OPEN FAU

The following categories of electronic documents are stored on and disseminated through OPEN FAU:

• Current publications as well as copies of previously published documents by FAU members with scientific content
• Series of publications from FAU
• Publications and series of publications such as collected editions, congress volumes, research reports, journals (e-journals) and series published by FAU members
• Documents that must be published according to examination regulations
• Final papers by FAU students, such as bachelor’s and master’s theses and theses for admission to state examinations (with at least 10 ECTS), are included if publication is recommended by supervisors or other teaching staff and if they are graded as “sehr gut” (excellent). The author must submit proof of this using the provided form.
• Automatic self-archiving of open access articles if at least one author is affiliated with FAU. This applies to publications from publishers that participate in the Deep Green delivery service.

Documents that have not undergone one of FAU’s internal quality assurance processes and do not meet the requirements for final papers and theses mentioned above, nor have been reviewed by the Academic Advisory Board (see the Regulations for the Scientific Advisory Board), may only be stored if they have undergone a recognized academic quality assurance process (e.g., peer review) or are addenda (e.g., research data, videos, images) to, or predecessors (e.g., preprint, working paper) of, documents that have undergone such processes.

The OPEN FAU search function (magnifying glass icon or https://open.fau.de/search) allows you to perform complex searches..

By default, a Boolean “AND” search is performed when multiple terms are entered (see the Wikipedia entry on Boolean algebra). This will return results that include each of the terms. “OR and NOT searches are also possible. For example, searching for “medical NOT care” will return results containing “medical” but not “care.”

Phrase searches, such as “medical care” (in quotation marks), return results containing the exact term.

Time range searches are also possible, for example dc.date.issued:[2007 TO 2022] or dc.date.issued:[2012 TO *].

The latter is a wildcard search. The wildcard character * can be used.

Certain metadata fields can be addressed by their Dublin Core element names. For example, a search for “dc.title:medical” returns results where the dc.title field contains “medical”. A search for “dc.title:medical AND dc.description.abstract:technology” will return results where dc.title contains “medical” and dc.description.abstract contains “technology”.

To publish a paper, you must register with either a Shibboleth identifier or an FAU email address (e.g., …@fau.de, …@uk-erlangen.de, or …@alumni.fau.de). Information on obtaining a valid email address as an alumnus can be found at: https://www.fau.eu/alumni/the-fau-network/benefit-from-the-network/#collapse_3. You do not need an FAU account to access and download already published documents.

Sometimes, the Shibboleth authentication will not work as expected, and you will be unable to log in. In these situations, we recommend creating an account with an FAU email address and password directly in Open FAU and using this account.

Your publication should be submitted as an archivable PDF/A file. Please check for display errors or shifted wraps after conversion. To allow for digital preservation, files may not be password- or copy-protected. There is a maximum size limit of 150 MB. For larger attachments and data for your publications, please use the FAU IT-Services for Research Data or dedicated data repositories as FAU Community by Zenodo for larger attachments and data for your publications.

Details

• OPEN FAU currently supports e.g. the following file formats: PDF, DOC(X), XLS(X), ZIP, AVI, MP3 and MP4.
• The size of the file should be as small as possible. The system only accepts uploads of files of up to 60 MB. If you cannot reduce the size of your file, please contact the OPEN FAU-team.
• For the file name, we recommend using a simple title without spaces or special characters, such as underscores. Example: Diss.pdf
• Special characters may only be used in the abstract, comment, and bibliographical reference fields. See  Markdown and MathJax for details.
• The document must not be copy-protected or have other restricted access settings. This is a requirement of the German National Library to ensure digital preservation. Moreover, no provision is made for restricting access to the documents through OPEN FAU itself, for example, by restricting access to certain IP ranges..
• If your work contains programs, files, video sequences, audio documents, or similar materials on a DVD-ROM enclosure, they must be prepared for publication as a compressed ZIP file and uploaded as well.
• If you encounter technical difficulties uploading your documents, please complete the form to the best of your ability and email your files to ub-repo(at)fau.de.

During the publication process, you can easily set legally binding conditions regarding the use and further use of your publication by choosing a CC license. However, you must hold the appropriate rights to use CC licenses, so you should check if you have transferred exclusive rights to a publisher, for example. If you need legal advice, you may contact our in-house counsel, Petra Heermann, during her office hours at +49 (0)9131-85-29394, or send her an email .

For license selection, you can use the Creative Commons License Chooser (https://creativecommons.org/choose/?lang=en) or the following overview as a guide:

Please note that your choice regarding non-commercial use may restrict the visibility of your document since this provision affects search engine providers and resource discovery systems. For more information on the individual licenses, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en.

Notes on CC licenses in the context of secondary publications or cumulative dissertations

Please adhere to the policies of the publishers or journals. For instance, some publishers only allow secondary publication or use in cumulative dissertations under an NC license. You can use Sherpa Romeo (https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo) to research publisher self-archiving policies. If the publications to be included in a cumulative dissertation are not all under the same CC license, include a note on any deviations from the CC license of the complete work. In accordance with § 17 para. 4, sentence 2, of the Promotion of Science and Research Act (PromO), provided that a reference to the publication is made in accordance with sentence 3, e.g., by means of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

Notes on cases where no CC license is allowed

In certain cases, the use of a CC license is prohibited. For example, this would apply if the publisher’s self-archiving policy excludes CC licenses (for eample, some Nature subscription journals: “Please note that the accepted manuscript may not be released under a Creative Commons license”), or if you have published with a German publisher and wish to republish according to § 38, para. 4 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz – UrhG), even though the publisher holds the exclusive rights of use (para. 4 only grants the right of public access and does not include any additional rights that may be included in CC licenses. In cases where you are self-archiving on the basis of § 38 para. 4 UrhG, and select “The copyright and license rights of the publisher and any open access rights negotiated with it apply” in all other cases, such as when a CC license is not possible due to publisher policies or other legal situations dependent on the publisher.

Dissemination

Your electronic publication is available from all over the world at any time and accessible free of charge. Open Access is therefore recommended by FAU as well the German Research Foundation and the German Rector’s Conference.

Proof of publication

Your publication may be found quickly and easily via Internet search.

Archiving and long-term availability

Your electronic publication will be permanently saved on OPEN FAU. Furthermore, doctoral and postdoctoral theses are forwarded to the German National Library’s archive server and digitally preserved there.

Free of charge

The service is free of charge for you. You can also save on OA option fees for subscription journals via a secondary publication.

OpenAIRE-Compliance

Open Access publication is mandatory in all EU projects. Open Access publications linked to an EU project must therefore be indicated in OpenAIRE. You can deposit your work in OpenAIRE automatically by publishing in OPEN FAU. Please enter your EU-Project number (metadata field “Identifiers”) for this.

To have the best experience with OPEN FAU, we recommend using Edge or Chrome on a laptop or PC. The website may display incorrectly and cause unexpected problems on Firefox and small mobile devices like tablets or mobile phones.

• Log in to OPEN FAU using the globe icon in the top right corner, then go to “My Publications” using the person icon in the top right corner.
• Drag your file into the designated area or upload the file.
• Select your document type.
• Fill out the upload form.

Please note that special characters can only be used in the abstract, comment, and bibliographical reference fields. For more details, see Markdown and MathJax.

• Regarding the license, please refer to the FAQ “Which license should I choose?”.
• Read the legal notice and agree by checking the appropriate checkbox.
• Submit your work.

After submitting your work, you will receive feedback from us via email, usually no later than the next business day.

For information on publishing dissertations, please refer to the FAQ “How do I publish my dissertation electronically on OPEN FAU?”

All information on dissertations can be found at your doctoral office and for library-based dissertation publications at the University Library’s Dissertation Office page: https://ub.fau.de/forschen/dissertationenstellen

In order to get a better experience with OPEN FAU, we recommend you to use Edge or Chrome and a laptop or PC. Firefox and small mobile devices like tablets or mobile phone may display incorrect the website and may cause unexpected problems.

Before publishing, please clarify whether a blocking notice (delayed publication of your dissertation for at least one year) may need to be applied for. Once your dissertation has been published, it cannot be subsequently embargoed.

1. Log in to DSpace and go to “My publications.”
2. Drag your dissertation file into the designated area or upload the file.
   Please double check your file before uploading according to the following criteria:
   • Are my title pages designed according to the specifications of the latest RPromO?
   • Are the date of the oral examination and reviewer(s) noted?
   • Are all personal data removed that I do not want to publish? For example, place of birth on the title page, private thanks, dedications and especially your curriculum vitae.
   • Is the file in PDF/A standard?
   • Are all images still displayed correctly after conversion to PDF/A?
3. Select your faculty.
4. For Document type, select: Doctoral thesis.
5. Fill out the upload form
   • Special characters can be used only in abstract, comment and bibliographical reference fields (details under: Markdown, MathJax).
6. Regarding the license, please refer to the FAQ item “Which license should I choose?”
7. Read the legal notice and agree by checking the appropriate checkbox.
8. Submit the work.

In addition, we need the form “Druckfreigabe” from your supervisor. You can find the form “Druckfreigabe” in the downloads of your DocDaten or you can get it directly from your supervisor. Please send us the approved print release to ub-disspflicht@fau.de.

For doctoral candidates at the School of Business, Economics and Society (Fachbereich Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften), the “Druckfreigabe” does not exist and is substituted by the “Vollzugsantrag” which should be sent to ub-wszb-diss@fau.de.

After submission, you will receive feedback from us via email, usually no later than the next business day, if any changes are needed or if any documents are missing. If everything is in order, we will send a submission confirmation by email to the appropriate promotion office, with a copy to you.

What do you need to consider in terms of content?

The title page and the second page (and the cover page if applicable) must comply with the rules set forth in the appendix of the General Doctoral Regulations, for further instructions see also: https://www.ub.fau.de/forschen/dissertationenstellen/#collapse_2. Please also observe the further specifications in the General Doctoral Regulations and FAU’s guidelines for safeguarding good academic practice.

The provisions of the General Doctoral Regulations notwithstanding, the author’s CV does not need to be published. Since the thesis will be permanently accessible to the global public, this may be waived for privacy reasons. Please remove the CV from your publications before publishing in these cases. The CV cannot be deleted later on. The same applies to other sensitive personal data, such as the name of the birthplace on the title page of the dissertation as well as any signatures (either your own or that of any co-authors of included papers). Please omit these personal information like the birthplace in the version to be published. However, the thesis must still be marked as coming from FAU.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT)

With ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT), our University Library contract with ProQuest provides indexing & abstracting in a renowned subject database, and a print distribution service for all OPEN FAU dissertation publications available in digital-only format. FAU doctoral students are eligible for a royalty from these based on sales and use of their dissertation, provided they contact disspub@proquest.com and set up an account. Royalty rates are currently set at 10% of net income.

Since the General Doctoral Regulations of FAU don’t stipulate the transfer of your thesis to ProQuest as a mandatory part of the publishing requirement, it is also possible to have the dissertation removed from PQDT. In such cases, please inform disspub@proquest.com and CC the library’s repository team at: ub-repo@fau.de. Please use the following template for your removal request email: “As the author of the following thesis, I hereby request the removal of said thesis from ProQuest’s service PQDT: [Thesis Title]. Please see the relevant information regarding the approval of removal requests on my University Library’s online repository: https://ub.fau.de/en/frequently-asked-questions/open-fau/#collapse_36317 “

As an additional benefit, ProQuest makes archival quality print copies available to you to purchase at a discounted price. Order your copy at https://dissexpress.proquest.com/search.html by searching for it (note, there may be some delay between OPEN FAU publication and indexing in PQDT). Verify that you are the author before check-out to receive discounted pricing. FAQ and instructions available at https://support.proquest.com/articledetail?id=kA23r0000007E8zCAE.

Information about cumulative theses and the papers included therein can be found here: https://ub.fau.de/en/research/doctoral-theses-service/#collapse_7.

Files that have been finally published and submitted to the German National Library via the OAI interface can no longer be modified or deleted. If authors who have voluntarily published their work should desire a correction, they must re-publish the document. This is equivalent to the procedure of a new edition in print publishing. The individual versions can be linked. The metadata entered during upload can be changed at any time by the OPEN FAU team upon request.

The author grants the operator of OPEN FAU the following rights:

• the permanent right to store electronically, especially in databases
• the non-exclusive permanent right of use (Section 31 (2) German Copyright Act, UrhG) for the purpose of making the document available to the public in international data networks
• the permanent right to convert the document for the purposes of digital preservation or visualisation while preserving the content (the document as originally archived is preserved)
• the right to amend and/or complete the metadata provided by the author or editor where necessary
• the right to give unlimited access to metadata and to make it usable
• the right to disclose the document and the corresponding metadata to the German National Library as well as other document servers and specialist databases that come into question in terms of subject or region with the same aforementioned rights; for dissertations, see also there.

The author is solely responsible for the content of the published documents. The University Library assumes no liability for the content of the publications provided and linked or embedded external pages. The author assures that the document does not violate legal regulations, official orders or other rights of third parties and undertakes to clarify the copyrights and exploitation rights of third parties or to obtain their consent. If the author becomes aware of the existence or development of legal obstacles, he/she shall inform the University Library immediately.

Copyright remains with the author. The University Library is merely granted non-exclusive right of use.

Please note that in order to ensure proper function of OPEN FAU a reboot will be performed on a regular basis, during which the system will not be available. This reboot is scheduled for 1 a.m.

Should you encounter any errors during the upload process, change the browser to Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Opera and see if the error is solved. If the error persists, you can report it under Feedback. Please include your email address to receive feedback. In the comment field, please include the email address, time, website, web browser and operating system so that we can identify and fix the problems or errors as best as possible.

Authors can register documents they publish in OPEN FAU for dividends with the registry portal T.O.M from VG WORT https://tom.vgwort.de/portal/index. You will need to register with T.O.M. for this. Please see the website for more information and the terms and conditions for dividends. When you register your document, you will need to provide the URL https://www.fau.de/ as the domain. The direct link to the document will not be accepted by the system. If VG Wort performs a check to confirm your entitlement, deliver the exact path to your document. Payment counters are not supported in OPEN FAU.

This document server is operated on the basis of the DSpace software. DSpace is documented at https://dspace.lyrasis.org.