Open Access in German research – Results of the FP7 funded project “Study of Open Access Publishing” (SOAP)

Within the “Study of Open Access Publishing” (SOAP, a FP7 funded European project, http://soap-fp7.eu, project duration March 2009 until February 2011) a comprehensive study has been conducted on the golden road to Open Access. The project partners (publishers and scientific organizations) jointly designed a large-scale survey to which more than 40,000 researchers responded. This paper presents and discusses the responses of 3,000 researchers based in Germany. Results of 12 selected questions from the original 23-piece set of questions provide an insight into researchers’ publishing behavior and their attitudes towards Open Access publishing. Survey respondents in Germany exhibited a very positive opinion on Open Access, which coincides with the worldwide data. A significant proportion of the researchers working in Germany have had experience with Open Access publications. Funding publication fees has been specified as one of the main barriers to publish in Open Access. Different funding sources are used to pay for Open Access fees: Researchers in Germany, in particular the employees of research institutions, often use institutional funds