WU sees it as part of its responsibility to society to provide the public with unlimited and long-term access to the academic literature and research results. That is why WU aims at making academic work published by its researchers available online following the principle of "Open Access".

In this context, the Rector´s Council has adopted WU Open Access Policy and published its resolution in the WU Bulletin dated November 23, 2016, issue no. 08 [in German only]. By doing this WU joins the growing number of universities and research institutions with an Open Access policy or principles in Austria and abroad.

Below you will find a verbatim copy of the WU Open Access Policy.

WU Open Access Policy

The term “open access” refers to the principle of making academic literature and research results available online, free of charge.

WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business) is a signatory of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. WU sees it as part of its responsibility to society to provide the public with unlimited and long-term access to the academic work published by its researchers.

WU encourages its researchers to publish their work on open access platforms.This Open Access Policy will be implemented in accordance with legal provisions, while taking the varying publication traditions of our researchers into consideration.

WU researchers’ free choice of publishing media remains unaffected by this Policy.

WU supports a variety of open access publishing strategies.

The goal is to include a full-text version of all WU publications in WU’s own institutional repository ePubWU, as long as no legal obstacles to this form of publication are given.

WU recommends that its researchers maintain exploitation rights (e.g. duplication, distribution, and right to make the work available to the public), for example in publishing contracts with publishers, especially the right to secondary publication in an open access format.

In addition, WU strongly encourages its faculty members to keep open access principles in mind when acting as editors or peer reviewers of other researchers’ academic publications.

WU offers a number of different means of support for its researchers’ open access activities.

WU provides its researchers with the infrastructure necessary to publish their work digitally in an open access format.

The WU Library’s Open Access Office acts as a university-wide coordination hub and contact for open access-related issues.

WU participates actively in open access-related collaborations on both national and international levels.

Resolution of the Rector´s Council dated September 27, 2016