The library provides literature on all the research areas of the five physics institutes and includes subjects such as relativity, quantum physics, biological physics, but also basic literature on the history of natural sciences or on related areas like philosophy and mathematics. You will find our complete collection in the USB catalogue under the location "Physikalische Institute / Forschungsbibliothek".
Let yourself be inspired directly on the shelf - our books are sorted according to subject areas → shelf assignment reading room.
You will find further information on our books and journals as well as tips and tricks on literature research in the research section.

Our librarian is always happy to hear your suggestions for new books. Please contact her if you are a lecturer and add new books to your recommendation lists. We then try to buy these for our collection.

The USB has recently started offering a campus delivery service for its own printed holdings - so you no longer have to go to the university library to make copies yourself, but can simply have a scan sent to you. If capacity permits, this service can also be requested for our physics library - especially for researchers who are located in other buildings.

In addition, you can order books or papers that are not available in Cologne via interlibrary loan.

You can set up an electronic reserve collection for your lectures and seminars via the platform ILIAS. This tool allows your students to access to the most important materials for your courses online. You will find further information on the USB website.

Open access means that a reviewed manuscript (journal article or book) is immediately and permanently online available and you can read it free of charge. Furthermore, the copyright remains with the author with a Creative Commons License. The “Alliance of German Science Organizations” recommends the Creative Commons license CC-BY for scientific publications.

Open access aims to achieve greater visibility, higher citation rates, and greater impact of research results of German scientific institutions. The subject of open access is quite complex. There are different models of open access like "hybrid" "green" or "golden" paths: (open access diagram)

It is a hybrid journal when a publisher charges both a subscription fee (the license for reading) as well as an additional fee if the author chooses to publish a certain article open access. The publisher therefore earns twice (double dipping). The hybrid path is the first step on the way to the transformation process that only started a few years ago.

The "green path" to open access means that the author can publish his article – usually with a time delay - on his website or in a repository after the article has appeared in a scientific journal. Publishers often only allow uploading a manuscript version (which is usually identical in content, but in a different layout). Documents published in the green way are often preprints.

The "golden path" refers to publishing in an open access journal. The publisher publishes the peer-reviewed version of the manuscript immediately and permanently in a journal and anyone can read, download or share the article without any barriers. Gold open access is a "pay-to-publish" model: you do not have to pay a subscription fee to read the content, but you have to pay an article processing charge (APC) to publish your article.

You are on the "platinum path" (or diamant path) if you don not have to pay neither for reading nor publishing an article. In these cases, scientific institutions usually offer publication platforms themselves.

The transformation from the subscription model to open access requires extensive changes in the background organization: for example, the university has to reorganize the budget for libraries and publication fees, and libraries have to develop and establish new work processes; the USB already offers new services related to OA publishing.

Open access has been an integral part of the publication and information structure in physics for a long time now. The first open access server ever, "arXiv", was created as early as 1991 to make preprints available. For several years now, there has been a trend towards further open access projects:

• DEAL: initiative supported by the MPDL (Max Planck Digital Library) to secure transformative publish-and-read-agreements with the largest commercial publishers of scientific journals (Wiley, Springer and Elsevier)
  Billing & funding:
  For publications in hybrid journals, so-called PAR fees ("Publish-and-Read") are charged per article. The fees depend on the journal you publish in and vary between 2,200 and 6,450 euros per article. For publications in pure Open Access journals, APCs (article processing charges) must be paid per article; there is a 20% discount on the list price. Additional publication fees may apply for colour illustrations or overlong articles. From 2024, the MPDL will also charge a service fee of 100 euros for each article submitted.
  The University Library takes care of the MPDL invoices centrally. All journal articles are subsidised with 700 euros. The remaining costs for hybrid publications are invoiced to the faculties on a quarterly basis; for Gold Open Access publications, however, the authors receive an individual invoice directly.
  for further information please check the website of the university library
• Springer Nature: as a member of the UoC, you can publish your article open access in the "Nature Research Journals" without additional fees thanks to a special agreement paid for by our faculty, the medical faculty and the university library

• In 2024, the UoC joins the Cambridge University Press Transformation Agreement via the Bavarian State Library Consortium. This means that all members of the UoC will have access to all of the publisher's journals and the UCL will take over the APCs until further notice.

• SciPost: a purely online-based scientific publication portal managed by the SciPost Foundation that offers freely, openly, globally and perpetually accessible science
• SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) has converted key journals in the field of high-energy physics to open access at no cost for authors

Not sure which journal you should publish in? The new "B!son" project - a recommendation service for quality-assured open access journals - may be able to help.

You can find more information on open access journals, books or repositories in physics in the “open access network”.

publication lists of the institutes:

• astrophysics / PH1
• experimental physics / PH2
• nuclear physics / IKP
• theoretical physics / THP: individual lists of the working groups on their website 
• biological physics / IBP: individual lists of the working groups on their website

The Cologne UniversityPublicationsServer (KUPS) offers all members of the University of Cologne the opportunity to publish their scientific publications electronically and make them available according to open access guidelines. In addition, KUPS has set itself the goal of being a university bibliography and recording all scientific publications by members of the University of Cologne.

• Please handle media, furniture and equipment with care. Vandalism will be prosecuted.
• It is not allowed to bring food and groceries into the library. Drinks are permitted.
• Please report any defects you notice in the library (damaged book, no wifi, heating too hot/cold...) to the librarian so that we can take care of solving the problem.
• The library is not liable for the loss of or damage to items you have brought into the library.
• You may take borrowed books to your office, but you are not allowed to take them home.
• You have to follow the instructions of the librarian and helpdesk personnel.
• If you have any questions, suggestions or criticism, please contact our librarian.

You will find more details in our terms of use (in German only).

The physics library provides you with printed and digital content. Please ensure that you comply with copyright regulations.

Extensive downloads of electronic media may result in access being blocked by the provider not only for your own computer but also for the entire university.

Please observe the terms of use of the publishers or editors. The following generally applies to publishers' offers subject to licensing:

Access to the full texts is permitted to employees and students of the University of Cologne. Library users who are not members of the university can only use the media subject to licensing on the premises of the library. Database contents as well as full texts of articles and e-book chapters may only be printed or saved for personal use and research purposes. Articles may not be passed on to third parties either electronically or in printed form. Systematic downloading of journal articles (e.g. all articles from a journal issue) or database content, in particular also by robots, is contrary to licensing law and prohibited.