It is a tribute to those who make research freely accessible: Scholars and scientists, research institutions, libraries, museums, archives, repositories and other committed bodies and persons. The prize is awarded for the first time this year.

In the reasoning for the award, it is stated among other things:

The automated delivery service for journal articles revolutionizes the sustainable distribution of scholarly publications. Publishers' articles are delivered to digital archives on a license basis.

DeepGreen operates a central "data turntable", which collects articles published in open access or for which secondary publication is possible in line with the "green road" from publishing houses with their support, and which makes available the respectively relevant portions to institutional or subject-specific repositories.

Not only the currently participating 13 publishing houses and 86 repositories, but also the authors, for which the libraries take over publication of the articles in institutional and subject-oriented repositories in the open access format, and the scholarly public as such profit from the delivery service. Over 100,000 articles have already been distributed to repositories by DeepGreen.

The pilot operation of DeepGreen takes place under the responsibility of the Cooperative Library Association Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV), the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) and the University Library of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU).

Further information on the DeepGreen project