The BUA goal of “Sharing Resources” extends far beyond the shared use of physical infrastructure. Alongside laboratories, research equipment, and technical expertise, the concept also includes the sharing of intellectual resources – such as research data, academic publications, and publishing platforms. Through initiatives like Berlin Universities Publishing (Berlin UP), BUA promotes open access to knowledge and supports researchers in publishing their results transparently and sustainably. In this way, shared knowledge becomes a driving force for scientific innovation and collaboration across Berlin.

Dr. Andreas Brandtner is not only an advocate of the open-access movement – he is actively shaping it. Supported by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), Brandtner, until 2024 Director of the University Library at Freie Universität Berlin, joined forces with his counterparts at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin to establish Berlin Universities Publishing (BerlinUP), a university press dedicated to open-access publishing. Since April 2024, Brandtner leads the University Library of the University of Vienna.

Today, the publisher has already launched successfully, with more than 20 books and 12 journals representing all four institutions. When asked which publication he holds particularly dear, Brandtner’s answer comes without hesitation: “It’s the very first book: Engage with Fungi by Vera Meyer and Sven Peiffer. It’s interdisciplinary, covers a fascinating and humorous topic, and truly embodies the spirit of Open Science.”

Strong Support from the Research Community

“Here in Berlin, we began thinking about open access very early on,” says Brandtner. A key milestone was the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, signed in 2003 by leading German and international research organizations. In 2015, the State of Berlin adopted its own Open Access Strategy, aiming to make scholarly publications, research data, and cultural heritage data freely accessible and reusable. Shortly afterward, the Open Access Office Berlin was established at Freie Universität Berlin to support Berlin’s academic and cultural institutions in implementing this strategy.

Building on these efforts, the Berlin UP project was launched in 2019 – initially as a joint publishing platform of the four BUA partners – with funding from the Excellence Strategy. “That initial support was crucial – we couldn’t have realized this project without it,” Brandtner emphasizes.

The funding enabled all four university libraries to hire staff and establish the structures needed for a future open-access press. The concept quickly resonated with the research community: “Researchers from all four BUA institutions saw the importance of creating new publication pathways and showed great enthusiasm for our plans,” Brandtner recalls. He also observes a broader trend in academia: “There’s a growing desire to bring publishing back into the academic sphere.” 

How BerlinUP differs from commercial publishers, what the Diamond Open Access model entails, and how the press has evolved since its official founding in 2023, tells BerlinUP spokesperson Jürgen Christof in an interview. You can find it here.