EOSC Future Open Days
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Open Access in Ethnological Disciplines
What is Open Access? Find an introduction here. Source: based on Brinken, H. (2021). 10 Gründe für Open Access. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4643859 ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access: Pros and Cons Find an introduction here. Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access at the Professional Associations Since around 2019, visible developments in open access have also gained momentum at the professional associations of the ethnological disciplines. However, despite increasing engagement with open access, none of these associations have signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities . The International Society for Ethnology and Folklore converted its journal Ethnologia Europaea to open access in 2019. In 2020, the Swiss Anthropological Association converted its journal Tsantsa (since renamed Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology ) from delayed free access to immediate open access on publication. And in 2021, the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde (since renamed Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Schweiz ) did the same with its journal Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde ( access via the publisher) . As early as 2016, the journal Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde , which is published on behalf of the Association for Austrian Folk Life ( Verein für Volkskunde ), made new issues freely accessible after a 6-month embargo period, and in 2024 it converted completely to open access. Although some of the publications of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft und Volkskunde are freely accessible, this professional association does not publish a journal. The European Association of Social Anthropologists converted its journal, Social Anthropology , to open access in 2022. In the same year, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft also converted its journal, Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft , to open access. And in 2024, the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology ( Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie ) converted its journal, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie | Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology , to open access. The Anthropological Society in Vienna does not publish its journal in digital format or in open access. Regarding professional associations in the anglophone world, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and the American Anthropological Association have not converted their primary journals, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and American Anthropologist , to open access. The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK does not publish a primary journal, but its book series ASA Monographs, which is based on its annual conferences, is not freely accessible. Besides their primary journals, many professional associations also publish other publications, such as announcements, book series, conference proceedings, lectures, discussion papers, and thematically tailored journals. Here too, there has been an increase in open access, and to a certain extent such publications are also used to try out open access and new forms of publishing. Open Access in the Ethnological Disciplines The ethnological disciplines are understood here to comprise, in particular, ethnology, social and cultural anthropology, European ethnology, empirical/ comparative cultural studies, and folklore studies. The information provided relates mainly to the German-speaking area and anglophone countries. Although the spread of open access in the ethnological disciplines has increased in recent years, it cannot yet be considered standard in scholarly publishing, as a substantial proportion of publications are still not published open access. However, the increasing transformation of entire journals to open access, the growing share of open access books , and continuing engagement with open access reflect a positive trend and underscore the fact that acceptance of open access exists in principle in the ethnological disciplines. The share of freely accessible journal articles in the ethnological disciplines has grown significantly in recent years. This is due on the one hand to structural developments, for example the fact that scientific institutions and research funders increasingly require and promote open access, and to transformative open access agreements . On the other hand, the publishing culture in these disciplines is slowly undergoing fundamental change. However, the depositing of preprints and post-print s in open access repositories is still uncommon in the ethnological disciplines. Yet that is precisely where great potential for more open access lies – a potential that can be realised by the individual researchers themselves. Book publications are of great importance in the ethnological disciplines because, in addition to anthologies, the publication of long years of research in the form of a monographic ethnography is considered the publishing gold standard and particularly prestigious. However, comparatively few books from the ethnological disciplines are published open access, although their number has been increasing steadily in recent years. This trend has been facilitated by increasing institutional and other funding opportunities for open access books and by the growth in the number of non-profit and science-led publishers. However, the sometimes high open access book processing charges ( BPCs ) continue to be a significant obstacle. Open access has been discussed and implemented in the ethnological disciplines since the mid-2000s – at first especially in North America. Some developments led to more attention for the topic. These included inter alia the establishment of several open access journals in 2011 and the first transformations of prestigious journals to open access, for example Cultural Anthropology in 2014. A further contributing development was the founding in 2015 of the network Libraria by scholars from the ethnological disciplines with the aim of changing the publishing system in the social sciences. The failure of the open access model at the journal HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory , which was established in 2011, and the public disclosure of internal controversies placed open access in the limelight in 2018 – for negative reasons . In the German-speaking area, comparatively little attention had been paid to open access in the ethnological disciplines up to then. From around 2016 onwards, the debate focussed mainly on the publication of research data . From 2019 onwards, numerous ethnological journals converted to open access, including key journals of professional associations as well as field-specific and transdisciplinary journals (see below). In addition, the conversion of journal bundles to open access through consortial funding models (see below) led to a sharp rise in the share of open access journals in the ethnological disciplines. With the increased focus on the topic both in the German-speaking area and in anglophone countries, and the growth in the number of journals converting to open access, open access had become a relevant topic across the breadth of the ethnological disciplines by 2019. Open Access Journals As of December 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals ( DOAJ ) listed over 150 journals under “ Ethnology. Social and Cultural Anthropology ”. Scholars in the ethnological disciplines publish in subject-specific journals, field-specific journals (e.g. science studies, migration research, gender studies, museum research, urban research), and region-specific journals. The main focus in what follows is on subject-specific journals. Well-known German-language open access journals include: Baessler-Archiv Berliner Blätter * Bricolage * Ethnoscripts * Hamburger Journal für Kulturanthropologie * Kulturanthropologie Notizen * Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde Paideuma Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde ( Access via the publisher ) Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology) (* Journals marked with an asterisk publish mainly or exclusively thematic special issues.) Well-known English-language open access journals include: Anthropological Journal of European Cultures doaj Cultural Anthropology doaj Ethnologia Europaea doaj Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Social Analysis doaj Social Anthropology doaj Teaching Anthropology The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology doaj Because of the breadth of publications in the ethnological disciplines and the fact that these disciplines are assigned to the social sciences, the humanities, and the cultural sciences, relevant field-specific and transdisciplinary open access journals can also be added to the list. They include, for example: Curare – Zeitschrift für Medizinethnologie * Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung doaj Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology doaj Journal of Legal Anthropology doaj kommunikation@gesellschaft Movements – Journal für kritische Migrations- und Grenzregimeforschung * Mobile Culture Studies * doaj Open Gender Journal doaj sub\urban – Zeitschrift für kritische Stadtforschung * Urbanities – Journal of Urban Ethnography (* Journals marked with an asterisk publish mainly or exclusively thematic special issues.) Also worthy of mention is the Journal of Political Ecology , which is in part anthropologically oriented. It has been published open access since 1994 and is thus one of the first and oldest open access journals in the social sciences. From time to time, several journals are bundled and converted to open access. This is usually done using consortial funding models, where the required funding is jointly provided by many institutions. In 2020, numerous journals published with Berghahn Books were converted to open access by means of the subscribe-to-open variant. The package now comprises 16 journals (besides those already mentioned, they include Anthropology of the Middle East , Focaal , Museum Worlds , and Religion and Society ). In 2024, with the support of the Specialised Information Service for Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA) and the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB), consortial funding for an initial period of 3 years enabled the open access of a bundle of six German-language, scholar-led journals . Conversions of journals from open access to closed access or the restriction of the open access publishing model are rare, but for various reasons they sometimes happen – usually due to funding problems – also in the case of journals from the ethnological disciplines. Six years after its launch as a purely open access journal, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory , which has already been mentioned above, switched to a publishing model that combines closed access (with a subscription option) and partial open access (temporary for new issues and permanent for selected articles and target groups; see da Col, 2017 ). The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture and the journal Human Affairs , both of which were open access for a time, were reconverted to closed access (subscription with hybrid publishing model). Furthermore, the discontinuation of journals is common and also affects open access journals, for example Open Anthropology , an open access pilot experiment conducted by the American Anthropological Association from 2013 to 2022, and the Museum Anthropology Review , which was launched in 2007 and discontinued in 2023 ( Jackson, 2023 ). It should also be mentioned that back issues of numerous journals are freely accessible. Via a digitisation project by the Specialised Information Service for Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA) , the back issues of many German-language ethnological journals are freely accessible. The respective time lag relative to the latest issue differs from journal to journal. The journals in question include Anthropos , Baessler-Archiv , Sociologus , Zeitschrift für Volkskunde (predecessor of Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft ) and Zeitschrift für Ethnologie . The archives of the journals Tsantsa (predecessor of Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie ), Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde , and Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde are completely freely accessible. So too is the archive of Ethnologia Europaea . Until 2022, all issues of American Anthropologist , the primary journal of the American Anthropological Association, that were over 35 years old were freely accessible. That is no longer the case. Open access is remarkably widespread among journals in the ethnological disciplines in the Ibero-American region, where open access is generally better established. Spanish-language journals from the ethnological disciplines are almost without exception open access. Well-known publications include AIBR – Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana , Chungara , Etnográfica , Horizontes Antropológicos , Intersecciones en Antropología , and Mana – Estudos de Antropologia Social . Was sind Open-Access-Zeitschriften? Hier finden Sie eine Einführung. Praxistipp Qualität von Zeitschriften – Wo publizieren und wo lieber nicht? Video zur Finanzierung von Open-Access-Artikeln Quelle: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Open-Access-Artikel finanzieren – welche Wege gibt es?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73319 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) What are Open Access Books? Find an introduction here. open-access.network (2026) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Open Access Books As of December 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the OAPEN Library listed several hundred titles from the ethnological disciplines (from fields with the words “anthropology” or “ethnography” in their names). HAU Books and Open Anthropology Cooperative Press are two publishers that publish books in the ethnological disciplines exclusively or mainly open access. Other publishers that often publish English- or German-language open access books from the ethnological disciplines include ANU Press , Duke University Press , Mattering Press , Open Humanities Press , Transcript , UCL Press , and University of California Press . Disciplinary Repositories Important repositories in the ethnological disciplines include: Open Anthropology Research Repository Social Science Open Access Repository SocArXiv Social Sciences Research Network With the EthnOA repositories for texts and audiovisual media , the Specialised Information Service for Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA) provides a cross-institutional offering for open access publishing and self-archiving. The offering also targets researchers who are not affiliated with an institution or who do not have access to an institutional repository. Because of the previously mentioned multi-disciplinarity of the field, repositories for specific lines of research are also an option. They include, for example, CrossAsia-Repository for Asia studies, GenderOpen for gender studies , MENAdoc for Middle East and Islamic studies, and OstDok for research on Eastern, Central Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe. The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories ( OpenDOAR ) also provides an overview of other possible relevant repositories. What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video about Self-Archiving Rights Source: Brehm, E. (2021). Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/51789 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Practical Tip Finding Open Access Literature (in German) Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk if you have any questions about Open Access. oa.finder The oa.finder shows you from tens of thousands of journals which are Gold Open Access, whether they charge APCs and how high these are. You can also view the funding modalities of your own institution. Other Useful Offerings EVIFA , which is managed by the Specialised Information Service for Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA), is a central portal for the ethnological disciplines in the German-speaking area where users can, for example, search for and access freely accessible literature. Its holdings include digitised editions of German-language journals and monographs from over 200 years of research. In addition, the FID provides free online access to selected licensed resources . The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology (formerly the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology) is an open access resource in which peer-reviewed introductory articles on subject-specific topics and concepts are published. Until 2024, the Open Folklore portal listed open access resources in the field of folklore studies. As of late 2024, it was undergoing reorganization. The Anthropology Book Forum , a project of the American Anthropological Association , publishes freely accessible English-language book reviews. Freely accessible research reports, reviews, and news are published via the history portal H-Soz-Kult , also in the category “ Ethnology and Historical Anthropology ”. Numerous other freely accessible disciplinary databases and offerings can be found in the “ Anthropology ” category in the database information system DBIS. Open Science in the Ethnological Disciplines The aspiration of open science to extend the principle of openness to the entire research cycle, from the first idea to the final publication, and thus to make all forms of scholarly knowledge open access, transparent, and reusable, has far-reaching consequences and brings significant challenges for ethnological disciplines and ethnographic research. It is therefore the subject of controversial debate . This becomes particularly clear in the case of open research data . In light of increasing requirements imposed by research funders, research data management and the archiving and reuse of ethnographic materials in particular have been addressed more intensively in the ethnological disciplines since around 2016. What is problematic for the ethnological disciplines – and for other social sciences – is that the specific characteristics of qualitative data, and especially data from ethnographic research, are not adequately taken into account. Rather, funders’ requirements are based on an understanding of data in the sense of raw data and primary data, as found in particular in the natural science disciplines and quantitatively oriented research areas. In the ethnological disciplines, the term “data” is used in a specific sense : Data are understood as being generated in the social process of field research and as embedded in field relationships. It is therefore not possible – or possible only to a limited extent – to make ethnographic research data, which usually contain sensitive information about persons or groups, openly accessible . Rather, openness must be considered and weighed up in relation to the respective concrete research fields as well as from a research ethics and legal perspective. Relevant aspects and important issues include (a) whether adequate consent has been obtained from individuals in the field, or whether it is even possible to obtain such consent in the first place; (b) whether research data belong to the researchers alone (e.g. in the case of interviews or recordings of conversational situations); and (c) what consequences may arise from this, or how protective measures such as pseudonymisation or anonymisation affect the reusability of ethnographic material. Obligations to provide open access to research data are broadly rejected, especially on legal and ethical grounds, coupled with fears that research, especially in confidential and sensitive contexts, could be made more difficult or even impossible. (On these and other aspects, and on research data management in general, see Imeri 2018, 2019 ). Several professional associations have published position papers on these issues and on the discipline-specific requirements in dealing with research data and have made their debates transparent in scholarly publications. The Specialised Information Service for Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA) portal EVIFA provides comprehensive information on research data in the ethnological disciplines . Furthermore, within the framework of the FID SKA, workflows and procedures that enable the archiving and reuse of almost the entire range of ethnographic data have been developed at the data service centre Qualiservice at the University of Bremen ( Rizzolli et al., 2024 ). Qualiservice offers advice for individual researchers as well as for projects, project consortia, and institutions. DATA AFFAIRS , a platform developed at Collaborative Research Centre 1171 “Affective Societies” at Freie Universität Berlin, invites researchers, teachers, and students to engage in interactive learning on the topic of data management in ethnographic research. Besides texts on individual aspects of data management, it also contains illustrative examples, experience reports, exercises, a glossary, and more. Open methodology – that is, the disclosure of methods developed or used in the research process – is not in fact new to the ethnological disciplines. As a rule, methods are disclosed and discussed in publications, especially in monographic ethnographies. When doing so, the consequences of the chosen approach for the research process are reflected upon. In this regard, the connection with and the relevance of open access should be stressed. The situation is different in cases where the disclosure of methods is expected to take place before or during the actual research process, and where open methodology in the broader sense is thus also understood as the transparent and open documentation of the steps in the research process. Because of the close links with the research field and the research data, the challenges – and therefore also the complex issues that arise here – are similar to those in the case of open data. Open source – that is, making source code available in open access – has played hardly any role in the ethnological disciplines to date, as programs and software are seldom developed in these fields of research. However, there are no fundamental arguments against open source. In the case of software used in research in the ethnological disciplines, especially for qualitative data analysis, there is indeed potential for increasing support for the development and use of open source software. This is relevant not least because the functioning of the mostly proprietary software used in these disciplines is a black box, and disclosure of this part of the method is thus not completely possible. In the case of open evaluation, there is no notable difference between the ethnological disciplines and other fields. Thus, open peer review would be just as possible in the ethnological disciplines as in other disciplines. To date, however, no journals or other publishing models in the ethnological disciplines use open peer review. SOCIOS , which was established in 2024, is an open peer review platform for preprints in the social sciences, and thus also for the ethnological disciplines . The provision of open and free-of-charge access to teaching materials (open educational resources, OER) is closely linked to the publication of books and journals open access. For example, the introductory textbook Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology (2017; 2nd, revised ed. 2020) was published open access. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References da Col, G. (2017). Free gifts that must be invented. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory , 7 (2), i–vii. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau7.3.001 Imeri, S. (2018). Order, archive, share. Research data in the ethnological disciplines. Journal for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis , 3 (2), 215–240. https://doi.org/10.18452/20810 Imeri, S. (2019). ‚Open Data‘ in den ethnologischen Fächern. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen eines Konzepts. In J. Klinger & M. Lühr (Eds.), Forschungsdesign 4.0 - 1 (Vol. 1, pp. 45–59). Institut für Sächsische Geschichte und Volkskunde. https://doi.org/10.25366/2019.07 Jackson, J. B. (2023). On Museum Anthropology Review (2007–2023). Museum Anthropology Review , 17 (1–2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.14434/mar.v17i1-2.35839 Rizzolli, M., Imeri, S., & Huber, E. (2024): Ethnografische Forschungsmaterialien zur Archivierung und Nachnutzung vorbereiten und dokumentieren – ein Überblick für Forschende (Qualiservice Working Papers 6-2024). https://doi.org/10.26092/elib/2723 Further Reading Jackson, J. B., & Anderson, R. (2014). Anthropology and open access. Cultural Anthropology , 29 (2), 236–263. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca29.2.04 Kelty, C. M., Fischer, M. M. J., Golub, A., Jackson, J. B., Christen, K., Brown, M. F., & Boellstorff, T. (2008). Anthropology of/in circulation. The future of open access and scholarly societies. Cultural Anthropology , 23 (3), 559–588. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2008.00018.x Miller, D. (2012). Open access, scholarship, and digital anthropology. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory , 2 (1), 385–411. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau2.1.016 Zeitlyn, D., Corsín Jimenez, A., Willinsky, J., Waterston, A., Tritton, R., Kelty, C. M., Ardevol, E., Jemielnak, D., Sanchez-Criado, T., Abadal, E., Gatti, R., García, B., Rasero, V., Nugent, S., Gideon, J., Aibar, E., Malo de Molina, T., & Rodríguez Lópes, J. (2014). Preguntas frecuentes sobre acceso abierto - La economía política en torno a las publicaciones en antropología y otras ciencias sociales . FAQs about open access – The political economy of publishing in anthropology and beyond (A. Montoya, M. Pérez, G. Dallemagne, & V. del Arco, Eds.). https://openaccessmadrid2014.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/faqs-about-open-access_preguntas-frecuentes-sobre-acceso-abierto.pdf Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft , 118 (1/2), 2022 (with a forum on open access) Content editors of this page: Kathleen Heft , Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, University Library / Specialised Information Service for Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Marc Lange , Helmholtz Open Science Office (last updated: December 2025). The authors thank Sabine Imeri for comments on the section on open research data....
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Open Access to Research Data
Intro The research data management cycle open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) The key takeaways from this article are 1 Research data and their independent publication are becoming increasingly important. 2 The FAIR principles are a de facto standard for research data. 3 Organisational, legal, and infrastructural obstacles before publication can be overcome. Research Data Scientific findings in text form are based, as a rule, on research data. Research data come in a wide variety of forms and types. They comprise all (digital) data generated during the scientific process, for example, through measurements, simulations, interviews, source work, or code and software. The management of these research data has become an essential element of good research practice and is anchored in policies at many institutions. Whereas in the past, research data were often neglected as a mere accessory to publications, made available as a matter of form, or provided only upon request, a strong trend towards the independent and prominent publication of research data in an open format is apparent. In some disciplines, the publication of data is on its way to becoming the main outcome of scientific work. Reasons for Publishing Research Data Research data enable the replication and transparency of scientific results. They are thus the basis for transparent science. Reusability promotes the reanalysis of data, the merging of data from different sources, and thus the opportunity to conduct further research with existing data and to generate new knowledge. Ideally, reusability includes the right to download, copy, disseminate, and automatically process the data and to use them without financial, technical, or legal restrictions. The publication of research data enables their citability and therefore contributes to the scientific reputation of the authors. Through research assessment reforms driven by initiatives such as the Coalition for Open Research Assessment (CoARA) , research data are increasingly recognised as a scholarly achievement in their own right. Source: Hole, B. (2015). Open Science: A New publisher Perspective. Ubiquity press. ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Positions and Drivers European Union In 2016, the European Union (EU) integrated the Open Research Data (ORD) Pilot into the funding programme Horizon 2020 . The ORD Pilot provided for the publication of research data according to the premise "as open as possible, as closed as necessary". Participation was voluntary. In Horizon Europe , the successor programme to Horizon 2020, which runs until 2027, open science is designated as the modus operandi and open access to text and data publications and the provision of the data according to the FAIR principles are mandatory. Germany The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG) refers to the provision of data according to the FAIR principles both in its Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice and in its separately published Guidelines on the Handling of Research Data . When submitting proposals, applicants are required to provide statements on research data management and data management plans. These statements are taken into account in the evaluation. The German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and research funding foundations, for example, also require details of the reuse and exploitation of the data. The German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) , which is jointly financed by the Federal Government and the Länder, has proved to be a further driver. According to its self-description , through the work in 26 consortia, "NFDI systematically indexes and networks valuable scientific and research data for the entire German science system and makes it available for sustainable and qualitative use.” Austria The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) introduced an Open-Access Policy for Research Data in 2019, in which it requires its grant recipients to draw up a data management plan (DMP) and to provide open access to the research data “underlying the project’s academic publications”. The Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) does not mandate open access to research data in its Open Science Policy . However, it “strongly encourages grantees to provide access to shareable research data”. The Austrian Open Science Policy , which came into force in 2022, aims inter alia to ensure that research data are published according to the FAIR principles. Moreover, several Austrian universities have adopted a research data management policy or guideline. Further information (in German) can be found on the Austria pages of forschungsdaten.info . Switzerland The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) also considers open access to research data to be a significant contribution. Further information (in English) can be found on the Switzerland pages of forschungsdaten.info . As in the case of research literature, one argument for making research data available in open access is that their production was financed with public funds. At an early stage in the history of open access, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities recognised data as objects that should be made openly available. Besides the intrinsic motivation to be able to work more efficiently in increasingly data-driven research with the help of good data management and to benefit from open data oneself, the main drivers of the publication of data are the research funders . FAIR Principles In their guidelines and policies, various national and international research funders, for example the EU and the German Research Foundation (DFG), aim to encourage compliance with the FAIR principles. The German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) has set itself the objective of making data “FAIRfügbar”. This is a play on the German word verfügbar , which means “available”. The acronym FAIR stands for F indable, A ccessible, I nteroperable, and R eusable. The term FAIR was coined by the FORCE11-Community and published in the journal Scientific Data on 15 March 2016 ( Wilkinson et al., 2016 ). Support for the FAIR principles can be found inter alia in the G20 Leaders’ Communiqué issued at the end of the Hangzhou Summit in 2016 . The FAIR principles are an internationally recognised standard for the handling of research data. “FAIR data” does not necessarily mean that the data are openly available. Source: based on Halina Sieminska, P. (2019). A FAIRy tale graphics. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3267168 . Bearbeitung: Ilona Lang ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ) The four individual elements of FAIR mean: Findable : For the data to be reusable, they must be easily findable. To render them findable, the data are described with rich human- and machine-readable metadata. Accessible : Access to the data found must be possible according to clear rules; authentication and authorisation must be defined. Interoperable : To use data and integrate them with other data, an accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language is needed for knowledge representation. Metadata use standardised vocabularies. Reusable : The description of the data and metadata facilitates their use in different contexts. Suitable data licences are used, and the data meet domain-relevant community standards. The FAIR principles are complemented by the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. The acronym “CARE” stands for Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics. On the basis of the CARE principles, researchers are made aware of the need to uphold the rights and interests of indigenous communities as part of efforts to promote open data and open science – irrespective of whether their research focuses specifically on the communities themselves or otherwise affects them. For research software, the FAIR principles are complemented by the FAIR Principles for Research Software (FAIR4RS Principles) . In connection with the AI transformation, the acronym “FAIR” may also stand for Fully AI Ready. It means that data processed according to the FAIR principles are mostly machine readable and can therefore be processed by AI. Publication When publishing research data, a suitable repository should be chosen – where possible one that provides open access to the data. A disciplinary repository that is well established in the community in question should always be the preferred choice, as one’s own data are thus in a good, specialised context, and findability is easier. The Registry of Research Data Repositories, re3data , can be used to select a suitable data repository. If no suitable disciplinary repository can be found, general or institutional repositories can be used. Well-known examples of general repositories are Zenodo and Dataverse . To guarantee the long-term provision and findability of the data, a permanent address must be assigned. This persistent identifier also ensures the citability of the datasets. Preferred identifiers are the Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) provided by the DataCite consortium. As the reusability of research data is greatly limited if they lack adequate descriptions and metadata, it is imperative that they be curated in accordance with the FAIR principles before publication. Metadata should be assigned at the earliest possible point in time during the research process. They comprise both technical metadata (e.g.: When and by whom was the dataset collected?) and substantive metadata (e.g.: What is the content of the individual variables?). There are specific metadata standards for numerous disciplines. These standards are promoted, maintained, and published in particular by the NFDI consortia (see the RDA Metadata Standards Catalog ). During curation, the data are, above all, technically checked. This includes checking the data format, the basic access, and the formal accuracy. Regarding data format, long-term accessible and open data formats should be used, for example. The checking of the data content must be carried out mainly by the researchers themselves. The curation ends with the choice of a suitable licence . The Creative Commons (CC) licences have proved their worth (more information can be found on the English-language pages of the research data portal forschungsdaten.info ). However, CC licences are not suitable for licensing code or software. There are special open source licences for this purpose. Source: based on Koch, M. (2015). Publizieren über das Repositorium der Leibniz Universität Hannover. TIB Blog Practical tip Tips and tricks on how to make research data openly available to the community are available here in the slides for the Open Access Talk Research Data & Open Access - How to Publish Your Data in German. Challenges Three important challenges in research data management (RDM) and in the publication process should be mentioned as surmountable obstacles: Organisational Research data management and curation require additional competencies. New professions, such as data curator, data steward, and data scientist, are emerging, and research institutions and infrastructure facilities must make corresponding resources available and provide their employees with the necessary basic and continuing training. Research funders now finance data stewards, for example in collaborative research centres or excellence clusters. Institutions must meet the increased demands by implementing policies and adapted procedures. Legal Research data may be personal and very sensitive. These data must be anonymised before publication, or access to them must be restricted in such a way that no data protection rights are violated. Copyright aspects in connection with research data should not be ignored. This applies both to the publication of one’s own data and to the reuse of existing data. It is imperative to obtain legal advice at an early stage in the research process. Infrastructure Especially in the natural sciences, the amounts of data generated can quickly become very large. Past experience shows that the volume of data will steadily grow. Handling petabyte-scale data places demands on storage, backup, archiving, and transfer. Reservations One criticism frequently voiced by researchers stems from their concern that others will benefit excessively from their wealth of data, and that they will not achieve the reputation they need for their scientific careers. It should be made clear in this connection that publication should be sought as early and as comprehensively as possible. However, the data may still be published at a later point in time – after the analysis or subject to an embargo period . This reservation is also being addressed through proposed reforms in the assessment of research. Sovereignty over the data can remain with the data producer. The additional costs associated with the required handling of the data are also frequently mentioned. It is already possible to also request funding for these costs when applying for research funding. Data management must be regarded as a key element of scientific research and be adequately staffed and funded. Outlook The process observed in recent years will further intensify. The publication, reuse, and linking of research data have become the scientific standard. Many journals now require compliance with data availability statements upon submission. Furthermore, dedicated data and software journals are establishing themselves as additional publication venues for research data alongside repositories. Overall, it is to be expected that the boundaries between open access, text publications, and research data will become increasingly blurred, that the topics and tasks will overlap, and that a change in mindset will be brought about in the scientific community under the umbrella term “open science”. For acceptance in the scientific community, data and their handling must be recognised as a scholarly achievement. References Wilkinson, M. D., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, Ij. J., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., Blomberg, N., Boiten, J.-W., Bonino da Silva Santos, L., Bourne, P. E., Bouwman, J., Brookes, A. J., Clark, T., Crosas, M., Dillo, I., Dumon, O., Edmunds, S., Evelo, C. T., Finkers, R., … Mons, B. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data , 3 . https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18 Further Reading Austrian Science Fund (FWF). (n.d.). Open-Access Policy for Research Data . https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/about-us/what-we-do/open-science/open-access-policy/open-access-policy-for-research-data Putnings, M., Neuroth, H., & Neumann, J. (2021). Praxishandbuch Forschungsdatenmanagement . de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110657807 Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). (n.d.). Open Science Policy . https://wiki.wwtf.at/books/open-science-policy/page/open-science-policy-gultig-ab-112026 Further Links forschungsdaten.info – G erman-language platform with information on research data (with some English pages) go-fair.org/ – Go Fair Initiative re3data.org – Registry of Research Data Repositories Content editor of this page: Matthias Landwehr, University of Konstanz (Last updated: May 2026). Special thanks are due to Anna-Karina Renziehausen, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library ....
