Open Access

Answers

What kind of documents are stored on OPUS?

OPUS is the HSWT's central publication tool. All institutional research output is bundled in it as a service by the university library and made available to everyone free of charge.

This repository offers uncomplicated, targeted research options and serves as an interface in science communication - both for the interested public and for a specialist audience.

Currently, OPUS is used for bachelor's and master's theses that have been published since 2024 in accordance with the authors and any other persons involved. However, the offer will quickly be expanded to include university publications such as research reports, essays and all other scientific works that have been and are being produced at the HSWT. Dissertations will also be published there.

However, there will be no retrodigitisation (OCR-ing) of older print-only theses.
These can be found using the HSWT library catalog.

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Advantages of publishing on OPUS

Listing your publications on the university publications server offers many advantages:

Increased visibility and distribution: The publications can be easily found worldwide at any time and subsequently used free of charge, as all content is indexed by numerous well-known, plus scientific search engines such as BASE or Google Scholar. The quality of the metadata is ensured by the university library. In addition to OPUS, the publications can be found in the HSWT library catalog, in the catalog of the Bavarian Library Network and in national and international catalog databases.

OPEN ACCESS: A digital publication based on the principle of open access is recommended by the German Research Foundation and the German Rectors' Conference. The science policy guideline of the Free State of Bavaria is expressed in the Framework Agreement for Universities 2023-2027. Further details can be found in the HSWT Open Access policy.

Archiving: Your digital publication is saved and archived in the HSWT repository as a PDF file. A Uniform Resource Name (URN) is registered for all publications with the German National Library. Your publication can be accessed permanently at this address and can be easily cited. In addition, the digital documents are forwarded to the archive server of the German National Library and archived there long-term.

Publication evidence: The publications stored in the repository can be permanently found and quoted using URN or, in the future, DOI. You can link to individual publications on the publication server or to complete lists of individuals or a faculty or institute. It will also be possible to integrate publication lists into external websites.

Export options: Lists can be exported to spreadsheet and literature management programs. It is also possible to transfer your information from the repository to your ORCiD profile.

Easy subsequent use: Easily accessible publications with guaranteed quality standards are cited more frequently in science and research than publications that only appear in print.

High citation rate: A publication on OPUS increases the likelihood of being noticed by a specialist audience. According to various studies, open access publications are now cited more frequently than publications that appear in print. Studies on the topic of "impact analysis" can be found at The Open Citation Project.

Saving time and money: The service is not only free of charge for you, but also saves you the time and organizational effort that inevitably arises with publishing publications. Your document is published online immediately after being checked by the university library and can then be cited.

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On Open Access

Open Access, according to the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Scientific Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities", means unrestricted and free access to scientific information as well as its use and distribution, while respecting and correctly naming the authorship.

Open Access has the following goals:

• free and free access to scientific information for all,
• maximizing the dissemination of scientific information,
• best possible attention for the results of scientific research,
• rapid publication and timely access,
• optimal further use of scientific information and
• transparency and quality assurance

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Hints for searching

OPUS offers several different search options:

Using simple Search, all terms are combined by AND automatically. For a more tightly focused search and better results you may use the Boolean Operators to combine different search terms.

Using Advanced Search, a number of fields can be combined, such as author, title and year. The fields are automatically combined using AND.

The Browse function offers the possibility to search the repository by category. For example, you can display all publications of a faculty / institute / facility or person or search specifically for a document type.

Boolean Operators AND, OR, NOT

Used within a single search field, Boolean Operators help to combine search terms in various ways:

AND: The document has to contain all search terms.

OR: The document has to contain one of the search terms. This function broadens your search and is recommended, when there are different terms for the same meaning.

article OR paper

NOT: This function has an excluding effect and might be useful to reduce a large result list: Documents, which contain the one term, may not contain the other.

article NOT paper

Boolean Operators work for the Advanced Search as well. You may use them to combine different search terms within one search field. For example, to search for documents of the author "Doe" in the years 2002 or 2003, use the query:

Author: Doe
Year: 2002 OR 2003

Wildcards

In the field 'Search:', you may use the symbols '*' and '?' as wildcards. Use them in place of a character or characters that are unknown or that may differ. You cannot use them in front of a word or search string.

Example 1: chemi* finds chemical but also chemistry or chemist.

Example 2: licen?e finds licence and license.

Searching for phrases

You may use double quotes (") to search for words in a certain order.

Example: "Artificial intelligence" will result in only hits with 'artificial' and 'intelligence' in this word order and with exactly this spelling.

Filters

To further narrow down your results list, use the filter options to the left of the results list. For example, you can filter for documents containing full text, by language or author.

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Accessing full texts

A direct link to the full text of the document appears if the license and copyright regulations allow it. You will find the full text in the details view as a PDF document; and also the attachments, where available.

If only the option to export the metadata is listed here, we unfortunately cannot offer you a full text for this document.

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Subsequent use of documents from the repository

What permissions do I have to use the documents?

All documents with full text are provided with a license information. You can find this at the end of the document's details page. By clicking on the link you can find out about the copyright and/or licensing provisions that apply to this document.

How can I export the metadata of a document?

The export of metadata for subsequent use, e.g. for import into literature management programs such as Citavi or Zotero, is possible for individual hits as well as for entire lists in BibTeX, DataCite, MARC21-XML and RIS formats.

Lists can also be exported as CSV for further processing in spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel.

Important: Save the CSV file as a .txt file before importing it into Excel. Otherwise, the assignment of metadata to individual columns will not work.

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Citing documents on OPUS - unique identifiability

URN

In OPUS, a URN is automatically created in the following format:
urn:nbn:de:bvb:1028-[unique code with check digit].
We store this Uniform Resource Name in the HSWT library catalog and in the catalog of the Bavarian Library Network so that your work can be found, accessed and cited worldwide - analogous to citing a web address.

Breakdown of the URN:

• nbn – national bibliography number
• de – country code for Germany
• bvb – Bavarian Library Network
• 1028 – the sigel (= identifier) of the university library in Weihenstephan.
• Only one subname space, i.e. one base URN, can be assigned per OPUS.

Example URN:
urn:nbn:de:bvb:1028-001

Internet browsers are currently incapable of resolving this directly. To follow the link,
https://nbn-resolving.de/ must be prefixed, so for the example given:
http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:1028-001

The German National Library automatically stores a copy of documents on OPUS on its servers as part of the German legal deposit law, thus ensuring long-term archiving.
If the storage location of the publication changes, for example due to a server change, the access address (URL) stored in a URN can be corrected centrally by the library in the URN service. This means that the URN remains valid and continues to refer to the corresponding publication.

DOI

DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) are not currently generated for bachelor's and master's theses. However, if a DOI already exists, this can be adopted.
The university management will investigate the possibility of future DOI assignment for theses, university publications or dissertations.

Other unique document identifiers

Other existing identifiers may also be imported: UUID, ISBN, ISSN, URL, CRIS (RIMS), ArXiv, Pubmed, STD-DOI, Handle.

Personal identifiers

Persistent IDs may also be specified for the people involved (in addition to the authors, supervisors or reviewers), e.g. GND, ORCID.

Please inform us about any identifiers you already have.

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What's metadata?

Metadata can be defined as

• data describing one or more resources or as
• data associated with an object and describing it

Basically metadata is describing documents, objects or services and contains information about their content, structure or form. Metadata is a description of data or "data about data", more abstractly speaking. Bibliographic data sets and catalog entries in library catalogs can be seen as a kind of metadata.

This repository is using metadata in the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (short Dublin Core (DC)) which has fifteen basic elements. Dublin Core is the result of international efforts to reach a collective consensus in describing electronic objects (in the broadest sense). The Library of Congress (LoC), the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and several national libraries are dealing with Dublin Core in many projects and are close to introduce the system respectively.

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Documents required for completing your thesis

Students can obtain the documents and forms necessary for their final theses, as well as the accessibility statement, from their dean's office and on the exam server.

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How to make my work accessible via OPUS?

Members of the HSWT can have their scientific documents (e.g. books, articles, conference or project reports, reports, preprints, etc.) published electronically.

In some cases, an embargo can postpone publication to a specified future date.

Final theses (Bachelor, Master, dissertation)

After the review process has been completed, the HSWT's librarians upload your thesis and attached documents to OPUS and add all the necessary metadata (description).
This only happens if you as the author have agreed to its publication via the accessibility declaration and any institutions or companies involved, as well as your supervisors and examiners repectively support the publication. They will then forward your thesis to the library.

Scientific publications

In the publication contract / authorship contract, the authors confirm to the university library that they have respected copyright and that they do not infringe any rights of third parties (e.g. when using images). If all legal requirements are met, the full texts can also be made available. The Centre for Research & Knowledge Transfer will provide you with further information.

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Can only the bibliographic data of my publication be entered into the publication server?

Of course, you can also have only bibliographic data for your publication entered. There is space for explanatory information, e.g., why the full text cannot be provided.

With a bibliographic data-only record, no files are uploaded. No licenses are selected, and no accessibility declaration is required.

A document can be added to an already approved citation and a URN can be generated.

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File format requirements

• Permitted file formats are:
  • compressed file packages: zip
  • graphics formats: jpg/jpeg, tif/tiff, gif, png, bmp
  • audio files: M4A, wav, avi, mpg/mpeg, mp3
  • video files: mp4
  • text documents: pdf, pdf/a

    The pdf/a format is preferable for text documents as it guarantees long-term archivability.
    Information on pdf/a can be found at https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/hub/how-to-convert-pdf-to-pdfa.html.
    Information on the archivability of other file formats can be found at https://forschungsdaten.info/themen/veroeffentlichen-und-archivieren/formate-erhalten.

• Digital Rights Management: Files must not have any copy or access protection, but must be fully accessible.
• The maximum single file size is 250 MB. There's essentially no limit to the number of files per entry, as long as they total a maximum of 270 MB combined. If this limit is exceeded, please contact us.
• File name convention: In addition to letters and numbers, OPUS only allows periods, hyphens and underscores. Umlauts and sharp s (ß, eszett) must be written as ae, oe, ue or ss.
  The file name may be a maximum of 50 characters in length. It should be kept simple as it will be visible publicly (e.g. conference.pdf).

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I have some more questions - whom shall I contact?

For questions regarding OPUS, contact the university library.

If you would like help with research or get related training, please email the library's training team.

For questions regarding your thesis (format, content, etc.), please get in touch with your examiner or the Student.Service.

For questions regarding your scientific documents (e.g. books, articles, conference or project reports, reports, preprints, etc.), the Centre for Research & Knowledge Transfer will be happy to assist.

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What is the accessibility declaration?

With the accessibility declaration, you determine whether your thesis may be made accessible to the public via the library. You can get this form in your dean's office.

You are free to decide whether you want to grant access, refuse it, or only allow it after an embargo period.
You can change your choice at any time, provided you do so in consultation with your supervisors, examiners and, if applicable, the commissioning body. In the case you wish to withdraw your already published full text, however, it will only be embargoed, and only if there is an important reason. Your name, title of your publication and other metadata will remain searchable.

If in any case you wish to amend passages of your text in accordance with your supervisors, examiners and, if applicable, the commissioning body, you will need to submit a new copy of your thesis. The first edition will remain searchable. This is comparable to publishing a new edition of a printed book and guarantees the authenticity of your work.

In concrete terms, this means that after you have given your consent, your thesis will be listed in the HSWT online library catalog and can therefore be found worldwide on the Internet. It will also be found in the libraries' union catalog. It may also be possible to find your work via internet search engines like Google, Google Scholar, BASE, OAIster.

This means that the public can access your work via lending, interlibrary loan or at the library (in case of printed editions), or that the full text is accessible (downloadable) and readable worldwide (in case of electronic submission and storage on OPUS).

Saving, copying and modified distribution by other people or automated data extraction tools cannot be prevented technically.

However, you can determine how your work may be used. The most restrictive variant is the German copyright law, which is applied by default. This means that third parties may only download, read and cite your work (in accordance with the provisions of German copyright law).

If you would like to grant third parties additional usage rights using Creative Commons (CC) licenses, you must explicitly inform us of this.

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What about licenses for my publication?

Authors can choose which terms of use must be abided by for their publication. These terms are defined in the license.
This repository supports different licenses, from which you can select one.
By default, the German copyright laws apply.
To grant the public permission to use and maybe even modify your creative work under copyright law you may assign Creative Commons Licenses. The License Chooser offers help if you are undecided which one is appropriate.

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What do I need to know if I plan to publish my work using a publishing house or have done that already?

In most cases this is no problem. Please ensure in any case, if your publisher allows a parallel publication! To do that you can use the SHERPA/ROMEO list.

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Technical background

The university library of the University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan-Triesdorf is responsible for editing and maintaining the database's metadata.

This document server is technically operated using the OPUS 4 software. The Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV) is responsible for maintaining the hardware and software of this server.

OPUS is documented here: https://www.opus-repository.org/.

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