Vocational Education and Training Research

^{Quelle: Brinken, H. (2020). Finanzierung von Open-Access-Artikeln, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/49536 (CC BY 3.0 DE)}

The term vocational education and training (VET) research covers research works that deal with vocational learning, VET institutions and systems, vocational and labour market development, the learning-conducive design of work processes, and skills development. The disciplines that contribute to VET research include, in particular:

• educational sciences/vocational and business education
• business administration
• economics of education
• psychology/occupational psychology
• sociology/occupational sociology

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of VET research, scholarly works in this area are characterised by multidisciplinarity.

Articles in scholarly journals are the most frequent form of publication in VET research. Journal articles account for over half of the works indexed in the VET Repository, a disciplinary repository for VET research operated by the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB). Although printed books, the traditional form of publication in VET research, are on the decline, they nonetheless continue to play an important role in this field. Overall, a trend towards open access publishing can be observed in VET research, and there are now a number of purely open access journals, for example Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik – online (bwp@).

From 2018 to 2021, the BIBB addressed the topic of open access within the framework of the research project “Open Access in der Berufsbildungsforschung“ (Open Access in VET Research, OABBF), which investigated the factors that play a role for authors when it comes to the acceptance, spread, and use of open access. The results of that project suggest that reservations towards open access persist in VET research. These reservations relate to reputation and the visibility of research results. Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional communication and information on open access should be expanded in the future to enhance the image of open access in VET research and dismantle any prejudices (see Getz et al., 2022; Getz & Rödel, 2026).

As of December 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 219 titles under “vocational training”, while OAPEN listed 2,714 titles under the same keyword.

In addition, as of December 2025, the full texts of 5,280 books were freely available in the VET Repository of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB).

On the left-hand side you can find helpful services and tools to inform yourself about specific questions on Open Access.