The term Open Access describes the goal of making knowledge globally accessible and usable in digital form without financial, technical or legal barriers. In order to ensure that scientific knowledge - continuously extended, modified and documented in scientific publications - is made available in accordance with this principle, a digital research environment must ensure well-organised, sustainably funded, and uncomplicated access to publications free of charge.

The activities of the Alliance's existing Open Access working group  - perhaps including further members - will be stepped up, so that the open access to texts, primary data and other digital objects can be promoted and implemented by means of science policy and other concrete steps.

A primary goal of this Priority Area is to expand the scope and network of institutional and disciplinary digital repositories. To achieve this, incentives will be developed in the context of the alliance's activities: First- with reference to the research institutions - to undertake the standardisation, networking and quality assurance of publication servers; and second - with reference to the individual scientists and scholars - to make (secondary) publications available via the so-called green road of Open Access.

The second essential goal is to further develop the so-called golden road of Open Access (an article is freely accessible as soon as it is published in a journal) through coordinated action. This will require the development of new business and funding models as well as new forms of cooperative financing. Pilot projects will be used to track the way in which subscription fees and publication costs can be correlated and/or rearranged. Models will be developed and tested in discipline-specific settings with the goal of financing publication costs as the final step of the research process. Suitable budgetary measures must be developed to ensure that research budgets are not strained as a result.