ZB MED has spent more than a decade promoting open access, a concept that essentially implies the free online availability of research and scholarly output. One of the key reasons for setting up the website www.publisso.de is to create a space where it can combine all its efforts in this area. The PUBLISSO website offers scientists and researchers an open access model for publishing books, journals, conference papers and research data.

Ursula Arning, who heads up ZB MED's Digital Publishing department, presented the new publishing portal on 21 October 2015 as part of an event held to mark International Open Access Week. "We previously offered a number of publishing options through a range of different platforms," says Arning. "But now we've combined everything we offer in one place on PUBLISSO." ZB MED's long-term plans for PUBLISSO include incorporating new content in addition to the specialist repository and book publishing services for life sciences. In the future users will be able to publish journals and conference papers from the full range of subject areas covered by ZB MED, namely medicine, health, and nutritional, environmental and agricultural sciences. ZB MED has offered this option for medical publications for more than a decade through German Medical Science (GMS).

Publishing advice is another key element of PUBLISSO. ZB MED has compiled a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) which cover many of the key issues involved. However, the PUBLISSO team also offers personal consultations on request as well as workshops on open access aimed at researchers and librarians.

"We very much hope that PUBLISSO will give a further boost to the concept of open access and motivate scientists and researchers to make their research results freely available online – either through gold open access publication in one of our journals or through green open access archiving in our Specialist Repository for Life Sciences," says Arning, summing up the primary goals of the new portal.

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