Open Access & License
Open Access
Open Access stands for free and unrestricted access to scientific literature on the Internet, enabling everyone to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search for, or link to research results without financial, legal, or technical barriers beyond those directly associated with accessing the Internet itself.
SPORK, a service of the Mainz University Library, is classified as a Diamond Open Access journal: authors do not incur any fees for publishing their articles. All content is freely accessible without users or their institutions having to pay for it. Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the articles in their entirety, as well as to use them for other lawful purposes without having to obtain prior permission from the University Library or the authors. Authors retain full copyright and all publication rights to their contributions.
Long-term archiving of the contributions is ensured by Gutenberg Open Science, the institutional repository of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. These entries are automatically forwarded to the German National Library.
License for contributions
The discussion about open access is not only about free access to research results, but also about how these results can be reused and shared.
To publish with SPORK, authors must use the following CC-BY license for their work, which enables SPORK to uphold the principles of Open Science:
This license allows the content to be reproduced and redistributed in any format or medium, and the material to be remixed, modified, and built upon. Adaptations may be made and distributed. The content may be used commercially.
Condition: The name of the author / copyright holder must be mentioned.
This license is open access compliant and recommended by the DEAL consortium.