The journal “Scientific Bulletin of Kherson State University. Series ‘Germanic Studies and Intercultural Communication’” supports the principles of open science and considers free access to research results an essential condition for the development of humanities scholarship, international academic communication, and the global visibility of Ukrainian philological research.

The journal’s policy integrates open access publishing, long-term digital preservation, and the promotion of open research data in accordance with contemporary international scholarly publishing standards.

Open Access Policy

All articles published in the journal are made freely available without financial, technical, or registration barriers for readers. This means that users may:

• read and download materials freely;
• share articles for non-commercial academic and educational purposes;
• reuse research results with proper citation;
• incorporate materials into teaching and research resources.

The open access model is intended to ensure the widest possible dissemination of scholarly knowledge without barriers.

Archiving and Long-Term Preservation

The journal guarantees long-term preservation of all published materials in digital form. Archiving is designed to ensure stable access to scholarly content regardless of technological changes.

The archiving policy includes:

• storage of full-text articles on the journal’s official website;
• backup preservation in digital repositories;
• ensuring persistent accessibility (long-term access);
• use of persistent identifiers (DOI);
• regular updating of storage formats for future compatibility.

The journal adheres to the principle that no scholarly publication should be lost to the academic community.

Open Research Data Policy

The journal encourages authors to make research data as open as possible, particularly in empirical, corpus-based, sociolinguistic, and intercultural studies.

Recommended practices include:

• depositing datasets in institutional, national, or international repositories;
• assigning persistent identifiers (DOI) to datasets;
• describing data structure and collection methods in the article;
• ensuring compliance with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable);
• providing access to data unless ethical or legal restrictions apply.

Where data include personal or sensitive information, authors must ensure proper anonymization or justify access limitations.

Exceptions and Data Access Restrictions

Partial or full restrictions on data access are acceptable where:

• ethical requirements for participant protection apply;
• data contain personal or sensitive information;
• legal or contractual restrictions exist;
• open access would infringe third-party rights.

In such cases, authors must clearly state the reasons for restriction in the manuscript.

Compliance with International Standards

The journal’s open access, archiving, and research data policies align with contemporary open science principles and international recommendations on transparency, reproducibility, and long-term preservation of scholarly outputs.