Open Access provides free and unrestricted access to qualified scientific publications in the public internet and guarantees long-term archiving. Publishing according to the open access model guarantees the authors the right to retain copyright to their works, and from faster publication and lower production and distribution cost, it allows wider accessibility and greater citation impact through world wide access.

The University of Zurich recognised the importance of this movement early on and declared open access a strategic goal by formulating the following guidelines:

• The University of Zurich requires their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published scientific works in the Zurich Open Repository and Archive (ZORA) with open access, if there are no legal objections.
• The University of Zurich encourages and supports their authors to publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable journal exists and provides the support to enable that to happen.
• The Annual Reports of the University of Zurich (Akademische Berichte) are based on ZORA starting from 2008. In the Annual Reports publications are only considered if they have previously been deposited in ZORA.

To achieve these goals the University of Zurich maintains a repository (Zurich Open Repository and Archive - ZORA), in which researchers of the University present their publications. In addition, this website contains information for publishing with open access.

The Open Access Project of the University of Zurich is led by the Main Library University of Zurich (HBZ) and the IT Services (Informatikdienste der Universität Zürich).

• Guide to ZORA
• Open Access: Overview