Open Access
The "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" initiated by the MPS and signed on 22nd Oct 2003 by major European research institutions and funding agencies is a clear commitment to encourage researchers to publish their work according to the principles of the open access paradigm.

The Max Planck Society pursues two parallel roads towards open access:
 institutional self-archiving of research output on the eDoc server
 publications by its researchers in open access journals.

About the eDoc Server
The eDoc server provides a unique entry point to the accumulated research output of the Max Planck Society. Institutes of the Max Planck Society are invited by the president to use the eDoc -Server to collect their scientific documents in digital form, manage their publication data and to increase the visibility of their digital collections. Via eDoc, scientists can make their work openly accessible online with the technological and institutional backing of the Max Planck Society.
From 2001 to 2006, the eDoc Server is a service developed and provided by the Heinz Nixdorf Center For Information Management (ZIM) in the Max Planck Society. Since 2007, the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) is responsible for maintenance of the eDoc Server. In parallel, the MPDL developed PubMan, an improved repository software, which is part of the eSciDoc infrastructure for the MPG. Since 2009, the solution is introduced at the Max Planck Institutes and the publication data are gradually migrated from the current repository eDoc to the central installation of PubMan for the MPG.