Open Access in Information Science
Information science can generally be considered to be quite a small discipline in the German-speaking area. The Hochschulverband Informationswissenschaft (Higher Education Association for Information Science, HI) lists only 19 higher education institutions (HEIs) at which the subject is taught. Most of these HEIs are universities of applied sciences. The German-language publishing landscape in information science is accordingly modest in size. Moreover, it cannot be described as having an affinity for open access. On 3 January 2022, the HI published its Open Science Guideline, calling for open access to texts, data, software and methods. This was preceded by the discussion of a first draft of the guideline by members of the HI in autumn 2021. The HI signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities on 15 November 2021.
Open Access Journals
Open access journals specifically for information science are still a rarity, especially in the German-speaking area. The DGI’s journal, Information – Wissenschaft & Praxis, is closed access. Internationally, the same goes for the Proceedings of the Association for Information Management (ASLIB), all publications of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (asis&t), and the Journal of Information Science.
As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 1,052 journals under information science and 196 entries under the related search term library science.
Important open access journals include:
- Information Research: An International Electronic Journal DOAJ
- Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics DOAJ
- Information DOAJ
- Informationspraxis DOAJ
- o-bib. Das offene Bibliotheksjournal DOAJ
- College and Research Libraries DOAJ
- 027.7 : Zeitschrift für Bibliothekskultur DOAJ
- Library and Information Research DOAJ
- Libreas : Library Ideas DOAJ
Video about the Funding of Open Access Articles
Open Access Books
As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 117 titles under the subject library & information sciences, while OAPEN listed 47 titles under library & information sciences. The proceedings of the International Symposium of Information Science (ISI), which is organised by the Higher Education Association for Information Science (HI), are published open access; the contributions can be found on the HI website.
Disciplinary Repositories
The most important repository is eprints in library & information sciences (e-Lis), which was developed by the library and information science community. However, especially in the German-language community, open access publications tend to be deposited more in institutional repositories.
Literatur
Further Reading
- Chen, M., & Du, Y. (2016). The status of open access library and information science journals in SSCI. The Electronic Library, 34(5), 722–739. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-05-2015-0070
- Kuhlen, R., & Wormser-Hacker, C. (2014, January 14). Antrag an die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft aus dem Programm Wissenschaftliche Literaturversorgungs- und Informationssysteme: Einrichtung einer Open-Access-Zeitschrift/Publikations-, Informations- und Kommunikationsplattform EIS - European Information Science. https://eprints.rclis.org/24877/
- Sahoo, J., Birtia, T., & Mohanty, B. (2017). Open access journals in library information science: A study on DOAJ. International Journal of Information Dissemination and Technology, 7(2), 116. https://doi.org/10.5958/2249-5576.2017.00008.5
Content editor of this page: Ulrich Herb, Saarland University and State Library (Last updated: January 2022)