research data are permanently quotable and can be linked as independent scientific achievements. The heiBOOKS platform offers monographs, proceedings, or book series as PDF documents from all fields of science.
All heiUP and heiBOOKS publications get an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and are catalogued and referenced in national and international library catalogues and the full text is furthermore indexed by search engines. Book series are additionally equipped with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) for continuous serial publications. The published works are usually under a Creative Commons license (preferably CC-BY or CC-BY-SA).
