Information for contributors

PsychArchives profile

PsychArchives accepts content that corresponds to its profile in terms of content, form, object type and quality of metadata. All submissions to PsychArchives undergo a formal evaluation through the PsychArchives team but are not subjected to any editorial review or peer review process.

• Objects must belong to the discipline of psychology or related disciplines to fit the scope of PsychArchives.
• Objects must be allocated to one of our 20 Digital Research Object (DRO) types. Have a look at our DRO type list to see which object types we store.
• We ask that research data be accompanied by a codebook. Datasets must be anonymized to be published in PsychArchives, although this is not verified by the PsychArchives team.
• The maximum size of DROs is 1 GB. Upon request, larger DROs may be accepted. Please have a look at our service catalog for larger DROs (research data or any other DRO type) here: https://rdc-psychology.org/en/service-catalog-rdm
• Objects and metadata must be provided in English or German. Decisions on submissions in other languages will be made on a case-by-case basis. Title, abstract and keywords can be provided as translations.
• Describing your content with the help of standardized metadata ensures its findability and searchability; see the PsychArchives metadata schema. Please choose meaningful titles for your objects.
• Please make sure to submit your content in file formats recommended for long-term archiving, e.g. PDF/A, CSV etc. File formats should ideally be open, standard, non-proprietary, and well-established. You may upload your content in a non-recommended format but it ought to be additionally provided in a recommended format (see table below). You can find more information about the conversion of files into recommended formats in our guidelines. In cases where a file is deposited in a proprietary format that cannot be converted into a recommended format, we ask you to add a readme file (txt file) specifying the program name and version used.

Technical requirements for files

• Files may not be subject to any technical protective measures or access restrictions, such as, for example, digital rights management (DRM) or password-protection.
• Documents must not contain any external images, dependencies and/or dynamic elements.
• Fonts must be embedded. It is best to use standard fonts and to specify the language in the document properties.
• File names must not contain special characters, such as "%" or "&". Here is a useful guide on file handling.
• Our recommendation is to upload single files instead of zipped files. If you are sure that a zipped file is the best option for your content, please provide a table of contents for the zipped file.

PsychArchives offers different sharing levels determining access to and usage rights of PsychArchives content. Our sharing levels range from open and immediate access to more restrictive access categories. Each sharing level is equipped with specific licensing options. Contributors choose a sharing level when submitting content to the repository.

The PsychArchives sharing level concept is in line with the Recommendations concerning Data Management and Data Sharing in Psychological Science by the German Psychological Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie / DGPs).

Sharing Levels 0 and 0+ (Public Use File)

Sharing Levels 0 and 0+ are equivalent to the provision of public use files, allowing open and immediate access to PsychArchives content. These sharing levels are applicable in all cases in which there are no plausible reasons (such as the inclusion of human subjects data or research ethics) for restricting access and use from the perspective of the scientific community.

When assigning Sharing Level 0 or 0+ to their content, contributors choose an Open Content license from our license portfolio. Permissive Open Content licenses foster reuse and widespread dissemination of public use files; for more information on the topic of available licenses, visit our Rights and licenses page.

If contributors wish to learn how others use their content, they may provide it through Sharing Level 0+. When retrieving 0+ content, users are asked to optionally disclose information about their intended use of the content. Information about the intended use, if given, is not reviewed by PsychArchives but is automatically forwarded to the contributor. Contributors are then informed about the retrieval via e-mail and, if provided by the user, the intended use of the respective content. 

Sharing Level 1 (Scientific Use File)

Sharing Level 1 refers to content that is provided for scientific use only. It is based on a standardized license agreement offered by PsychArchives. This sharing level is applicable if contributors want to ensure that usage of their content is exclusively restricted to the context of scientific analysis and discourse.

Content made available in Sharing Level 1 can be accessed by accepting the applicable license conditions before download of the content. Users are asked to provide information about the intended use of the requested content; this information is not checked for correctness and/or appropriateness by PsychArchives but is automatically passed on to the contributor. Contributors are informed about the retrieval and the intended use of their content via e-mail. 

Sharing Levels 2 and 3

Sharing levels higher than 1 (“scientific use”) are in preparation and this page will be updated once they become available.

Granular allocation of Sharing Levels on the file-level

Access and usage rights may vary within one Digital Research Object (DRO), i.e. PsychArchives allows for a flexible and granular allocation of sharing levels on the level of individual files. For instance, contributors may archive their research data and codebook as part of one DRO, which receives one DOI. While they have the option of providing their research data under the conditions of Sharing Level 1, Sharing Level 0 can be allocated to the corresponding codebook.

Choosing a Sharing Level

Promoting openness and transparency, the German Psychological Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie / DGPs) recommends researchers to share content “as openly as possible, as closed as necessary”.

When choosing a sharing level in PsychArchives, contributors should, among other things, consider

• data protection and copyright laws,
• aspects of research ethics,
• requirements of third-party funders and/or scientific journals,
• their own legitimate scientific interests.

Please note that you are required to anonymize your research data for all available Sharing Levels except Level 3. Learn more about copyright and data privacy issues as well as ethical considerations at the Research Data Center at ZPID.

Embargo option

Independent of the chosen sharing level, contributors may define an embargo for their content in PsychArchives. This is important, for example, if contributors want to safeguard first use of their research data. Embargoed files are made available according to the chosen sharing level at a pre-specified future date set by the contributor. Until the embargo period expires, only the metadata of the DRO and not the file itself are publicly available. If a file is designated as being “embargoed until YYYY-MM-DD”, this means that it becomes available according to the chosen sharing level on said date. Find out more about this option in our FAQ section.

Reviewer link functionality

PsychArchives offers the option of anonymizing content and sharing it only with peer-reviewers before archiving it. Upon submission to PsychArchives, contributors may request a reviewer link for their DRO. The submission will then remain on the PsychArchives submission platform for the time being. Reviewer links are intended for the peer-review process. Having been assigned a reviewer link, the contribution will be accessible to anyone with whom the reviewer link is shared. This feature is currently available for all DRO types except preregistrations.

Contributors should bear in mind that reviewer links are not Persistent Identifiers (DOIs). To facilitate publication in PsychArchives with one click later, we are asking contributors to prepare their reviewer link submission with long-term archival in mind. This includes already choosing a sharing level and license, and providing descriptive metadata. However, content can only be provided to others for re-use when it is published in PsychArchives and assigned a DOI after the peer-review process has ended. Find out more about this functionality in our FAQ section.

The granular sharing level concept in PsychArchives

PsychArchives offers different sharing levels determining access to and usage rights of content. Sharing levels range from open and immediate access to more restrictive access categories. Each sharing level is equipped with specific licensing options. Contributors choose a sharing level when submitting content to the repository and thereby determine how users can retrieve their material and what they are allowed to do with it. For a more detailed overview of the PsychArchives sharing levels, see our Sharing Levels page.

Access and usage rights may vary within one Digital Research Object (DRO), i.e. PsychArchives allows for a flexible and granular allocation of sharing levels on the level of individual files. In other words, terms for individual files apply. To find information regarding access and usage rights of a PsychArchives DRO, one must refer to the file level of the DRO.

Examples

Here are three exemplary ways in which sharing levels and/or licenses may vary within one DRO.

Example 1: Varying licenses

Contributors may allocate Sharing Level 0 to all files of a DRO but choose to license the individual files under varying Open Content licenses.

Example 2: Varying sharing levels

Contributors may archive their research data and the accompanying codebook as part of one DRO, which receives one DOI. While the research data are provided under the conditions of Sharing Level 1 under the Scientific Use License, the corresponding codebook is shared through Sharing Level 0, with licensing option CC-BY 4.0.

Example 3: Varying sharing levels and licenses

Contributors may archive their research data as well as a number of files containing accompanying documentation as part of one DRO, which receives one DOI. While the research data are provided under the conditions of Sharing Level 1, Sharing Level 0 is allocated to the accompanying documentation, which is in turn licensed under varying Open Content licenses.

Disclaimer

Although the information on these pages has been carefully checked by the PsychArchives team, it does not constitute legal advice. The information below was taken over, with some adaptations, from the blog of the GenderOpen repository; it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Information

What are licenses?

“Progress in science and scholarship can only be achieved if scholars are able to build on earlier research results and apply them. However, scientific work is often complicated by a lack of clarity on whether, how, or under what terms the documents, illustrations, graphics, tables, data, and software of other authors may be reused for teaching and research work. Licenses that are granted by the author or the rights holder ... are one way out of this dilemma.” This is because “licenses stipulate what users are allowed to do with copyrighted works without having to ask the author for permission in each specific case.”

(Excerpt translated from: German Research Foundation (DFG), Information für die Wissenschaft No. 68 | November 20, 2014, “Appell zur Nutzung offener Lizenzen in der Wissenschaft”)

What are Creative Commons licenses?

CC licenses allow holders of copyrighted material to grant usage rights to anyone interested in using the work. Usage rights range from simple sharing to translation, use as teaching material, and textual modifications. Six different CC license types have become established, specifying the terms of use in different ways. They are composed of four basic modules:

Why do we support the Creative Commons licenses CC-BY 4.0, CC-BY-SA 4.0, and CC 0 1.0?

We support the Creative Commons licenses CC-BY 4.0 and CC-BY-SA 4.0 in Sharing Levels 0 and 0+ because they are considered genuine Open Access licenses in the sense of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. CC 0 is offered for cases in which contributors want to dedicate their content to the public domain.

CC-BY 4.0 is generally regarded as the most suitable form of licensing for educational and research contexts. Its advantage is that contributions with this license can be distributed, reproduced, modified, or used in any way, as long as the authors/creators are mentioned as originators. In this way, the CC-BY license helps achieve greater visibility for academic publications and their authors/creators. Numerous institutions that fund research – the Austrian Science Fund FWF, for instance, or (in certain cases) the European Commission – even require that research results obtained with their financial support be published under a CC-BY license. It is therefore no coincidence that the CC-BY license is the most common license form used for academic publications (Schmeja 2017).

A valid alternative to CC-BY 4.0 is CC-BY-SA 4.0, equally one of the most important and widely used CC licenses in the academic context. CC-BY-SA binds users of a work to the original license. In other words, if someone remixes/adapts, translates, transforms or builds upon CC-BY-SA-licensed material and wants to share it, they must do so under the same license. Read more about why this may be relevant under the subsequent heading.

Both CC-BY 4.0 and CC-BY-SA 4.0 require users to indicate in a reasonable manner if they made modifications to the licensed material.

With the CC 0 license, copyright-protected works can be deliberately dedicated to the public domain. Thus, it is basically a waiver of rights. Once it is in effect, a work can be used by anyone without any restrictions or obligations.

Why do we not support the additional CC license element NC?

Adding the CC license element NC to a Creative Commons license prohibits commercial use. This initially sounds appealing to authors/creators, and is a popular choice. However, the NC module can be problematic in many respects, as it excludes types of use which actually may be in the interest of the author/creator. For instance, it prohibits sharing the material in newspapers, archives, and open knowledge banks such as Wikipedia. In addition, educational and training institutions that are not exclusively publicly funded are not necessarily permitted to use material with a NC license. A further disadvantage of the NC module is that in many cases, it is not exactly clear what counts as commercial use. Many blogs display advertising to generate revenue in order to cover their server costs. Also, some third-party funded research projects involve industry participation. Should these players then be classified as commercially-driven? NC licensing terms remain rather vague on this point, so that interested parties may, as a precaution, decide not to use the NC-licensed material (Klimpel 2012).

The SA (Share Alike) module is a useful alternative for authors/creators who want to prevent others from making money with their content, as it requires “sharing under the same (license) conditions.” The same licensing terms must be applied to modified material as to the original work. In other words, if companies create materials using SA-licensed content, they must make those materials freely available under Share Alike conditions. Very few companies want to take that step, and as a result, it is rare for unwanted commercial usages to occur. At the same time, a Share Alike license allows educational institutions and projects that are not, or not fully, publicly funded to use the materials.

Why do we not support the additional CC license element ND?

The CC license element ND (No Derivatives) prohibits the distribution of content that has been modified in any way, such as translations or excerpts. That makes the ND module particularly restrictive for the domain of education and research. For example, if an edited volume is given a CC-BY-ND license and made accessible on the internet, only the volume as a whole can be used, not selected texts. In some cases it makes sense to redistribute articles in a modified form, for example as a long excerpt – but this is not possible if you apply the restrictive ND (Graf 2013).

Why do we support GNU LGPL 3.0, Apache 2.0 and 0BSD for licensing code?

Creative Commons itself recommends against using Creative Commons licenses for software. We therefore support LGPL 3.0 and Apache 2.0 in Sharing Levels 0 and 0+, which are both established and widely-used permissive Open Source licenses that can be used for licensing code. 0BSD, which is equally widely used, is offered for cases in which contributors want to dedicate their code to the public domain.

Overview of licenses supported by PsychArchives

What secondary publication rights are allowed under the German Copyright Law?

Authors of unpaid academic contributions published in a collection of texts (journals, edited volumes) may reproduce, distribute, and make publicly available their work after an embargo period of 12 months, as long as the text was first published after January 1, 1995, and unless stipulations were otherwise agreed with the publisher or other third parties. According to Section 38 (1) and (2) of the German Copyright Law, in cases of doubt, the publisher of a contribution to a collection (journal or collected volume) acquires an exclusive right of reproduction and distribution, but the publisher's exclusive right of use ends upon expiry of 12 months after first publication. Authors are then free to apply, for example, a Creative Commons license to their work and republish it (secondary publication) in a repository or any other publication venue.

Copyright with regard to monographs is more restrictive. Monographs can only be republished in a repository such as PsychArchives or any other publication venue if prior permission is obtained from the publisher or other third parties who hold the rights to the work. We therefore ask you to check your contract and/or to contact the publisher or the third parties who hold the rights to the work. If you have relinquished all rights of use to a publisher or other third parties in the past, then you will have to obtain the rights holders’ written permission, including explicit reference to the type of license that you would like to apply to your work and the license granted by the publisher.

Reading Material

English

Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (2020). Copyright in Academic Work: An Overview for Research, Teaching and Libraries. [Accessed 2023-08-07]. copyright-in-academic-work.pdf

Gollwitzer, Mario, Abele-Brehm, Andrea, Fiebach, Christian, Ramthun, Roland, Scheel, Anne M., Schönbrodt, Felix D., & Steinberg, Ulf. (2020). Data Management and Data Sharing in Psychological Science: Revision of the DGPs Recommendations. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/24ncs

Klimpel, Paul (2012). Free Knowledge thanks to Creative Commons Licenses: Why a non-commercial clause often won’t serve your needs. iRights info. [Accessed 2021-01-21]. Free_Knowledge_thanks_to_Creative_Commons_Licenses.pdf

Kreutzer, Till (2014). Open Content – A Practical Guide to Using Creative Commons Licences. Wikimedia Commons. [Accessed 2021-01-21]. Open_Content_-_A_Practical_Guide_to_Using_Creative_Commons_Licences.pdf

German

Aktionsbündnis Urheberrecht für Bildung und Wissenschaft (2016): Das Recht auf eine Zweitveröffentlichung [Flyer]. [Accessed 2021-01-21]. http://www.urheberrechtsbuendnis.de/docs/zvr-folder-2015-a4.pdf

Arbeitsgruppe Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen der Allianz der Deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen (2015). FAQ zum Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht. Schwerpunktinitiative “Digitale Information” der Allianz der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen. https://doi.org/10.2312/ALLIANZOA.022

Bruch, Christoph, & Pflüger, Thomas (2014). Das Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht des § URHG § 38 Abs. URHG § 38 Absatz 4 UrhG – Möglichkeiten und Grenzen bei der Anwendung in der Praxis. In: Zeitschrift für Urheber- und Medienrecht (ZUM) 58(5), pp. 389-394. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-0-258153

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) (2020). Urheberrecht in der Wissenschaft Ein Überblick für Forschung, Lehre und Bibliotheken. [Accessed 2021-10-14]. urheberrecht-in-der-wissenschaft.pdf

Gollwitzer, Mario, Abele-Brehm, Andrea, Fiebach, Christian J., Ramthun, Roland, Scheel, Anne M., Schönbrodt, Felix, & Steinberg, Ulf. (2021). Management und Bereitstellung von Forschungsdaten in der Psychologie: Überarbeitung der DGPs-Empfehlungen. Psychologische Rundschau, 72(2), 132–146. https://doi.org/10.1026/0033-3042/a000514

Klimpel, Paul (2012). Freies Wissen dank Creative-Commons-Lizenzen: Folgen, Risiken und Nebenwirkungen der Bedingung »nicht-kommerziell – NC«. iRights info. [Accessed 2021-01-21]. https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/userfiles/CC-NC_Leitfaden_web.pdf

Kreutzer, Till (2015). Open Content – Ein Praxisleitfaden zur Nutzung von Creative-Commons-Lizenzen. iRights info. [Accessed 2021-01-21]. https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Open_Content_-_Ein_Praxisleitfaden_zur_Nutzung_von_Creative-Commons-Lizenzen.pdf

Kreutzer, Till, & Lahmann, Henning (2021). Rechtsfragen bei Open Science: Ein Leitfaden. Hamburg University Press. 2. überarbeitete und erweiterte Ausgabe. [Accessed 2023-05-26]. https://doi.org/10.15460/HUP.211

Spielkamp, Matthias (2015). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler: Geltende Rechtslage und Handlungsempfehlungen. iRights.Lab Policy Paper Series Nr. 1. [Accessed 2021-01-21]. https://irights.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/zweitveroeffentlichungsrecht-20150425.pdf

This page contains a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) concerning the use of PsychArchives. We are steadily expanding the list of FAQ topics, so if you have any feedback or questions, just contact us.

Disclaimer

Although the information on these pages has been carefully checked by the PsychArchives team, it does not constitute legal advice.

Why should I deposit content in PsychArchives?

PsychArchives enables you to publish digital research objects (DROs) quickly and free of charge. Uploads in PsychArchives are assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to render them easily and uniquely citable. In the repository, DROs are safely stored and made available for the long term. All your research-related output is available in one place and linked within PsychArchives, so that users easily find what they need. Metadata quality is assured by formal control procedures run by PsychArchives staff, which enhances the online findability of your research. To increase the international visibility of PsychArchives DROs, they are indexed in public search engines such as GoogleScholar and PubPsych. Research shows that Open Access articles are generally cited more often than paywalled papers. Publishing your research in PsychArchives through Sharing Level 0 or 0+ – be it via the Green or Gold road – can therefore be considered an effective impact maximization strategy for researchers. If necessary, you may embargo your content for up to 3 years upon publication in the repository. This is important, for example, if you want to safeguard first use of your research data. To find out more about the PsychArchives submission process, visit our Contribute page.

Is this service only for academic users?

No, PsychArchives is a disciplinary repository for psychological science and neighboring disciplines and open to anyone. Although researchers are our main audience, we also address psychology professionals, members of media and politics as well as anyone interested in psychological content.

What are the charges for submitting and downloading content?

Downloading content from PsychArchives is free of charge. Submitting content is free if your DRO does not exceed 1 GB. If you would like to submit larger DROs (research data or any other DRO type), please have a look at our service catalog here: https://rdc-psychology.org/en/service-catalog-rdm.

Which legal conditions must I observe when publishing in PsychArchives?

As a contributor, you must ensure that publishing a respective object and making it publicly available on PsychArchives does not infringe the rights of third parties (e.g. copyright, trademark, personality or other rights of third parties such as co-authors, publishers, copyright collecting agencies and providers of third-party funds). This means that you must ensure that you are respecting applicable copyright and license conditions for the content you upload. In cases of multiple authorship, you must ensure that all co-authors are aware of the submission of the work and give their unconditional agreement. For more information about this, see our Rights and licenses page. In the case of research data, all human subjects data must be properly prepared under applicable legal and ethical guidelines. To find further information on this issue, visit our External resources page.

Which license should I use for my DRO?

To learn more about this, see the Rights and licenses page in PsychArchives.

What sharing levels does PsychArchives offer?

To learn more about this, see the Sharing Levels page in PsychArchives.

Which PsychArchives DRO type does my content correspond to?

Have a look at this list of DRO examples and their corresponding PsychArchives DRO types.

If you want to contribute a bundle of supplementary materials for a journal article, you should consult our Submission guidelines for supplementary materials in PsychArchives.

If you’re still unsure where your DRO belongs, you may contact us at psycharchives-submission@leibniz-psychology.org.

What manuscript version of an article can/should I contribute?

We publish preprints, postprints, and publisher’s versions of published works. If a manuscript has been peer-reviewed and published elsewhere, the version deposited in PsychArchives should ideally be the publisher’s version, but we also accept authors’ preprint or postprint versions. For the latter, we recommend that you use a version with pagination corresponding to the publisher’s version. Different versions of one manuscript are linked within PsychArchives, so that different stages of the manuscript development are made transparent.

Do I have the option of embargoing my content?

Yes, contributors have the option of embargoing their content in PsychArchives. Embargoed files are made available according to the chosen sharing level at a pre-specified future date set by the contributor. Until the embargo period expires, only the metadata of the DRO and not the file itself are publicly available. If a file is designated as being “embargoed until YYYY-MM-DD”, this means that it becomes available according to the chosen sharing level on said date. After expiration of the embargo period, both DRO and metadata are made available in PsychArchives. The maximum embargo duration is 3 years from the time of contribution and has to be requested with the first submission of the DRO. If you wish to lift the embargo of your DRO prematurely, this is also possible. Just send us an email and let us know.

Can I edit/replace files and/or my DRO’s metadata after publication in PsychArchives?

Files and metadata of published DROs may be modified upon request of the original contributor within one week after publication in PsychArchives. To request modifications within this timeframe, send an email to psycharchives-submission@leibniz-psychology.org.

After this one-week period, no essential changes can be made to files and metadata for reasons of transparency. Instead, if the original contributor wishes to update their DRO, a new version of the DRO will be generated. The new version receives its own DOI and the changes undertaken are made transparent by means of a change log on the landing page of the DRO. This does not remove the existing version of the DRO but links the different versions together into a publicly visible version history. Users accessing a previous version are pointed towards the existence of a more recent version. If you want to generate a new version of your DRO, please send the DOI of the existing DRO and a short change log (max. 255 characters, including spaces) to psycharchives-submission@leibniz-psychology.org. Make sure to include the file(s) that need to be updated or replaced as well as information about any changes to the metadata that might have to be made in the new version.

If you want to add bibliographic information of a corresponding article to your DRO’s metadata retroactively, such additions are welcome at any time. Just let us know via email and include the DOI of the DRO whose metadata you want to update.

Can DROs be deleted from PsychArchives?

DROs in PsychArchives cannot be deleted; they may be withdrawn from the repository in exceptional cases. Because PsychArchives is a long-term archival system, withdrawals of already published DROs are generally not desirable. Upon express request of the original contributor, however, any DRO can be withdrawn from PsychArchives. A withdrawn DRO cannot be retrieved via PsychArchives anymore. The DOI remains intact, but the files are no longer accessible. Users who access the DOI directly will be informed on the landing page that the DRO is no longer available. If you want to withdraw a DRO, contact us. Please provide a reasoning for the requested withdrawal. We will publicly display the withdrawal reason on the landing page of the DRO.

Can I get one DOI for all of my supplements?

Some repositories offer such a mechanism, but we observed that this often creates an unsystematic heap of DROs that are hard to reuse. We therefore split up supplementary files of journal articles into individual categories and then link them together in PsychArchives. This policy ensures that each DRO is uniquely citable. For instance, datasets are classified as “research data”, images are assigned the DRO type “image”, and any material that does not fit into any other category, such as analyses, tables, figures, maps, appendices and surveys, is defined as “other”. As a result, if you contribute a bundle of supplements for a journal article, you might receive more than one DOI for your material. If your publisher explicitly requires you to provide only one DOI for your supplements, our suggestion is to use one of the DOIs as a “start DOI” or “representative DOI” in your article. For more information on contributing supplementary materials to PsychArchives, please consult our Submission guidelines for supplementary materials in PsychArchives.

Is there an option to anonymize my DRO and share it only with peer reviewers?

Yes, PsychArchives offers the option of anonymizing content and sharing it only with peer-reviewers before archiving it. Upon submission to PsychArchives, you may request a reviewer link for your DRO. The submission will then remain on the PsychArchives submission platform for the time being. Reviewer links are intended for the peer-review process. Having been assigned a reviewer link, the contribution will be accessible to anyone with whom the reviewer link is shared. This feature is currently available for all DRO types except preregistrations.

Your submission will be anonymized by default, i.e. relevant metadata will be veiled. Please ensure that your files do not contain any identifying information. After receiving the reviewer link, you will be able to switch anonymization, revise, delete or publish your contribution in PsychArchives.

Please bear in mind that reviewer links are not Persistent Identifiers (DOIs). After the peer-review process has ended, please get a DOI for your submission by depositing your content in PsychArchives for the long term. While we ask you to choose a Sharing Level and license for your DRO(s) before requesting a reviewer link, content can only be provided to others for re-use when it is published in PsychArchives and assigned a DOI. You should make sure that the DOI (instead of the reviewer link) is referenced in your final journal article.

Information for contributors

1. How to prepare the files

Naming files

We recommend that you designate your files with self-explanatory file names to help future users to navigate your individual files. See the following image for examples of comprehensive and self-explanatory labels.

Recommended file formats

Please make sure to submit your content in file formats recommended for long-term archiving, e.g. PDF/A, CSV etc. This will ensure the long-term usability of your files by future researchers. File formats should ideally be open, standard, non-proprietary, and well-established. You may upload your content in a non-recommended format but it must be additionally provided in a recommended format. For more information on recommended file formats, see our Quality and technical guidelines.

How to transform files into recommended formats

Below you can find links to tutorials for software and online tools to convert your files into the recommended format. We cannot guarantee the up-to-dateness of the tutorials. So be conscious that if you choose to use third party software and online tools, you will do so at your own risk.

Documentation: How to ensure reusability of supplements and replication of studies

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of descriptive documentation of your supplementary materials. It is essential for the long-term impact and benefit of your research to the scientific progress in your field. Try to imagine that ten years from now you have to be able to understand and use your supplementary materials when you have forgotten all your meta-knowledge about, for example, abbreviations and relations of variables. We highly recommend that you preserve all of this knowledge through thorough documentation of your files’ content.

Depending on the amount and type of supplementary material you submit, different approaches to the documentation of your materials’ content may be suitable:

• Should you provide research data, please complement those with a codebook containing all essential information about e.g. variable names and their meaning, coding and structure of data, layout of the data collection;
• Should you provide files with dense and complex content, try to add explanatory information within the file, if possible;
• Should you provide several files with different types of content, please complement those with a file guide, featuring a descriptive table of content of all files associated with your supplementary materials submission.

2. How to submit the files to PsychArchives

Choosing the correct Digital Research Object (DRO) type

Supplementary files of journal articles are split up into individual categories and linked together by PsychArchives. For instance, datasets are classified as “research data”, images are assigned the DRO type “image”, and any material that does not fit into any other category, such as analyses, tables, figures, maps, appendices and surveys, is defined as “other”.

This policy ensures that each DRO, once published in PsychArchives, is uniquely citable. As a result, if you submit a bundle of supplements for publication in PsychArchives, you might receive more than one DOI for your material.

When submitting a bundle of DROs via our Submission Assistant, simply start with one DRO type and add another one before the end of the submission process.

Why metadata?

During the submission process in PsychArchives you will be asked to provide additional information (metadata) about your study and article. This fulfills two purposes: On the one hand, complete and correct metadata is an essential part of the thorough documentation of scholarly research. But furthermore, the metadata will help significantly to increase the online findability of your research in general but especially for scientists interested in related fields. The individual set of metadata will be different depending on the associated PsychArchives DRO type of your submission. For an example, see the complete metadata record of a PsychArchives DRO here: https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.12522. Notice especially the brief summary in the Table of Contents field.

This page provides a non-exhaustive list of online resources for the topic of Open Access and related issues. 

Disclaimer

Although we make every effort to ensure that the links on this page are accurate, up-to-date and relevant, PsychArchives cannot take responsibility for pages maintained by external providers. If you come across any external links that don’t work, we would be grateful if you could report them to the PsychArchives team.

Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that aggregates and analyzes publisher Open Access policies from around the world and provides summaries of self-archiving permissions and conditions of rights given to authors on a journal-by-journal basis.

https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ or https://beta.sherpa.ac.uk/ (joint Sherpa services)

Sherpa Juliet is a searchable database and single focal point of up-to-date information concerning funders’ policies and their requirements on Open Access, publication and data archiving.

http://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/ or https://beta.sherpa.ac.uk/ (joint Sherpa services)

The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) is a searchable international registry charting the growth of Open Access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders.

http://roarmap.eprints.org/

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) hosts a community-curated list of Open Access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA).

https://www.doaj.org/

The How Can I Share It look-up tool provides academic researchers with an easy way to check where a journal article can be shared in line with the paper’s access and usage rights.

https://www.howcanishareit.com/

The University of Cambridge provides resources for finding out which publishers allow author self-archiving of book chapters.

https://osc.cam.ac.uk/monographs/open-access-and-monographs/making-book-chapters-available-repositories

The Open Access Books Toolkit for researchers and academic book authors, which was launched by the OAPEN Foundation, is a free-to-access resource that aims to provide reliable and easy-to-find answers to questions from authors, and provide guidance on the process of publishing an Open Access book.

https://oabooks-toolkit.org/

The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) by Apurva Ashok and Zoe Wake Hyde is a living repository of collective knowledge, written to equip all those who want to publish open textbooks with the resources they need. The Guide is a book-in-progress and is evolving and growing over time.

https://press.rebus.community/the-rebus-guide-to-publishing-open-textbooks/

The Turing Way is an open source community-driven guide to reproducible, ethical, inclusive and collaborative data science.

https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/welcome.html

OpenAIRE provides a range of helpful guides on Open Science issues, such as research data management and related legal issues.

https://www.openaire.eu/guides

The open-access.net platform provides comprehensive information on the subject of Open Access and offers practical advice on its implementation. Some of the content is specific to the situation in German-speaking countries, e.g. information on legal issues.

https://open-access.network/en/information/legal-issues/legal-issues-in-germany

forschungsdaten.info provides a wealth of information concerning research data management, focussing on German particularities such as legal issues, funding, guidelines, policies and more. An English version of some of the content is available.

https://www.forschungsdaten.info/

The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument that you can use to modify your copyright transfer agreements with non-Open Access journal publishers.

https://sparcopen.org/our-work/author-rights/#addendum

The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / DFG) offers a dynamic online portal providing information on safeguarding good research practice. An English-language version of the web portal will be implemented in 2021.

https://wissenschaftliche-integritaet.de/

COSMO project

COSMO (COVID-19 Snapshot MOnitoring) was a joint project of the University of Erfurt, the Robert Koch Institute, the Federal Centre for Health Education, the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID), the Science Media Center, the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, and the Yale Institute for Global Health. In addition to funding from these research partners, COSMO is financially supported by the Klaus Tschira Foundation. Initiated during the current outbreak of the coronavirus, the goal of the COSMO project was to monitor public perceptions of risk, protective and preparedness behaviours, public trust as well as knowledge and misinformation to enable government spokespeople, the media, and health organizations to implement adequate responses.

PsychArchives stores the WHO standard protocol as well as preregistrations of national COSMO studies. Preprints by COSMO Germany and the research data of the COSMO Germany study are made available. Find content belonging to the COSMO project in PsychArchives.

https://projekte.uni-erfurt.de/cosmo2020/web/

With more than 1,600 members, the Deutsche Musiktherapeutische Gesellschaft e.V. (DMtG) is the largest professional association of music therapists in Germany. The association is committed to anchoring music therapy in the health care system. Based on scientifically recognized evidence of its positive effects, music therapy is already anchored in numerous medical guidelines (e.g. dementia, stroke, psychosocial therapies). Binding training and quality standards, mapped in the DMtG certification procedure, give patients the greatest possible degree of security, precisely because of the lack of a professional law.

In the frame of a cooperation with PsychArchives, the Deutsche Musiktherapeutische Gesellschaft e.V. provides Open Access to all thirteen volumes of their music therapy annuals from 2005 to 2017. Find Deutsche Musiktherapeutische Gesellschaft e.V. content in PsychArchives.

www.musiktherapie.de

The “Europäische Akademie für bio-psycho-soziale Gesundheit, Naturtherapien und Kreativitätsförderung” (European Academy for Bio-psycho-social Health, Nature Therapy and Promotion of Creativity, EAG) offers professional training in different therapeutic and psycho-social methods. Founded in 1981 as a state recognized advanced training academy, the EAG publishes training materials, graduation theses, scientific articles as well as different peer-reviewed online journals.

In the frame of an ongoing cooperation with PsychArchives, the EAG provides Open Access to all articles from the online journals “Polyloge”, “Supervision” and “Grüne Texte” as well as a range of e-books. Find EAG content in PsychArchives.

https://www.eag-fpi.com/
https://www.fpi-publikation.de/

Hogrefe Publishing is Europe’s leading publisher in psychology, psychotherapy and psychiatry. Established over 70 years ago, Hogrefe is a family-owned company, which has grown across Europe in the past 17 years. In addition to 2,500 available books in eleven languages, 1,600 eBooks and 41 journals, their program includes 1,600 psychological tests in 20 languages, which are used, for example, in clinical diagnostics, education and human resources.

In September 2018, the German Psychological Society (DGPs), the Hogrefe Publishing Group and the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) entered a partnership to foster research transparency, reproducibility, and replicability in Psychology, encompassing a comprehensive and interrelated set of open science offerings. Read the full announcement of the partnership ​here​. Within the frame of the cooperation, PsychArchives has become the preferred repository for Hogrefe journals. Find Hogrefe content in PsychArchives.

https://www.hogrefe.com/

Being closer means to be more advanced – facing a fair future for the gifted children

Highly gifted children and young people are the subject of our foundation. Our mission is to shape the German educational system into one that supports the gifted. Being an expert of the needs of the gifted and potentially high-performing child, the Karg Foundation is seeking better ways for the promotion of highly gifted children; professionally and in partnership with others. In doing so it follows a motto: an educational system that meets the needs of the highly gifted and enables them to develop their personality on the basis of their particular strengths.

We are specialized in guiding our educational system in Germany into a better future – above and beyond our own programs and projects. The Executive Board and Board of Trustees transform the various activities of the foundation together with an engaged team. The Karg Foundation was founded in 1989 by the department store entrepreneur Hans-Georg Karg and his wife Adelheid Karg. Today it is the largest acting foundation in supporting gifted children in Germany. Its total assets amount to around 125 million euros (in 2017).

PsychArchives stores a range of secondary publications by the Karg Foundation; new issues are added continuously. Find Karg Foundation content in PsychArchives.

www.karg-stiftung.de

www.fachportal-hochbegabung.de

In cooperation with the section “Methods and Evaluation” of the German Psychological Society (Fachgruppe “Methoden und Evaluation” der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie / DGPs), PsychArchives provides access to the online archive of the journal “Methods of Psychological Research (MPR-Online)”. “MPR-Online”, the official organ of the former DGPs “Methods” section, was an internationally oriented journal of methodology that comprised contributions from different areas of psychological research.

“MPR-Online” (together with the formerly independent journal “Metodologia de las Ciencias del Comportamiento”) is now published under the new journal title “Methodology. European Journal of Research Methods for the Behavioral and Social Sciences”.

Find issues of “Methods of Psychological Research (MPR-Online)” in PsychArchives.

Active since 1993, Psychosozial-Verlag is a German publisher of books and journals from the disciplines of psychology and the social sciences, with a focus on the fields of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, psychosomatics, family therapy and the connection between psychological and social issues. Contrary to the prevailing trend towards a narrowing of the subject-specific perspective, Psychosozial-Verlag aims to revive the dialogue between the psychological and the sociological sciences and as well as the dialogue between the various helping professions.

In the frame of an ongoing cooperation with PsychArchives, Psychosozial-Verlag provides Open Access to a variety of books via the repository, and has made an extensive set of journal volumes available in Open Access in the form of secondary publications. PsychArchives features over 700 articles from the “Journal für Psychologie”, “Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft”, “à jour! Psychotherapie Berufsentwicklung” and “Bioenergetic Analysis: The Clinical Journal of the IIBA”. New volumes are added on a regular basis. Find Psychosozial-Verlag content in PsychArchives.

https://www.psychosozial-verlag.de/

Established in 1986, Shaker-Verlag is a German publisher of scientific literature, especially monographs, dissertations and conference proceedings of renowned European events and conferences. Shaker-Verlag cooperates with a large number of scientific research institutes and publishers, and their program currently includes more than 27,000 available titles from a wide range of subject areas. 

In the frame of an ongoing cooperation with PsychArchives, Shaker-Verlag provides Open Access to the conference proceedings of the annual psychological conference “Psychologiedidaktik und Evaluation”. Find Shaker-Verlag content in PsychArchives.

https://www.shaker.de/

Data security at PsychArchives

The measures also meet the requirements of Art. 32 (1) GDPR.

Scope

The measures relate exclusively to the servers used to provide the psycharchives.org service. They do not refer to end devices of users or services that use data provided by PsychArchives. 

Encryption

Encryption of content stored in PsychArchives does not take place. The web pages are accessed using the secure transmission protocol HTTPS. Access to the server level is done using SSH. Data backup to tape backup is done in a network secured by a firewall without encryption. 

Ensuring confidentiality

Physical access to facilities

The server rooms used are secured via doors with a transponder system, as are the server cabinets. The required locking authorization for the server room and cabinets is restricted to a narrowly defined group of people (IT employees). Locking authorizations are only issued upon request. Locking operations with the transponders are logged. 

System and network security

Access to the servers is possible via authentication with username/password for users with restricted rights, and via key-based SSH authentication for users with root rights. In the case of the latter, the keys used must be secured via a keyphrase.

On the network, the servers are secured by a global and local firewall, so that access from outside the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) is only possible via dedicated ports. Only ports that are necessary for the system to operate are open. 

At the application level (web interface), access is secured via username/password. Appropriate login must be requested and is set up by administrators. Physical access is limited by entry control. 

Access control

The system and network security measures stated above also apply to access. A rights system enables different levels of access rights both on the operating system level and in the software DSpace used for PsychArchives. Each employee has only those rights that are necessary for the performance of a respective task. The rights are managed by a system administrator. Accesses are logged. The corresponding logs are stored for 7 days for troubleshooting purposes. 

Ensuring integrity

The used DSpace software maintains a database field dc.description.provenance, in which significant changes made via administrative interfaces are logged. Making changes to the metadata is only possible after authentication. The assignment of access authorizations is put into writing. 

Checksums are calculated at the DSpace level to verify the integrity of uploaded files. 

In the case of changes requested by data contributors, the corresponding files are not simply exchanged, but a new version is created. The changes made are thus transparent and can be traced with the help of the previous versions. In justified cases, a publication of datasets can be withdrawn from PsychArchives. The corresponding datasets are then no longer accessible via the system, but retain their DOI. The process is documented. 

In principle, many activities and changes that are necessary for traceability are documented. The quality assurance concept also includes procedural instructions for the operating personnel to ensure consistent handling of the data. 

A review of the metadata of the Digital Research Objects (DROs) is carried out by qualified staff at irregular intervals. 

Ensuring availability

The servers are located in a university computer center equipped with an uninterruptible power supply. In addition, they are virtual servers. The failure of a physical machine, which provides the virtualization environment, can be compensated automatically. The network is redundant. 

There is a backup and recovery concept regarding the creation of backup copies of data, process states, configurations, data structures. The backup process is reviewed. The backups are kept spatially and physically separated in another building. 

Protection against external influences is provided by: 

• Use of uninterruptible power supply 
• Air conditioning in server rooms
• Devices for monitoring temperature and humidity in server rooms 
• Fire and smoke detection systems and fire extinguishers in server rooms. 

There is a substitute arrangement for absent employees. 

Ensuring the capacity and service availability of the systems

The servers are integrated into a monitoring system. The log files are regularly evaluated. 

The servers run as virtual machines in a cluster with redundant hardware and network connections, i.e. the server continues to run even if a node in the cluster fails. Repeated load peaks can be absorbed by allocating additional resources. The software is kept in a similar configuration on test and demo systems. However, the data stock, i.e. the uploaded files, of PsychArchives is not kept redundant.

Procedures for restoring the availability of (personal) data after a physical or technical incident

The basis for PsychArchives is the open source software DSpace with in-house adaptations. The metadata of the captured items are stored in a PostgreSQL database, the bitstreams (files, such as PDF documents) are stored in a so-called asset store in the server’s file system.

The PsychArchives database is backed up once a day as a dump and written to magnetic tape together with the configuration files and the asset store. The backup written to tape goes back one month. The PsychArchives server and the tape robot that performs the backups are physically separated (different buildings). In addition to the nightly backup of the files, the virtual machine with the PsychArchives application as a whole is periodically stored on a storage system to enable fast restoration. 

In the event of a failure, the application can be restored within one day using the data from the tape backup, provided that the necessary hardware is available. 

Procedures for regular review, assessment and evaluation of the effectiveness of technical and organizational measures

The basic functionality of a restore from tape backup is assumed for PsychArchives servers, because restores on the file server, which is backed up with the same mechanism, are done successfully at irregular intervals.

Written documentation of other actions

Employees working with the PsychArchives system are trained.

For PsychArchives itself, there is a quality assurance concept, procedural instructions and other documents that lead to a standardized procedure for handling the data.

In the area of IT support, the standards according to FitSM, an IT service management, are used.

Last update: 2023-06-15

About PsychArchives

PsychArchives is a disciplinary, international repository for digital research objects (DROs) from psychology and related disciplines. It is provided as a free, non-commercial public service by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID).

ZPID stores the DROs on the PsychArchives infrastructure, supplements them with bibliographic metadata, indexes their contents and disseminates all metadata over open interfaces to third party search and retrieval systems. 

Contributors gain visibility of their DROs in a disciplinary, quality curated environment and widespread dissemination of information about their DROs into the psychological research and user community. Users gain a comprehensive resource of psychology-related information under clear usage terms and with immediate, electronic access.

Besides DROs contributed by individual users, further DROs are acquired by PsychArchives subject to different cooperation models with publishing houses and other institutional partners.

1 Use of DROs

Users may use a DRO offered in PsychArchives under the license terms chosen by the contributor and stated on each item page. No further restrictions apply. All content is provided “as-is”. DRO metadata may be freely used under the CC0 waiver.

1.1 Creation of copies from DROs

Your rights to create copies of a DRO and distribute these copies depend on its license. Therefore ZPID generally advises to link to the appropriate Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the DRO in PsychArchives, instead of copying DROs to other repository systems or distributing them internally at the user’s organisation.

2 Contribution of DROs

2.1 Accepted material

We accept DROs for PsychArchives that fulfil the collection mandate of the repository in terms of their contents, quality, form and document type according to our quality and technical guidelines. All submissions will be checked by ZPID staff for formal accordance with these guidelines before publication. Material which fails to meet these requirements will not be accepted into PsychArchives. ZPID staff reserve their right to select material.

2.2 Legal frame

(1) The rights and obligations of contributors and PsychArchives are subject to a contract agreement, the terms of which are stipulated in these Terms of Use. This contract will be concluded between the contributor and ZPID when the contributor submits a DRO and ticks the respective checkbox in the upload dialogue. All exclusive/intellectual property rights of a DRO accessible on PsychArchives remain with the original author/creator of the DRO. When uploading contents to PsychArchives contributors must choose a license from a choice offered by PsychArchives (see sec. 2.4) for the material they contributed. This license enables the users to use the contribution according to the respective license terms.

(2) Contributors have to be fully legally entitled to contribute the DRO to PsychArchives and license it under the chosen license. Contributors are personally responsible for observing legislation and third party rights when contributing a DRO. They are liable for violations of applicable law, including, but not limited to, copyright, privacy, data protection and intellectual property rights. PsychArchives assumes no liability or responsibility for the contents of DROs or their use by third parties. If contributors gain knowledge of own violations of applicable law with their contributed DROs, they must inform ZPID in writing immediately and coordinate a withdrawal as outlined in section 2.7

(3) PsychArchives can use the DROs according to the license the contributor has chosen for them. In any case contributors grant PsychArchives a non-exclusive right to use the DRO as follows: electronic storage, particularly in databases, making the DRO available under the terms chosen by the contributor; converting the file format for the purpose of long-term archiving and/or visualisation. The aforementioned grant of rights to PsychArchives shall in no way restrict the rights granted by the chosen license.

2.3 Reviewer link functionality

PsychArchives offers the option of anonymizing content and sharing it only with peer-reviewers before archiving it. Upon submission to PsychArchives, contributors may request a reviewer link for their submission. The submission will then remain on the PsychArchives submission platform for the time being. Reviewer links are intended for the peer-review process. Having been assigned a reviewer link, the submission will be accessible to anyone with whom the reviewer link is shared. This feature is currently available for all DRO types except preregistrations.

After receiving the reviewer link, contributors are able to switch anonymization, revise, delete or publish their contribution in PsychArchives. Subsequent publication of the reviewer link submission in PsychArchives entails the assignment of a DOI as well as the long-term archival of the DRO (s). There is currently no expiration date for reviewer links, i.e. there is no preset time frame after which the material made available via reviewer link is removed. This may change in the future.

2.4 Sharing Levels for DROs

Each of the DROs has to be assigned a sharing level by the contributor, which combines statements about licensing and access to the DRO (see sec. 2.2 (1) above).

2.4.1 Sharing Level 0

By assigning Sharing level 0 to a DRO, the contributor makes it available under a public license from the license portfolio for sharing level 0 offered at the time of contribution. Usage of DROs in sharing level 0 is public according to the chosen license and access for users is immediate.

2.4.2 Sharing Level 0+

By assigning Sharing level 0+ to a DRO, the contributor makes it available under the terms and conditions of sharing level 0. Different from sharing level 0, access via PsychArchives includes an optional step in which users may share information about the intended use of the DRO with the contributor.

2.4.3 Sharing Level 1

By assigning Sharing level 1 to a DRO, the contributor makes it available under a “scientific use license” from the license portfolio for sharing level 1 offered at the time of contribution. Usage of DROs in sharing level 1 is restricted according to the chosen license, and access to these DROs for users agreeing to the license conditions is immediate via download of the licensed material.

ZPID can update the terms of the scientific use license from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new developments, problems or concerns. Each version of the scientific use license is given a distinguishing version number.

2.4.4 Sharing Level 2 and above

These more restrictive sharing levels are currently not implemented. We will update these terms of service accordingly when they are introduced.

2.5 Embargo functionality for DROs

Embargoed DROs are deposited in PsychArchives, but only made available according to the chosen sharing level at a pre-specified future date set by the contributor. Until the embargo period expires, only the metadata for the DRO and not the file itself are publicly available. After expiration of the embargo period, both DRO and metadata are made available in PsychArchives. The maximum embargo duration is 3 years from the time of contribution and has to be requested with the first submission of the DRO.

2.6 Updates of contributed DROs

Contributed DROs may be updated by the original contributor. This does not remove the existing version of the DRO but links the different versions together into a publicly visible revision history.

2.7 Withdrawal of submitted DROs

PsychArchives is a long-term archival system. Withdrawals of already published DROs are therefore generally not desirable. On request of the original uploader any contributed DRO can be withdrawn from PsychArchives with validity for the future. A withdrawn DRO can not be retrieved via PsychArchives anymore. In case of infringement of third-party rights, e.g. copyright or privacy, affected third-parties may request withdrawal of a DRO instead of the original uploader. PsychArchives can withdraw DROs on such requests from the repository and will inform the contributor about such measures and the third party’s claims. Every request for withdrawal must be accompanied by a statement about the reasons for the request. ZPID will publicly display this statement in PsychArchives instead of the withdrawn DRO.

2.8 Availability of contributed DROs

Contributed and accepted DROs are available as long as PsychArchives is operated. ZPID reserves the right, without notice, at its sole discretion and without liability, to alter or delete inappropriate content, and to restrict or remove DRO access where it considers that use of PsychArchives interferes with its operations or violates these Terms of Use or applicable law.

3 Update of these Terms of Use

Occasionally, ZPID may make legitimate changes to these Terms of Use for PsychArchives, for example to enhance existing features or to add new functionality or features to PsychArchives, to make scientific and technical progress, to make appropriate technical adjustments to ensure the functioning or security of PsychArchives, or for legal or regulatory reasons. If we make changes to these Terms of Use that may affect the ongoing contractual relationship between you and ZPID, we will, in accordance with the circumstances, provide you with appropriate prior notice, for example by displaying a prominent notice on the PsychArchives website or by sending you an e-mail or by asking for your consent within the services. This message will contain information about the proposed changes and your possible right to reject those changes, as well as where the rejection is to be sent and what the consequences are if you do not refuse. The changes are considered accepted if you do not decline them within 30 days. In applying this process, we will not make any changes that materially affect the contractual balance between you and ZPID. If you do not wish to continue using PsychArchives under the new version of the Terms of Service, you may cancel your registration by contacting us at any time. 

4 Restrictions and Changes to the Services

ZPID will make reasonable efforts to keep PsychArchives operational. However, due to technical difficulties, maintenance or testing or updates required to reflect changes in applicable technical or regulatory requirements, there may occasionally be temporary disruptions.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, ZPID can decide ceasing to provide PsychArchives at any time. You understand and agree that ZPID is under no obligation to provide, upgrade or update PsychArchives, or to provide certain content through PsychArchives.

5 Miscellaneous 

5.1 Unenforceable Clauses

If any clause of these Terms of Service is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain effective and such term shall be replaced with a term consistent with the purpose and intent of these Terms of Service.

5.2 Governing Law and Jurisdiction

This Agreement is governed by German law. 

5.3 Entire Agreement

You agree that these Terms of Service and the information which is expressly incorporated into them by reference (including reference to information contained in an URL) are the complete Agreement for the legal relationship between you and ZPID and supersede all prior or contemporaneous Agreements or representations, written or oral, regarding this relationship.

5.4 Changes to the Agreement

These Terms of Service may not be modified except in a written contract or statement.