After an informal welcome over coffee, Anne-Katrin Henkel, deputy director of the GWLB, opened the workshop with a welcoming speech in which she stressed the importance of open access for a modern state library. In subsequent welcoming speeches, Anna Teschner from the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture and Arne Butt from the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen emphasised the importance of open access to research results, especially in regional studies. In addition, with reference to the GWLB’s updated Open Access Policy, Andreas Steinsieck, head of the media processing department at the GWLB, explained the library’s strategic positioning as an important point of contact for non-university researchers. Although certainly keen to publish their works in open access, this target group has so far received little support to do so from relevant funding programmes.

In his capacity as project manager, Benedikt Krüger (GWLB) then presented the project Förderung landeskundlicher Open-Access-Transformation [Promotion of the Open Access Transformation in Regional Studies](FLOAT), which aims to create a stronger awareness of open access in the regional studies community in Lower Saxony and to test new ways of financing and implementing open access transformation projects. As an example of such a transformation, Krüger presented inter alia the pilot project “Open Access Transformation of the Series ‘Publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen’”, which was developed in cooperation with the publishing house Wallstein Verlag and the Historical Commission. Within the framework of this project, selected volumes of the very extensive series are being published retrospectively in open access. For future volumes, on the other hand, various forms of open access financing – for example consortial funding or purchase to open – will be tested. Regarding this project, Lena Hartmann (Wallstein Verlag) explained how Wallstein Verlag is taking a stance on changes in scholarly publishing by developing open access business models and implementing transformation projects. At the same time, she pointed out the great technical and human resources challenges for smaller publishers associated with this.

In the late morning, the focus was on projects and funding opportunities. Jan Stieglitz presented NiedersachsenOPEN, a programme financed by the State of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation that funds both the provision of open access to publications from and about Lower Saxony and infrastructure projects, including FLOAT. An insight into and a preview of the work of the national Service Centre for Diamond Open Access (SeDOA) was provided by Katja Wermbter, who referred in particular to the SeDOA Distribution Hub and the provision of support with technical and legal issues. Following on from that, Linda Martin from the preliminary project NiedersachsenPUBLISHING presented the concept for a cooperatively built diamond open access publishing infrastructure distributed across various Lower Saxony libraries. Each of the three presentations also identified specific points of reference of relevance to regional studies research, for example through the provision of advisory services.

In the afternoon, the focus shifted to open access projects aimed at providing impetus for future open access initiatives in regional studies. Gerrit Heim (Baden State Library) presented RegionaliaOPEN, a platform that for several years now has been making publications about the region of Baden available in open access. In doing so, it has met with lively demand from the regional studies community, but also with a great need for advice on their part. Daniel Fischer (Saxon State and University Library Dresden) presented by way of example the library’s extensive activities to clarify rights in the case of the retrospective provision of open access to regional studies periodicals. Finally, Markus Bierkoch (GWLB) addressed the e-mandate recently introduced in Lower Saxony (i.e., the mandatory deposit of electronic publications from Lower Saxony with the GWLB) and highlighted the role that it could play in the comprehensive transmission of freely accessible regional studies publications.

One central element of the workshop was the World Café in the afternoon, which gave participants an opportunity for active exchanges. At each of the three topic tables, one of the following key questions were discussed: What are the benefits of open access for regional studies in Lower Saxony? What are the obstacles to open access publishing? And what types of support and services are specifically needed to ensure that open access gains broader acceptance in regional studies? The conversational format made it possible to bring together experiences from researchers, publishers, institutions, and projects. The potential benefits of open access for regional studies were highlighted more clearly in the discussions. They range from increased visibility of regional studies publications, through long-term availability, to completely new possibilities for linking regional studies publications with cultural data of other memory institutions. At the same time, areas of tension or activity became apparent. Some participants criticised the discrepancy between the funders’ requirements on the one hand and the interests of publishing authors in regional studies on the other. In particular, the requirement that works be made available only under a Creative Commons CC BY or CC BY-SA licence was criticised. With reference to existing uncertainties in the wake of the processing of content by AI applications, some participants expressed a desire for more licensing options in order to be able to grant more restrictive licences in case of doubt. It was also noted that a high need on the part of the regional studies community for continuous advisory and information offerings and funding opportunities was becoming apparent. Although this need could be met in the short and medium term by existing open access projects, several participants were of the opinion that a strategy for the long-term and sustainable support of regional studies researchers who wish to publish their works in open access would be desirable.

After a short coffee break, the results of the World Café were presented and discussed in the plenary session. There was broad consensus that open access in regional studies offers great opportunities for the visibility and linking of this research. However, the discussions that arose in the course of the workshop about making works available under a Creative Commons licence, which licence to choose, and what “reusability” actually means in the context of open access also made it clear that, at the same time, low-threshold advisory and information offerings and reliable infrastructures are needed to support regional studies researchers in publishing their works open access.

The slides of the workshop presentations have been published on Zenodo:

• Bierkoch, M (2026). E-Pflicht und Open Access an der GWLB. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18978416.
• Fischer, D (2026). Open Access und Rechteklärung. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18979043.
• Hartmann, L (2026). Open-Access-Transformation aus Verlagssicht. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18979274.
• Krüger, B (2026). Das FLOAT-Projekt. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18977953.
• Martin, L (2026). Vorprojekt NiedersachsenPUBLISHING. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18978983.
• Stieglitz, J. & M. Schatz (2026). NiedersachsenOPEN - Zentraler Publikationsfonds des Landes Niedersachsen. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18885371.
• Wermbter, K (2026). SeDOA. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18979086.

The cover photo shows Dr. Anne-Katrin Henkel, deputy director of the GWLB. The photo was taken by Benedikt Krüger.

Krüger, Benedikt (2026). Open Access Meets Regional Studies. New Ways of Publishing. open-access.network. DOI: 10.64395/qabq1-w3e42