Background: Many of the discussions surrounding Open Access (OA) revolve around how it affects publishing practices across different academic disciplines. It was a long-held view that it would be only a matter of time before all disciplines fully and relatively homogeneously implemented OA. Recent large-scale bibliometric studies show, however, that the uptake of OA differs substantially across disciplines. We aimed to answer two questions: First, how do different disciplines adopt and shape OA publishing practices? Second, what discipline-specific barriers to and potentials for OA can be identified? Methods: In a first step, we identified and synthesized relevant bibliometric studies that assessed OA prevalence and publishing patterns across disciplines. In a second step, and adopting a social shaping of technology perspective, we studied evidence on the socio-technical forces that shape OA publishing practices. We examined a variety of data sources, including, but not limited to, publisher policies and guidelines, OA mandates and policies and author surveys. Results: Over the last three decades, scholarly publishing has experienced a shift from “closed” access to OA as the proportion of scholarly literature that is openly accessible has increased continuously. Estimated OA levels for publication years after 2010 varied between 29.4% and 66%. The shift towards OA is uneven across disciplines in two respects: first, the growth of OA has been uneven across disciplines, which manifests itself in varying OA prevalence levels. Second, disciplines use different OA publishing channels to make research outputs OA. Conclusions: We conclude that historically rooted publishing practices differ in terms of their compatibility with OA, which is the reason why OA can be assumed to be a natural continuation of publishing cultures in some disciplines, whereas in other disciplines, the implementation of OA faces major barriers and would require a change of research culture.

Background: Many of the discussions surrounding Open Access (OA) revolve around how it affects publishing practices across different academic disciplines. It was a long-held view that it would be only a matter of time for all disciplines to fully and relatively homogeneously implement OA. Recent large-scale bibliometric studies show however that the uptake of OA differs substantially across disciplines. This study investigates the underlying mechanisms that cause disciplines to vary in their OA publishing practices. We aimed to answer two questions: First, how do different disciplines adopt and shape OA publishing practices? Second, what discipline-specific barriers to and potentials for OA can be identified? Methods: In a first step, we identified and synthesized relevant bibliometric studies that assessed OA prevalence and publishing patterns across disciplines. In a second step, and adopting a social shaping of technology perspective, we studied evidence on the socio-technical forces that shape OA publishing practices. We examined a variety of data sources, including, but not limited to, publisher policies and guidelines, OA mandates and policies and author surveys. Results: Over the last three decades, scholarly publishing has experienced a shift from “closed” access to OA as the proportion of scholarly literature that is openly accessible has increased continuously. The shift towards OA is however uneven across disciplines in two respects: first, the growth of OA has been uneven across disciplines, which manifests itself in varying OA prevalence levels. Second, disciplines use different OA publishing channels to make research outputs OA. Conclusions: We conclude that historically grown publishing practices differ in terms of their compatibility with OA, which is the reason why OA can be assumed to be a natural continuation of publishing cultures in some disciplines, whereas in other disciplines, the implementation of OA faces major barriers and would require a change of research culture.

Institut zur Erforschung von Gemeinschaftsgütern (Bonn) und Mitherausgeber von JLL (www.LanguageAndLaw.eu) und Rechts|Empirie (www.RechtsEmpirie.de), Ass.-Prof. Dr. Daniel Hürlimann ist Assistenzprofessor für Informationsrecht an der Universität St.Gallen und Herausgeber von sui generis (www.sui-generis.ch). Die Autoren danken (nicht nur, aber insbesondere) Alexander Peukert für die gemeinschaftliche Ausrichtung der Tagung "Open Access für die Rechtswissenschaft: Pflicht oder Privatsache?" im Oktober 2018, auf der dieses Sonderheft beruht (www.jurOA.de#2018), Johannes Rux für die unermüdliche, umsichtige und wohlwollende Redaktion der Beiträge, Christian Wolf und der Universitätsbibliothek Marburg für wertvolle Einblicke und die geduldige Beantwortung allzu neugieriger Fragen, sowie Ralf Schimmer und der Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) für die Möglichkeit, das Sonderheft Open Access zu veröffentlichen.

Daten sind zu einem Rohstoff geworden, der neue Wertschöpfungsketten ermöglicht. Dessen ungeachtet ist die Frage, welche Rechte an Daten bestehen, bisher – zumindest in der Schweiz – nur wenig bearbeitet worden. Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags ist es, mit Blick auf die Rechtslage in der Schweiz eine erste Übersicht zu Rechten, die an Daten bestehen können, zu geben. Daran anschliessend wird auch die Frage aufgeworfen, ob an der heutigen Rechtslage etwas geändert werden soll.

The present special edition investigates which opportunities open access to scientific publications offers to legal studies and which challenges it poses. Scientific publishers play an important role with regard to this issue; their perspective is therefore examined first. Nine reports from legal-scientific open access periodicals show that open access is possible with as well as without traditional publishers. Other contributions explain the role of academic infrastructure, especially of libraries and promoters of research. The publication is rounded off by an opinion analysis from a transnational conference on the subject which took place in October 2018 (www.jurOA.de).