Ideally, you can find the legal requirements for a possible secondary publication in the author contract.

To find an overview of the publishing conditions for secondary publication of journal articles, you can visit the Jisc Open Policy Finder. While these notices are not legally binding, in most cases Jisc also provides links to the relevant publisher pages. The information on the publisher's pages usually provides reliable indications as to whether, from when, where and with which version a second publication is possible.

Please note: If you are about to sign a publishing agreement with a publisher, agree on the right to publish a digital copy of your work in an institutional repository (after an embargo period, if applicable).

Based on Section 38 UrhG, the secondary publication of journal articles, or more precisely: articles in a collection that is published periodically at least twice a year, is possible under certain conditions. Further information can be found in the following section.

Section 38 of the German Copyright Act (UrhG) regulates the secondary publication of contributions in a collection that appears periodically at least twice a year. According to this provision, unless otherwise agreed, an author may reproduce his or her work (in the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version) elsewhere after one year has elapsed since publication (paras. 1, 2 and 3). Contributions that originate from research activities, at least half of which were supported by public funds, may even be republished if the publisher has been granted an exclusive right of use (para. 4).

The prerequisite for this is that the publisher has a branch office within Germany. This applies, for example, to the following publishers: Springer, Wiley, Budrich, De Gruyter, etc.

Unfortunately, unlike journal articles, there is no legal basis in copyright law for the secondary publication of monographs. This is mainly due to the fact that the conditions per monograph and publisher are very individual, so that such a list could not be reliably compiled.

If the articles have already been published, we recommend contacting the publisher directly to find out the conditions for secondary publication.

Ideally, the possibility of a secondary publication, for example after an embargo period, should be contractually agreed before publication of the article or monograph!

The following information should be available for secondary publication:

  Can it be published secondarily at all?
  Which version of the article can be republished?
  At what point in time after the first publication can the article be republished (Embargo)?

Publication workflow:

• Please create a document on DuEPublico. Indicate as "Info on primary publication" in which publisher publication the final article appears / has been published.
• Upload your PDF file.
• Send us the signed DuEPublico author's contract.
• If desired, the DuEPublico Team will be happy to assist you in checking the legal conditions.
  The document can be published immediately or, if necessary, after the embargo period has expired.

DuEPublico contract: In case of a secondary publication via DuEPublico, you grant the University of Duisburg-Essen the non-exclusive right to electronically store, make publicly available and distribute your publication.

If there is an embargo on the secondary publication, you are welcome to upload your AAMs and the DuEPublico contract to DuEPublico or send them to the DuEPublico Team even before the embargo period ends. Of course, the publication will only take place after the embargo expires.

The DuEPublico Team thus relieves you of the burden of meeting the respective deadlines and offers you the fastest possible open access publication of your research results.

Different versions of an article are created in the course of the publication process, not all of them may be republished!

Preprint: Manuscript submitted to the publisher (not yet reviewed)..
 

Postprint / Authors AcceptedManuscript (AAM): The manuscript has gone through the publisher's review process. The article is ready for publication, often only the final publishing layout is missing.

Published Version / Version of Record (VoR): Article in final publishing version.

The info page of "Open Access Button" helps you to distinguish between the different manuscript versions.

You will also find "Direct2AAM", a tool for finding your author manuscripts on the publishing platforms if you have not saved the AAMs locally.

If you are looking for alternative versions of an article hidden behind a paywall, there are proven free tools:

Have your Google Scholar search results list "all versions" of an article, and you may find manuscript versions that are freely available.

Install the browser extension "Unpaywall" (currently available for Firefox and Google Chrome) and have it display accessible article versions for you with one click.

Another Unpaywall offering is the OA search by DOI in the "Simple Query Tool", where you can search for up to 1000 DOIs simultaneously.

Users of iOS and Safari (macOS) as well as Google Chrome can find OA versions of articles using the "Open Access Helper" app.

You can also conveniently search for secondary publications of articles on the "Open Access Button" page. The "Open Access Button" is also available as a browser extension for Firefox and Google Chrome..

duepublico.ub@uni-due.de

DuEPublico-Team
0203 / 379-2027