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  1. COAR Annual Meeting 2022: The Role of Repositories in the Radical Transformation of Scholary Communications

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  2. EOSC Future Open Days

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  3. ORCID DE Online-Seminar: Persistent Identifier in Publikations- und Affiliationsrichtlinien

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  4. Open Access in Art History
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    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 in Art History Works in art history are increasingly being published in digital formats, and open access plays an important role in this regard. For example, Heidelberg University Library , together with its Specialised Information Service Art, Design, Photography, arthistoricum.net , have jointly developed strategies for digital publishing in the arts with representatives of the professional associations in the field of art history. Particularly in Die Zukunft des kunsthistorischen Publizierens [The Future of Art Historical Publishing]), an e-book edited by Maria Effinger and Hubertus Kohle (2021), the possibilities of digital publishing are set out in numerous contributions from an art history perspective. These thoughts were further developed by Maria Effinger (2023) in an article entitled “ Kunstgeschichte kommunizieren? Aufgaben, Herausforderungen und Weiterentwicklungspotenziale beim elektronischen Publizieren im Open Access ” [Tasks, Challenges, and Potential for Further Development When Publishing Electronically in Open Access]. A further fundamental work entitled Digitales Publizieren in den Geisteswissenschaften: Begriffe, Standards, Empfehlungen [Digital Publishing in the Humanities: Concepts, Standards, Recommendations] (AG Digitales Publizieren , 2021) was published by the Digital Publishing Working Group of the association Digital Humanities in the German-Speaking Area (DHd) . Veronika Fischer and Grischka Petri’s (2022) guide Bildrechte in der kunsthistorischen Praxis [Image Rights in Art Historical Practice] provides answers to questions about image rights. Open Access Journals As of September 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals ( DOAJ ) listed 87 entries under the search term History of the arts and 686 entries under Fine arts . Besides newly established open access journals, retrodigitized journal volumes are also available in open access. New issues of these journals either appear simultaneously in print and in digital format, or the digital version is made available in open access after an embargo period (delayed open access). Important open access journals published in the German-speaking area include: 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual – Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur DOAJ ABE-Journal: Architecture Beyond Europe DOAJ Belvedere Research Journal ; International Journal for Digital Art History Journal for Art Market Studies DOAJ kritische berichte. Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaft Kunstchronik. Monatsschrift für Kunstwissenschaft Kunstgeschichte. Open Peer Reviewed Journal kunsttexte.de – Journal für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte Pegasus. Beiträge zum Nachleben antiker Kunst und Architektur RIHA Journal DOAJ Sediment – Materialien und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Kunstmarkts transfer – Zeitschrift für Provenienzforschung und Sammlungsgeschichte | Journal for Provenance Research and the History of Collection Within the framework of the Specialised Information Service Art, Design, Photography, arthistoricum.net , for which it is co-responsible, Heidelberg University Library provides a technical infrastructure for publishing open access journals . The offering is addressed to art historians worldwide. The publication platform uses the open source software Open Journal Systems (OJS), which is provided by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) . As of September 2025, 52 open access journals were being published via arthistoricum.net. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( 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 September 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books ( DOAB ) listed 581 titles under the keyword History of art and 36 titles under History of art/art & design styles , while the OAPEN Library ( OAPEN ) listed 27 titles under History of art/art & design styles . Many international museums and research institutions, for example the Getty Research Institute’s Getty Publications Virtual Library , the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s MetPublications , and the Canadian Online Art Book Project , now offer cost-free access to a selection of their books. The open access publication platform arthistoricum.net ART-Books , which is provided by Heidelberg University Library , publishes open access scholarly e-books from the fields of art history, photography, and design ( gold open access ) and also makes digital versions of print books from these fields available to the public ( green open access ). The cost-free offering is addressed to art historians worldwide. The platform uses the open source software Open Monograph Press (OMP) , which is provided by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) . Disciplinary Repositories ART-Dok , the publication platform of arthistoricum.net, offers scholars from all over the world an opportunity to make their digital art history publications (monographs, articles, lectures, etc.) available in open access. The self-archiving of digital versions of works published in print format elsewhere is also possible and desired. As of September 2025, ART-Dok contained over 9,500 open access publications. Overviews of relevant repositories are also provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and by re3data under the search terms Art History and Data Access (as of September 2025). What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: 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 of 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 Subject Portals and Platforms The information and service portal for art history arthistoricum.net is operated by the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) and Heidelberg University Library. The Digital Art History Research Group , a platform for digital art history, promotes networking among scholars in the field of art history who develop, use, and theoretically reflect on digital tools and methods. The Deutsche Verband für Kunstgeschichte e. V . (German Association for Art History) represents the interest of art historians working in Germany and at German institutions abroad. The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now make available open access content of relevance to art historians. Databases and the Like The Art Discovery Group Catalogue is an international database with holdings from art and museum libraries in the USA and Europe. Via arthistoricum.net ’s catalogue, users can search for literature of relevance to art history. Searches in the full texts of collections and in image sources and disciplinary repositories are also possible. The Getty Research Portal is a subject portal of the Getty Research Institute. The portal offers worldwide open access to digitized art history literature. The Database Information System (DBIS) provides an overview of databases in the areas of art history and architecture . Image Databases The Bildarchiv Foto Marburg at Philipps-Universität Marburg is the German Documentation Centre for Art History. With around 2.6 million images, it is one of the largest digital image archives for European art and architecture. With around 7 million digitized images, the Deutsche Fotothek is a universal archive of art and cultural history. It is located at the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) . heidICON is Heidelberg University Library’s object and multimedia database. prometheus is a distributed digital image archive for research and teaching located at the Department of Art History at the University of Cologne . With almost 4 million high-quality digitized images from the fields of art and archaeology, the web-based collection currently connects 128 databases from institutes, research facilities, and museums on a common user interface. Open Science in Art History Although open access has received strong support in the field of art history in recent times, legal, technical, and organizational issues relating to the publication and archiving of art history research data still put obstacles in the way of many scholars who want to publish their data open access. To remedy this, the consortium NFDI4Culture , which was established in October 2020, has set itself the goal of creating an infrastructure for research data on tangible and intangible cultural assets and, when doing so, to engage with the needs of the communities. The NFDI4Culture Helpdesk advises art historians on various aspects of handling research data. Questions can be asked about legal aspects, publishing and archiving data, digitization in general, open access standards, and support for the planning of funding proposals. Moreover, with its FAIR Clearing Unit, NFDI4Culture has created an advisory service that promotes the application of quality standards such as the FAIR Principles. The Munich Memorandum 2024 – Research Data in Art History: 10 Theses (Deutscher Verband für Kunstgeschichte e. V. et al., 2024) formulates from the perspective of art history in Germany current requirements, positions, and impulses for the further development of digital art history research data and their infrastructure. In addition to the possibility of archiving research data in institutional research data repositories, research data relating to open access publications on arthistoricum.net can also be published online and archived with arthistoricum.net@heiDATA . DARIAH-EU is a European network that not only supports and improves digital research and teaching in the arts and humanities but also promotes the transition to open science in these fields. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) Praxistipp Wie und unter welchen Bedingungen audiovisuelle Materialien als Open Educational Resources in Forschung und Lehre genutzt werden dürfen, erläutert das Rechtsgutachten von Klimpel & Rack (2023) . References AG Digitales Publizieren (2021). Digitales Publizieren in den Geisteswissenschaften: Begriffe, Standards, Empfehlungen. https://doi.org/10.17175/wp_2021_001_v2 Effinger, M., & Kohle, H. (Eds.) (2021). Die Zukunft des kunsthistorischen Publizierens. arthistoricum.net. https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.663 Effinger, M. (2023). Kunstgeschichte kommunizieren? Aufgaben, Herausforderungen und Weiterentwicklungspotenziale beim elektronischen Publizieren im Open Access. kritische berichte51(1). https://doi.org/10.11588/kb.2023.1.92820 Fischer, V., & Petri, G. (2022). Bildrechte in der kunsthistorischen Praxis. Ein Leitfaden (2nd ed.). Verband Deutscher Kunsthistoriker e.V. http://doi.org/ 10.11588/artdok.00007769 Deutscher Verband für Kunstgeschichte e. V., Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (2024). Forschungsdaten in der Kunstgeschichte: 10 Thesen - Münchner Memorandum 2024. https://doi.org/10.11588/artdok.00009194 Content editor of this page: Alexandra Büttner. Last revision of content: Maria Effinger, Heidelberg University Library (as of October 2025)....

  5. Open Access in Arts
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    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. Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) Open Access in the Arts In recent years, the arts disciplines have also increasingly taken a position on open access . Because they are situated between the arts and the sciences, they always play a special role in this regard. The arts are characterised not only by a diversity of disciplines that work both artistically and academically, but also by an extremely diverse publishing landscape with actors from the areas of science, culture, education, and (creative) industry. The diversity of the arts disciplines is also reflected in the broad range of publications, which may be text-based or non-text-based. Whether they be artist books, exhibition catalogues, photos, music/performance productions, or 3D-objects, these publications usually require consideration of numerous legal issues and are often a challenge for publishing platforms. The currently existing infrastructures for open access publications are geared mostly towards text-based publications and are not adequate for the needs in the arts. The infrastructures in the area of research data , some of which already exist or are currently being developed, are important points of reference and are groundbreaking for open access infrastructures (not only) in the arts. In addition, because of the close links with the creative industries, develop­ments in the arts impact a new area for the open access community – namely, the economic livelihood of artists. Artists work both for cultural and educational institutions and in the culture industry; they are dependent on marketing their content; and their publications are financed only partly via royalties. Moreover, they are often members of collecting societies, and are limited in their freedom to freely license their works. An open access strategy in the arts must therefore include the safeguarding of artists’ incomes. The arts disciplines already clearly show that open access must always be seen in the context of all building blocks of open science and of all actors. Open Access Journals As of March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 627 entries under the keyword fine arts and 89 entries under music and books on music . The listed open access journals cater often for the arts-related scholarly disciplines but only rarely for the arts or artistic practice. In addition, journals are not the dominant form of publication in the arts disciplines. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. 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 March 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 169 titles under the keyword fine arts , while the OAPEN Library listed around 450 titles under art . However, the search results are mainly publications from the areas of art/art history or even ethnology rather than from the visual or applied arts. In the last few years, the first open library consortia have been establishing themselves, for example the Open Library Medienwissenschaft since 2021 and KOALA Media Studies since 2023. Disciplinary Repositories The most important disciplinary repositories in the arts include: ART-Dok , the full-text server of the Specialised Information Service for Art, Photography and Design musiconn , the portal of the Specialised Information Service for Musicology media/rep/ , an open access repository for media studies publications The above-mentioned repositories are geared towards text-based publications. The increasing importance of open access in the arts is also changing the discip­linary repositories: needs are being identified and new projects that deal with the building of repositories for non-text-based and multimedia media are arising. An overview of relevant repositories is provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: 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) Fokusgruppe "OA-Künste" Die digitale Fokusgruppe OA-Künste ist ein Netzwerk mit Mailingliste, das für alle künstlerischen Einrichtungen und Hochschulen offensteht. Open Access Helpdesk You are welcome to contact our Helpdesk of 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 Offerings The network Open Access in den Künsten [Open Access in the Arts] offers all artistic institutions and higher education institutions a forum for exchange and discussion. The aim of the network is to share materials and information and to anchor the open access idea in the arts. The focus of the network is on libraries, which, as service facilities, promote and contribute to shaping the establishing of open access structures at various levels. Open access is also gaining in importance in art and museum libraries ( Hahn, 2018 ). Besides making text-oriented electronic resources available, these libra­ries have long been administering analogous special collections, such as image archives, graphical collections, or artist books. Here, open access can be a step towards digital transformation and the expansion of the collection profile and the information offering. Via synergy effects, this can also advance open access in the arts. For several years now, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kunst- und Mu­seumsbibliotheken (Working Group of the Art and Museum Libraries, AKMB) has offered further training in the area of open access. Open Science in the Arts Open science is also a key topic in the arts. The process of creating art, and also the works themselves, often move between several components of open science. In view of the diversity of the content and formats in the arts, it is therefore very expedient to focus not only on open access but also on open science as a whole, including, for example, open research data. Besides the open access infrastructures, the offerings of cultural institutions and research data infrastructures also offer points of reference. The expertise that exists in NFDI4Culture and other representatives of the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) is a valuable support for the arts in establishing publication infrastructures. NFDI4Culture is a consortium within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) that represents the art history, musicology, theatre, dance, architecture, film, and media studies communities. The aim of the consortium is to establish a range of offerings such as advisory and training services, guidelines, and forums for discipline-specific exchange. Moreover, NFDI4Culture engages with the legal complexities of dealing with cultural heritage, for example with questions of provenance or copyright. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Hahn, C. (2018). Open Access im Museum . Herbstfortbildung AKMB Dresden. https://www.initiativefortbildung.de/pdf/schlaglichter_AKMB2018/Hahn_OA_Museum.pdf Further reading Somajni, Chiara; Tóth-Czifra, Erzsébet; Barbieri, Chiara; Marazza, Suzanna and Pensa, Iolanda (2024). Open Science for Arts, Design andMusic: Guidelines for Researchers, Librarians and Practitioners in the Humanities . SUPSI, CC0 1.0 except where otherwise stated. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13896781 Content editors of this page: Anika Wilde, Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch , and Friederike Kramer, Library of the Berlin University of the Arts, UdK (Last updated: July 2024)....

  6. Open Access in Chemistry
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    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. Perception of Open Access Survey on requirements and obstacles in selected technical and natural sciences: Mechanical engineering and chemistry. Open Access in Chemistry The acceptance and spread of open access are still less advanced in chemistry than in physics or biology , for example. The reasons for this are diverse and undoubtedly arise also from the traditional development of the chemistry community. Nevertheless, there has been an increase in open access activities in chemistry in recent years. For example, large specialist publishers have converted several journals to open access, and chemical societies have intensified their activities towards open access, as shown, for example, by the establishment of the preprint server ChemRxiv . One pioneer in this field is Peter Murray-Rust of the University of Cambridge, who has been active both in the area of open access and open data . There are still reservations about open access publishing in chemistry – also because of fears regarding the free reuse of research results by industry and the related aspects of patent-protected results. However, these fears can be dispelled by granting suitable reuse licences. Although the German Chemical Society (GDCh) was critical of Plan S in a statement issued in 2018, its partner publisher Wiley-VCH signed a transformative agreement with DEAL in 2019 ( Schmitz, 2019 ). Moreover, a DEAL agreement with Springer Nature has been in force since 2020, and in 2024, a DEAL agreement was concluded with Elsevier. Open Access Journals As of October 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 636 indexed journals under the keyword chemistry . The most important open access journals in chemistry include: ARKIVOC Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry Journal of Cheminformatics (BMC) Chemical Science (RSC) ChemistryOpen (Wiley -VCH ) ACS Central Science Communications Chemistry Although this list is just a small selection of chemistry journals with open access models, it includes journals from relevant publishers or with a long open access tradition. In addition to their traditional, subscription-based journals or their hybrid journals, some large and eminently relevant and renowned publishers – for example the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and Nature Publishing – also offer open access journals in chemistry. Furthermore, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is planning to convert its entire journal portfolio (44 journals as of 2024) to open access by 2028 (see https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2022/oct/rsc-oa-commitment/ ). Although the Journal Impact Factor as a quality metric is very controversial (see the Declaration on Research Assessment, DORA ), it should be noted that many of the aforementioned open access journals have sizeable Impact Factors. For example, according to the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), as of 2023, the Impact Factor of the RSC journal Chemical Science was 7.6, and the Impact Factor of the ACS journal ACS Central Science was 12.7. One journal that has been open access since the beginning of the open access movement is ARKIVOC (established in the year 2000). It covers organic chemistry, including areas of bio-organic and organometallic chemistry. The journal is published by ARKAT USA, Inc ., a not-for-profit organisation established through charitable donation in the year 2000, whose aim is to promote the dissemination of organic chemical research worldwide, hence benefitting students, researchers, and commercial and non-commercial enterprises. Thus, neither the submission of an article to ARKIVOC nor its publication is subject to author-side fees. This is also true of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry (BJOC) , which has been published in open access since 2005 and is fully funded by the Beilstein-Institut. Thus, both journals fall under the label “platinum” or “ diamond open access ”. In addition to being reusable completely free of charge, the articles are published under a CC BY licence, thereby enabling their greatest possible reuse. The Journal of Cheminformatics was established in 2009 as an open access journal at BioMed Central (BMC), which is now part of Springer Nature. It covers all areas of cheminformatics and molecular modelling. The citation rate has more than doubled in the past five years, increasing from 3,490 citations in 2019 to 9,430 citations in 2023. The journal ChemistryOpen has been published since 2012 by Wiley-VCH on behalf of ChemistryEurope, an association of 16 European chemical societies. Until 2020, ChemistryEurope was known as ChemPubSoc Europe. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( 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 October 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 1,960 titles under the keyword chemistry , and the OAPEN Library listed some 972 titles under the search term chemistry in the subject area science . The most important publishers of chemistry include Taylor & Francis , Springer Nature , and De Gruyter , all of whom have published only a small number of open access books in chemistry to date. Disciplinary Repositories The most important disciplinary repositories in chemistry include: Beilstein Archives : contains preprints from the fields of organic chemistry and nanotechnology that are intended for publication in one of the Beilstein journals. The service is operated and funded by the Beilstein-Institut. ChemRxiv : a server for preprints in chemistry and related areas. ChemRxiv is collaboratively managed and funded by the five largest chemical societies in the world: the ACS, the Chinese Chemical Society, the Chemical Society of Japan, the GDCh, and the RSC. PubMed Central : contains full texts of biomedical and life sciences journal literature (incl. biochemistry, medical chemistry). It is the full-text archive of the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). The archive was developed and is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at NLM. Institutional repositories of relevance for chemistry include, for example, JuSER , the publication portal of Forschungszentrum Jülich; the publications database of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht ; the publications repository of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf ; and Renate , the German National Library of Science and Technology’s (TIB) repository for science and technology. An overview of relevant repositories is provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: 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. FID Chemie Other Offerings Chemistry is shaped by laboratory work. The experiments conducted are documented in so-called lab notebooks, or lab books. These records are still often kept in paper form. However, as digitalisation advances, the possibilities of digital documentation are also increasing. Chemotion is an electronic lab notebook (ELN) for chemistry, in which molecules and reactions can be systematically recorded in digital form ( Tremouilhac et al., 2017 ). In addition, the content and data can be made freely available for reuse under a Creative Commons licence via the affiliated Chemotion repository . The development of the Chemotion open source software was funded by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). For an overview of various electronic lab notebooks, see the ELN-Wegweiser (ELN guide) published by ZB MED ( Adam & Lindstädt, 2020 ). Open Science in Chemistry Although the topic of open science and its sub-topic open access to research data are still addressed less in chemistry than in other disciplines, there are small rays of hope, for example in the area of crystallography. The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) and the Crystallography Open Database (COD) provide an access to crystallographic data that is already well established in that community. There are already a number of open access databases in the area of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy (e.g. the Spectral Database for Or ganic Compounds ) that can be used to search for and to compare spectroscopic data. However, this is mostly limited more to the depiction of spectra than to the actually recorded data points Chemical data and information can be deposited and made freely available in the PubChem database at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) . PubChem collects information on, for example, chemical structures, identifiers, chemical and physical properties, and biological activities. Within the framework of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NDFI) , the topic of open science and the handling of research data at national level is being addressed in the chemistry consortium NFDI4Chem (Steinbeck et al., 2020). The aim is to advance the digitalisation of all relevant steps in chemical research in order to support researchers in collecting, storing, processing, analysing, disclosing, and reusing research data. Within the framework of NFDI4Chem, discipline-specific repositories for research data are also being developed further. They include, for example, the repository Chemotion for diverse analysis data; the NMR spectroscopy data repository nmrXiv ; and RADAR4Chem, a generic repository for all types of chemical research data. The Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data) provides a good overview of further research data repositories for chemistry. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Adam, B., & Lindstädt, B. (2021). Electronic laboratory notebooks in the context of research data management and good research practice – A guide for the life sciences . ZB MED – Leibniz Information Centre for Life Sciences. https://www.publisso.de/fileadmin/user_upload/PUBLISSO/PUBLISSO_ELN-Guide_2021-04-07_view_englisch.pdf Schmitz, K. (2019). DEAL-Vereinbarung tritt heute in Kraft . https://web.archive.org/web/20250803053202/https://www.gdch.de/service-information/nachricht/article/deal-vereinbarung-tritt-heute-in-kraft.html Steinbeck, C., Koepler, O., Bach, F., Herres-Pawlis, S., Jung, N., Liermann, J., Neumann, S., Razum, M., Baldauf, C., Biedermann, F., Bocklitz, T., Boehm, F., Broda, F., Czodrowski, P., Engel, T., Hicks, M., Kast, S., Kettner, C., Koch, W., … Wulle, S. (2020). NFDI4Chem – Towards a national research data infrastructure for chemistry in Germany. Research Ideas and Outcomes, 6 , Article e55852. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.6.e55852 Tremouilhac, P., Nguyen, A., Huang, Y.-C., Kotov, S., Lütjohann, D. S., Hübsch, F., Jung, N., & Bräse, S. (2017). Chemotion ELN: An Open Source electronic lab notebook for chemists in academia. Journal of Cheminformatics , 9 (1), Article 54. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-017-0240-0 Further Reading Brazil, R. (2024, September 2). Will open science change chemistry? Chemistry World . https://www.chemistryworld.com/careers/will-open-science-change-chemistry/4020023.article Jensen, J. (2021, January 8). Open access chemistry publishing options in 2021. Proteins and Wave Functions . https://proteinsandwavefunctions.blogspot.com/2021/01/open-access-chemistry-publishing.html Content editor of this web page: Dr. Janna Neumann, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology (last updated: October 2024)....

  7. Open Access in Economics and Business Studies
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    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 in Economics and Business Studies Open access is always also part of the publishing market and of publishing behaviour as a whole. It is of particular relevance for economics and business studies because of the strong preprint culture in these fields. As a rule, these works, which have not yet undergone peer review at a scholarly journal, are published as working papers or discussion papers – for the most part by economic and business studies institutes or faculties – and are usually freely accessible. Most journal articles in economics and business studies have therefore already been published as working papers ( Baumann & Wohlrabe, 2020 ), which are freely accessible via disciplinary repositories or indexing databases such as SSRN , RePEc , or EconStor . Despite the preprint culture in economics and business studies, journal articles are still the main publication format. There is a strong fixation on publishing-performance rankings based on journal quality ratings (such as those produced, e.g., by Forschungsmonitoring at ETH Zurich for Handelsblatt or WirtschaftsWoche). The main publishers of economics and business studies journals are Elsevier , Springer , and Wiley . Most of these journals are subscription or hybrid journals. The growing trend towards supra-regional and national transformative agreements both in Germany (e.g. the DEAL agreements; see marketwatch ) and internationally has therefore led to an increase in open access articles in hybrid journals of economics and business studies. This effect is considerably stronger than the increase in open access articles in gold open access journals. The preprint culture is more pronounced in economics than in business studies, and the share of English-language publications, which dominate in both disciplines, is even higher in economics than in business studies. Open Access Journals Open access journals still play quite a minor role in economics and business studies. Although their share has grown proportionally in recent years, it is still in the single-digit percentage range compared with all other journals ( Laakso & Björk, 2021 ). There are various reasons for this, for example, the great importance of rankings, which especially favour established (subscription) journals, and, at the same time, the low level of willingness on the part of authors to publish in open access journals that levy article processing charges ( APCs ; Severin et al., 2018 ). The following open access journals play a relevant role for economics and business research, especially in Germany (publishing institution or publisher in parentheses): Quantitative Economics DOAJ (Econometric Society) Theoretical Economics DOAJ (Econometric Society) Health Economics Review DOAJ (Springer) Journal for Labour Market Research ​​​​​​​ DOAJ (IAB, Springer) Energy Strategy Reviews DOAJ (Elsevier) Environmental Research Letters DOAJ (IOP) Economics E-Journal DOAJ (DeGruyter) Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik (De Gruyter Brill) German Economic Review (Verein für Socialpolitik, De Gruyter Brill) Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research (VHB/Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, Springer) German Journal of Agricultural Economics DOAJ (Gewisola, TIP Open Publishing) Wirtschaftsdienst DOAJ (ZBW, Springer) Intereconomics DOAJ (ZBW, Springer) It is interesting to note that over half of the above-mentioned journals do not levy any APCs, and thus follow a diamond open access business model. Instead, the publication costs are borne by the institutions or professional associations that publish them. This may be due to the fact that, in contrast to the natural and life sciences, there is no distinctive APC culture in economics and business studies, or that the payment of APCs is less widespread in these fields ( Borrego 2023 ). For some years now, an increasing number of economics and business studies journals have been converted to a diamond open access model. This has been done in two different ways: first, using commercial transformative models such as “subscribe to open”, via which, for example, the publisher De Gruyter Brill has made several economics and business studies journals open access . Second, the conversion to open access has increasingly taken place in non-commercial contexts in which the title rights in a journal are not held by a commercial publisher but by a scientific institution or a professional association. One example is the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics’ (ZBW) Open Library Economics , via which economics and business studies journals are also being converted to open access. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( 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 The importance of publishers’ monographs for economics and business studies research has decreased steadily in recent years. They currently play only a minor role, for example in the form of edited collections or as popular-science publications of well-known professors. Textbooks are an exception in this regard, and they are still widely used by students. However, because of their high turnover in the traditional sales model (also outside library budgets), it is difficult to transform textbooks and popular-science titles into an open access business model . The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) provides a good overview of the open access book segment in the areas of economics, business, management, and finance. It lists several hundred open access books from these fields. The further financing of open access books is increasingly supported by institutional open access monograph funds , which are being established at more and more academic institutions (see also the Focus Group on Open Access Monograph Funds ). Disciplinary Repositories There is not just “the one” disciplinary repository in economics and business studies. Rather, several relevant venues have arisen over the years that are of relevance not only, but primarily, for the culture of publishing preprints (or working papers) that exists in these disciplines. The main repositories in economics and business studies include: SSRN : Although the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), which is owned by Elsevier, covers a broader range of disciplines than just economics and business studies, it is considered the largest disciplinary repository in these fields. Around 1.6 million full texts are available in open access, of which over half are from economics and business studies. EconStor : This publication server, which is provided by ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, holds over 300,000 open access full texts. For the most part, these are working papers, but holdings also include conference proceedings and journal articles. EconStor publications are also indexed in RePEc as well as in Google Scholar and EconBiz . AgEcon Search : This disciplinary repository is operated by the University of Minnesota and funded mainly by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association . It holds around 200,000 freely accessible full texts, mainly from the areas of agricultural and applied economics. All publications in AgEcon Search are also indexed in RePEc . MPRA : Hosted by Munich University Library, the Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA) holds over 60,000 economics and business studies publications from all over the world. As a rule, publications are not deposited by institutions or publishers but rather self-archived by individual researchers and then released by an editorial team and indexed in RePEc . The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) also provides an overview of relevant repositories What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: 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 Many researchers in business studies and especially in economics are familiar with the platform RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) . It is a mixture of a union catalogue, a registry of institutions , and a ranking system. The circa 5 million publications listed in the union catalogue are indexed on a decentralized basis by the academic institutions and scholarly publishers themselves. With the help of automatic citation analysis and download statistics as well as information supplied by over 70,000 researchers worldwide who are registered with the RePEc author service, RePEc produces, among other things, rankings of researchers, academic institutions, and scholarly journals. The entire service is non-commercial and free of charge and is operated on a voluntary basis by various economists on distributed servers. The search portal EconBiz , which is provided by ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics , indexes over 10 million publications; searches can be restricted to open access full texts. In addition, it offers a calendar of events (scholarly conferences, summer schools, etc.) in economics and business studies worldwide. Open Science in Economics and Business Studies Other aspects of open science that are of relevance to economics and business studies include, in particular, research data , which are increasingly being made available in open access and according to the FAIR Principles . In Germany, the German Data Forum (RatSWD), among others, is engaged in the further development of this area. In this pursuit, it has, for example, drawn up standards for access to research data centres . In addition, as part of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) , there are also consortia from the economic sciences, for example, KonsortSWD and BERD . ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics in particular, is also engaged in the further development of open science in economics and business studies, for example through its research activities , the annual Open Science Conference , and extensive marketing activities . Furthermore, its Open Economics Guide is a central point of reference on the topic of open science for researchers from the fields of economics and business studies. open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Baumann, A., & Wohlrabe, K. (2020). Where have all the working papers gone? Evidence from four major economics working paper series (CESifo Working Paper No. 8328). Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo). https://hdl.handle.net/10419/219146 Borrego, Á. (2023). Article processing charges for open access journal publishing: A review. Learned Publishing, 36(3), 359–378. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1558 Laakso, M., & Björk, B.-C. (2021). Open access journal publishing in the business disciplines: A closer look at the low uptake and discipline-specific considerations. https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006211006769 Severin, A., Egger, M., Eve, M. P., & Hürlimann, D. (2020). Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: An evidence-based review. F1000Research, 7, 1925. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.17328.2 Content editor of this page: Olaf Siegert, Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW) (Last updated: August 2025)....

  8. Open Access in Educational Sciences
    last modified at:

    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 and Self-Archiving Find an introduction here. Open Access in the Educational Sciences Although open access as a publishing form is established in educational sciences, it continues to play a somewhat secondary role compared with proprietary publications. Journal articles are the preferred form of publication in educational sciences (Schmidt-Hertha & Müller, 2020), followed by monographs, edited collections, and contributions to edited collections, which together make up around one third of the publication output in this field (Abs et al., 2020). According to the German Education Index ( FIS Bildung ) labelling, as of August 2025, the full-text versions of 42% of the publication output, 32% of the listed journal articles, ca. 58% of the listed monographs and edited collections, and ca. 61% of the listed contributions to edited collections in educational sciences in 2024 were freely available. The German Educational Research Association (GERA/DGfE) , one of the key institutions in educational sciences in the German-speaking area, supports a large number of open access initiatives, but it has not yet adopted a clear position on open access. A further overview of open access developments in the German-language educational sciences is provided in a dissertation by Bambey (2016) and journal articles by Rummler (2021) and Schindler and Rummler (2018) . Open Access Journals As of October 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed around 1,980 journals under the subject Education . Important German-language open access journals that are listed in the DOAJ include: bwp@ DOAJ Die Deutsche Schule doaj Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research (FQS) DOAJ Magazin Erwachsenenbildung.at DOAJ MedienPädagogik. Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung DOAJ Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung (ZFHE) DOAJ Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung DOAJ Important open access journals that are not listed in the DOAJ include: bildungsforschung PhyDid widerstreit-sachunterricht Die Österreichische Volkshochschule (ÖVH) on_education. Journal for Research and Debate Beiträge zur Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung . Contributions up to and including 2013 and contributions from 2014 onwards can be found on peDOCS. Journal for Educational Research Online (JERO) journal für lehrerInnenbildung Erziehungswissenschaft Journals in the educational sciences are often published open access by committed individuals with the help of their institutions and through voluntary effort. For example, the German Youth Institute publishes the magazine IMPULSE . Although, as mentioned earlier, the German Educational Research Association (GERA/DGfE) has not yet adopted a clear position on open access, its journal, Erziehungswissenschaft , is published in diamond open access . In addition, the above-mentioned DOAJ-listed journal MedienPädagogik , which is published by GERA’s Media Education Division, is also diamond open access. In Austria, the Forum Neue Medien in der Lehre Austria publishes the journal Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung in diamond open access. And in Switzerland, the Swiss Society for Research in Education (SSRE) also publishes the quadrilingual journal Swiss Journal of Educational Research in diamond open access. Some journals rely on support from funding agencies or sponsors. For example, the Magazin erwachsenenbildung.at is funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Women, Science and Research (BMFWF ), while the online journal bwp@ is run inter alia through a cooperation with wbv Media and with support from sponsors. What are Open Access Journals Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality. Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( CC BY 3.0 DE ) open-access.network (2021) ( 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 October 2025, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed over 1,600 titles under the subject " Education ", and the OAPEN Library listed over 1.200 titles. Furthermore, peDOCS provides a good overview of series in educational sciences. And the German Education Index (FIS Bildung Literaturdatenbank) indexes open access monographs and contributions to edited collections. A large share of open access books in educational sciences are now published by university presses or institutional repositories (see Schindler & Rummler, 2018). Besides research reports and edited collections, these works include in particular monographic doctoral dissertations and habilitation theses. Although the German Educational Research Association (GERA/DGfE) has not yet adopted a clear position on open access, its divisions and committees publish various books and book series open access: Division 1 – Historical Education Research . Series: Jahrbuch Historische Bildungsforschung (Verlag Julius Klinkhardt) Division 7 – Vocational Education . Series: Jahrbuch der berufs- und wirtschaftspädagogischen Forschung (Verlag Barbara Budrich) Division 9 – Adult Education . Series: Schriftenreihe der Sektion Erwachsenenbildung (Verlag Barbara Budrich) The Gesellschaft für Medien in der Wissenschaft (GMW) published the conference proceedings series Medien in der Wissenschaft in open access with Waxmann Verlag until 2022. Furthermore, various publishers support the publication of open access books in educational sciences. They include Verlag Julius Klinkhardt , Barbara Budrich , Nomos , Beltz Juventa , wbv Media , transcript , Waxmann , and Werner-Hülsbusch-Verlag . Disciplinary Repositories The most important repositories in the educational sciences include: peDOCS : the disciplinary repository of DIPF – Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education for the areas educational research, educational science, and subject didactics. DIPFdocs : DIPF’s institutional repository. texte.online : publications on adult education of the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE) . Scripta Paedagogica Online : digital text archive on the history of education in the German-speaking area (holdings include, inter alia, journals, teacher registers, school programmes). VET Repository : the central repository of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training – BIBB for literature in the area of research on vocational education and training (VET). An overview of relevant repositories is also provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: 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 Offerings As a virtual specialised education library, the Education Research Portal is the central point of access for literature searches in (German-language) educational sciences. It is run by the Information Centre for Education (IZB) of DIPF – Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education in Frankfurt am Main. The development of the portal was funded by the German Research Foundation ( DFG ). The offering, which can be used free of charge, is divided into three sections, Literature & References, Research Data in Education, and Research Information: In the Literature & References section, users can conduct searches, report publications that are not yet indexed in the database, publish documents via peDOCS , or avail of the services of the Specialised Information Service for Educational Science and Research . The Research Data in Education section contains comprehensive studies in empirical education research that have been documented for the long term. In addition, there is a central access point to descriptive information about the studies (e.g. survey instruments used, research data collected, information material on research data management) . The Research Information section provides a thematic compilation of relevant Internet sources for and about science and research in the area of education . The Education Research Portal has been online since August 2005. Following a complete overhaul, it was relaunched in September 2017. Open Science in the Educational Sciences In educational sciences, there are also other movements in the area of open science beyond open access. For example, a special issue of the journal Erziehungswissenschaft , Issue 61 (2-2020), entitled: “ Neue Formen der Archivierung, Bereitstellung und Nachnutzung von Forschungsdaten ” [New Forms of Archiving, Providing, and Reusing Research Data], which brought together arguments on open science and open data, sparked a debate within educational sciences on new forms of research and data collection and the requirements that these models involve. The special issue also addressed discernible limitations and reservations, especially regarding data protection and the use of open research data and processes. Nonetheless, open science practices and forms of open access publishing will also change things in educational sciences, as the open handling of research data is supported in principle. The German Educational Research Association (GERA/DGfE), the Society for Empirical Educational Research ( Gesellschaft für Empirische Bildungsforschung, GEBF), and the Gesellschaft für Fachdidaktik (GFD) have published a joint statement with recommendations on the archiving, provision, and reuse of research data in the context of education and subject didactics research. At an international level, as of November 2025, the registry of research data repositories re3data listed 100 open research data portals and repositories under “educational research”. In the German-speaking area, the portal Forschungsdaten Bildung indexes research data via the German Network Educational Research Data (Verbund FDB) and provides information on sharing and managing research data in education research. Engagement with open science and the adaptation of open science to the disciplinary framework conditions and possibilities can increasingly be observed in educational sciences (van Dijk et al., 2021; Krammer & Svecnik, 2020; van der Zee & Reich, 2018). Furthermore, educational sciences are also influenced by the open educational resources (OER) movement. By explicitly calling for open access to education, educational opportunities, and educational materials, this thematic field follows the lead of historical pedagogical precursors (Deimann, 2020; Hug, 2014). In recent years, an increasing number of studies have investigated the innovations in the area of educational and informational practice. These studies emphasise, examine, and critically discuss the new ways of handling materials and infrastructures (Schön & Ebner, 2021; Heck et al., 2020; Deimann, 2020; Heinen et al., 2015). The website OERinfo provides regular German-language news and information on OER as well as a compilation of German-language OER directories and platforms (e.g. the OER-Repositorium Baden-Württemberg and twillo ) . These directories and platforms cover both the areas of school and adult education and the area of higher education. In Austria, an OER certificate ( OER-Zertifikat.at) has been introduced for higher education teachers and institutions (Schön et al., 2 023). open-access.network (2021) ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Abs, H. J., Kuper, H., Cathleen, G., Ludwig, K., Hüfner, K., Radhoff, M., Ruberg, C., Kerst, C., Wolter, A., Gerecht, M., Krüger, H.-H., Sauerwein, M., Schultheiß, J., Schmidt-Hertha, B., Müller, M., Martini, R., & Stelter, A. (2020). Datenreport Erziehungswissenschaft 2020. Erstellt im Auftrag der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft (DGfE). Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.25656/01:18987 Bambey, D. (2016). Fachliche Publikationskulturen und Open Access. Fächerübergreifende Entwicklungstendenzen und Spezifika der Erziehungswissenschaft und Bildungsforschung . https://doi.org/10.25656/01:12331 Deimann, M. (2020). Lernen mit Open Educational Resources. In H. M. Niegemann & A. Weinberger (Eds.), Handbuch Bildungstechnologie. Konzeption und Einsatz digitaler Lernumgebungen (pp. 699–708). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54368-9_58 Heck, T., Kullmann, S., Hiebl, J., Schröder, N., Otto, D., & Sander, P. (2020). Designing Open Informational Ecosystems on the Concept of Open Educational Resources. Open Education Studies , 2 (1), 252–264. https://doi.org/10.1515/edu-2020-0130 Heinen, R., Kerres, M., & Schindler, C. (2015). Provisioning strong and weak OER: Requirements of open informational ecosystems. Proceedings of Open Education Global 2015 . https://doi.org/10.25656/01:18242 Hug, T. (2014). Bildung für alle – eine Neuauflage? Offenheit und Teilen in der Open Educational Resources (OER) Bewegung. In P. Missomelius (Ed.), Freie Bildungsmedien und digitale Archive. Medien - Wissen - Bildung (pp. 227–256). Innsbruck University Press. https://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/literatur/vollanzeige.html?FId=1055764 Krammer, G., & Svecnik, E. (2020). Open Science als Beitrag zur Qualität in der Bildungsforschung. Zeitschrift für Bildungsforschung , 10 , 263–278. https://doi.org/10.1007/s35834-020-00286-z Rummler, K. (2021). Open Access Zeitschriften in den Bildungs- und Erziehungswissenschaften. Ausgewählte Aspekte zum Betrieb wissenschaftlicher Fachzeitschriften. Schweizerische Zeitschrift Für Bildungswissenschaften , 43 (1), 116–128. https://doi.org/10.24452/sjer.43.1.9 Schindler, C., & Rummler, K. (2018). Open Access in der Publikationslandschaft der Erziehungswissenschaft. Eine Sondierung mit Blick auf Monographien und Sammelwerke. Erziehungswissenschaft , 57 (29), 9–18. https://doi.org/10.3224/ezw.v29i2.02 Schmidt-Hertha, B., & Müller, M. (2020). Forschung und Publikationskulturen. In J. Abs, H. Kuper, & R. Martini (Eds.), Datenreport Erziehungswissenschaft 2020 . Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.3224/84742419 Schön, S., & Ebner, M. (2021). Digital gestütztes Lernen in der Erwachsenenbildung - wo liegt die Innovation? In Egger, R. & Härtel, P. (Eds.), Bildung für alle? Für ein offenes und chancengerechtes, effizientes und kooperatives System des lebenslangen Lernens in Österreich (pp. 231–252). Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31054-7_12 Schön, S., Ebner, M., Berger, E., Brandhofer, G., Edelsbrunner, S., Gröblinger, O., Hackl, C., Jadin, T., Kopp, M., Neuböck, K., Proinger, J., Schmölz, A. & Steinbacher, H.P. (2023). Development of an Austrian OER certification for higher education institutions and their employees. In D. Otto, G. Scharnberg, M. Kerres, & O. Zawacki-Richter (Eds.), Distributet learning ecosystems. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38703-7_9 van der Zee, T., & Reich, J. (2018). Open Education Science. AERA Open , 4 (3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858418787466 van Dijk, W., Schratschneider, C., & Hart, S. A. (2021). Open Science in Education Sciences. Journal of Learning Disabilities , 54 (2), 139–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219420945267 Further Reading Mruck, K., Mey, G., Schön, S., Idensen, H., & Purgathofer, P. (2013). Offene Lehr- und Forschungsressourcen. Open Access und Open Educational Resources. In M. Ebner & S. Schön (Eds.), L3T. Lehrbuch für Lernen und Lehren mit Technologien (2. Auflage). https://doi.org/10.25656/01:8356 Schaffert, S. (2004). Kostenlose Online-Literatur der Bildungsforschung. P@psych E-Zine , 9 . https://www.stangl-taller.at/paedpsych/ezine/2004/schaffert04/ Content editors of this page: Dr Klaus Rummler, Zurich University of Teacher Education , Dr Christoph Schindler, Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education , and Dr Sandra Schön, Graz University of Technology (Last updated: November 2025)....

  9. Open Access in English and American Studies
    last modified at:

    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 in Linguistics Find an introduction here. Open Access in English and American Studies English and American studies refers here to a range of disciplines that, at German universities, are also known as Anglophone literature and cultures or British and American studies , and that may comprise different regionally oriented and inter­disciplinary cultural studies. The following information therefore refers in part also to British, Irish, American, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand studies, as well as to interdisciplinary research fields such as postcolonial studies. In addition to genuinely philological topics and research questions, and in line with the current self-perception of the disciplines on the English-studies continuum, the history, society, politics, cultural geography, mass media, and popular culture of the respective countries are also investigated using different metho­dological approaches. The spread and acceptance of forms of open access publishing has not quite been able to keep pace with this continuous thematic and disciplinary opening of the field of English and American studies. There are a variety of reasons for this, the main one being the publication culture in the humanities, which differs – sometimes to a large extent – from the distribution channels and work me­thods in the natural sciences. The exception here is linguistics , which is closer to the natural sciences, not only in terms of its methods but also its scientific communication practices. For example, the concept of preprints is widely known in linguistics. In the field of literary and cultural studies, commercial print publications still prevail, especially in the case of dissertations and monographs. Open access publications in English and American Studies are not usually financed through article processing charges ( APCs ) but rather through book publishing charges ( BPCs ). The publication of open access monographs is supported in various ways, for example through monograph funds at institutional or federal state level, publisher-side pledging initiatives such as Knowledge Unlatched , third-party funding, or professional associations’ membership fees. The consortially funded Open Library of Humanities has developed into an important infrastructure for open access journals . Its platform also hosts a whole range of journals from the field of English and American Studies. In addition, the French platform for humanities and social science research blogs Hypotheses , which is part of the portal OpenEdition , is used by numerous German institutes and scholars to publish their research works. Overall, the development of open access in English and American Studies is positive. Many authors, publishers, and research funding organisations are calling for, and support, the further development of the provision of open access to research results. The growing trend in the humanities towards publishing research results in the form of journal articles and special issues is also contributing to a more vital open access culture in English and American Studies. Open Access Journals As of May 2025, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 92 entries under the keywords “ Language and Literature: English language ”, 61 entries under “ Language and Literature: English literature ”, 20 entries under “ Language and Literature: American literature ”, 4 entries under “ History of Great Britain ”, 9 entries under “ History America: America ”, 2 entries under “ History America: United States ” and 3 entries under “ History America: United States local history ”. The subject classification in the DOAJ is not always precise. Some of the journals of relevance to English and American Studies are to be found under more general categories, such as Language and Literature . In the case of specific research interests, it is therefore worthwhile to use free search terms. There are also several high-quality journals that are not yet listed in the DOAJ. The numbers mentioned above are thus only reference values. Important open access journals include: Anglistik Journal for the Study of British Cultures Amerikastudien / American Studies New American Studies Journal: A Forum European Journal for American Studies Zeitschrift für Australienstudien/Australian Studies Journal Canada and Beyond European Journal of American Studies Review of Irish Studies in Europe Journal of Transnational American Studies On Culture Postcolonial Text Transformative Works and Cultures Many journals that for a long time were available only in printed form have retained the classic subscription model without an open access component for their (mainly additional) digital editions. A welcome tendency when transitioning from a print to a digital version can be observed in the case of the journals of the main professional associations (e.g., the German Association for the Study of English , the German Association for American Studies , and the German Association for Australian Studies ), almost all of which are now (additionally) available in open access. Some of these journals are still published by scholarly publishers, whereas others are published via the associations’ websites. By contrast, the journal of the European Association of American Studies , for example, has been published in open access since its foundation. On the other hand, some e-journals were successfully implemented at an early stage as scholar-led publications without the support of publishers. Besides free worldwide access, in particular the potential of web-based publishing (hyperlinks, integration of images and audio-visual sources) was recognised. These journals include, for example: in Germany, Erfurt Electronic Studies in English (1995–2011) and the American Studies Journal (since 1996); in the United Kingdom, Early Modern Literary Studies (since 1995); and in Canada, Romanticism on the Net (RoN) (since 1996). Open access is now also an established model among journals edited by early career researchers. The articles of the journals Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS) (since 2000) and aspeers: emerging voices in american studies (dual-publishing model since 2008) have been published under a Creative Commons (CC) licence from the very beginning. What are Open Access Journals? Find an introduction here. Practical Tip Publishing Open Access: How to evaluate a journal's quality Video on the Funding of Open Access Articles Source: Becklas Dorow, C., Hauss, J. (2026). Funding Open Access Articles – What Are the Options?. Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/73596 ( 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 A search in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in May 2025 using the terms “ English literature ”, “ English language ”, and “ American literature ” yielded a total of 451 results. Numerous monographs were also found under the more general search terms “American Studies” (470 results) and “English Studies” (43 results). In addition, there are publications from the areas of postcolonial studies , literary studies , cultural studies , etc. Because the platform does not provide uniform content indexing, it is worthwhile using search terms to search for books on the research topic in question. In addition, the platform OAPEN provides direct access to many hundreds of titles under the aforementioned search terms. The increasing availability of such a wide range of open access books and documents has been a positive development in recent years. Important commercial publishers in the German-language context that provide noteworthy open access offerings for the scholarly communities in the field of English and American Studies include transcript , DeGruyter/Brill, and Peter Lang . Furthermore, several German university presses offer opportunities to publish monographs in open access. Examples include the series Göttinger Schriften zur Englischen Philologie , which is published by Göttingen University Press , and Berlin University Publishing. Most of these monographs and edited collections are now indexed by central platforms such as OAPEN and thus find their way into library indexing systems. It is likely that the number of open access books – and the number of scholars calling for open access – will continue to increase in the coming years. Not only have research funders such as the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) made the publication of research results in open access a prerequisite for funding, but also German initiatives, such as Enable! , or international initiatives, such as Knowledge Unlatched , have established themselves as additional catalysts. Internationally, many publishers, for example MIT Press, have changed or expanded their business models in favour of open access and now offer a large number of their titles under an open licence. Disciplinary Repositories The most important repositories for English and American Studies include: The Stacks , an interdisciplinary repository for the following disciplines: American Studies, English Studies, Anglophone postcolonial studies, Australian and New Zealand Studies, British and Irish Studies, and Canadian Studies, including all sub-fields. The repository is provided by the Specialised Information Service (SIS) Anglo-American Culture and is operated by Göttingen State and University Library. Besides self-archiving their publications (journal articles and monographs), scholars can also deposit previously unpublished works, for example conference papers, teaching materials, and conference programmes. All documents are made available in open access either immediately or after a freely selectable embargo period. The repository was awarded the current version of the DINI Certificate in 2021. Humanities Commons (CORE) , an interdisciplinary open access repository for the humanities, which is operated inter alia by the Modern Language Association (MLA). Its holdings also include grey literature (teaching materials, conference papers). GenderOpen , a disciplinary repository for gender studies operated by the Margherita von Brentano Center for Gender Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Women and Gender at Technische Universität Berlin. media/rep/ , a disciplinary repository for media studies and neighbouring disciplines, which is operated by the Institute for Media Studies in cooperation with Marburg University Library. CompaRe , a repository for comparative literature, which is maintained by the Specialised Information Service Comparative Literature. An overview of relevant repositories is provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . The English Language and Literature Commons section of the database Digital Commons Network lists full-text articles from institutional repositories worldwide (with a focus on US institutions). What are Repositories? Find an introduction here. Legal Aspects Find an introduction here. Video über das Zeitveröffentlichungsrecht Quelle: 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 Offerings The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now also make available open access content of relevance to English and American studies. Open Science in English and American Studies Major open science initiatives, for example the German association Geistes- und kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungsinfrastrukturen e.V , are not usually discipline-specific, but rather are addressed to the humanities as a whole. Here, the term open science refers primarily to providing access to digital materials (historical sources, literary texts, language corpora) and preparing (mostly text-based) research data using digital tools and making them available in the long term (e.g., in the DARIAH-DE Repository ). Especially in research areas in which the object of research includes not only texts but also audiovisual sources, pioneer projects were conducted at an early stage on the Internet to benefit from the opportunities afforded by hypermedia and to enable free access and – especially also interdisciplinary – reusability . For example, the Rossetti Archive and the Victorian Web date back to the 1990s. Recent major edition projects include, for example, the Walt Whitman Archive and the James Joyce Digital Archive . In Germany, scholars in the field of digital humanities, and projects at scholarly libraries in particular, are forging new paths. So far, the anchoring of open science in the main professional associations has only partially been implemented, for example by the Digital American Studies Initiative (DASI) , a working group within the German Association for American Studies that organises, among other things, thematic discussion forums at the annual conferences. Potential for a central strategy for dealing with language- and text-based research data currently also lies in the humanities consortia (e.g., Text+ ) within the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) . open-access.network ( CC BY 4.0 International ) References Further Reading Blumesberger, S. (2023). FAIRe Forschungsdaten in den Geisteswissenschaften: Umfrage über Aufbereitung und Archivierung von Daten. o-bib – das offene Bibliotheksjournal. 10 (4). https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/5883 Dreher, L., Lang, I., & Oberländer, A. (2020). Bereitschaft zu Open Access in den Geisteswissenschaften. o-bib – das offene Bibliotheksjournal, 7 (2), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/5512 Elstermann, A. (2017). The power of digital publishing: Rethinking knowledge distribution in English philology. In A.-J. Zwierlein, J. Petzold, K. Boehm, & M. Decker (Eds.), Anglistentag 2017 Regensburg. Proceedings: Vol. XXXIX (pp. 39–50). Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. https://www.wvttrier.de/top/Proceedings_2017_WVT.pdf Eve, M. P. (2014). Open Access and the humanities. Contexts, controversies and the future . Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316161012 Fitzpatrick, K. (2011). Planned obsolescence: Publishing, technology, and the tuture of the academy. New York University Press. http://mcpress.media-commons.org/plannedobsolescence/ (Link leads to manuscript version with open peer review .) Projekt AuROA (2022). Publizieren und Open Access in den Geisteswissenschaften. Erkenntnisse aus dem Projekt AuROA zu den Stakeholdern im Publikationsprozess . Link: https://projekt-auroa.de/stakeholder/#perspektiven . Severin, A., Egger, M., Eve, M. P., & Hürlimann, D. (2020). Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: an evidence-based review. F1000Research, 7 , 1925. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.17328.2 Content editor of this page: Wiebke Kartheus, Greifswald University Library (last updated: May 2025)....

  10. Open Access in Ethnological Disciplines
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    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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