License selection and DOI
The migration of the OPUS publication server to a new software version has brought some changes. In addition to the more modern web layout with preview images of the publications, you can now also choose between a simple author agreement ("UB license") and CC BY, a standard license for Open Access. The DOI can now be assigned to the publication during the upload process so that it can be added to the bibliographic details of the publication in the full text (PDF). Previously, a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) could only be assigned after a publication had been published.
Following the relaunch, further functions will be improved or added in the coming weeks and months. The layout of the short display for publications will be expanded to include the DOI. However, meaningful download statistics remain a fundamental problem, as these are dominated by bots.
Central component of Open Access services since 1998
OPUS (Online Publications of the University of Stuttgart) started in 1998 and was thus the first important component of the university's Open Access infrastructure. The publications are permanently visible worldwide, listed in the library catalogs ("Catalog plus" of the University Library, K10plus, German National Library) and are indexed by Google Scholar, for example. The most common publication type is dissertations (5,414), followed by journal articles (4,559), Master's theses (1,057) and conference papers (1,019). In 2024, two thirds of all dissertations at the University of Stuttgart were published via OPUS (308).
As an institutional repository, OPUS is available to all members of the University of Stuttgart for Gold and Green Open Access publications. The software used is DSpace (currently version 8). DSpace is open source and developed by a large community that regularly takes up the requirements of authors and librarians.