Open Science

Your guide to Open Access publishing and Open Science

Tag: Germany
Dresden’s Military History Museum, 2011, Daniel Libeskind, Dresden, Germany, November 9, 2013 | © Courtesy of Maciek Lulko/Flickr.

Klemperer Online: De Gruyter Makes All Victor Klemperer’s Diaries from 1918 to 1959 Available Digitally

De Gruyter is launching a digital version of Victor Klemperer’s archive: one of the most important sources for understanding 20th century German history. A Blog Post by Eric Merkel-Sobotta. The database Klemperer Online contains the complete and unabridged diaries of Victor Klemperer as transcripts and facsimiles of the handwritten pages with commentaries. The digital version of the diaries has more than 30 percent of additional content than the print edition. The complete collection of the diaries provides a more comprehensive, detailed and focused depiction of the decades that Klemperer documents. Victor Klemperer (1881-1960) was a noted Romance Studies scholar and […]

Germany Pavilion, Shanghai EXPO 2010, Shanghai, China, March 8, 2011 | © Courtesy of Wojtek Gurak/Flickr.

Sino-German Interrelations, Country-Level Economic Ties, Cultural Exchanges and their Future

In March 2019, De Gruyter has published in German a collected volume of scholarly articles dealing with the present and future interrelations between China and Germany as well as their expected challenges, inherent prospects and long-term outlook. As this collection is edited by Yu Zhang, who presides over the Berlin-based Association for German-Chinese Cultural Exchanges, this book also explores uncertainties in these interrelations, their regional contexts and multifaceted aspects, such as business, cultural and social domains, in which both China and Germany are active. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. In her introduction to this book, Yu Zhang (2019: 2-9) casts a […]

Night View of the Geisel Library, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA, March 21, 2014 | © Courtesy of O Palsson/Flickr.

Conflicts with Large Journal Publishers Can Slow Down University Libraries’ Efforts to Transition to Open Access Models

The likely reason that the journal subscription contract negotiations between the library system of the University of California, comprising 100 libraries, services to about 238,000 students and resources for circa 69,000 faculty members, and Elsevier that commands a portfolio of over 1,000 journal titles appear to be dead-ending is that global publishers are yet to adjust their extant models to the demands for and of Open Access. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. While the University of California, which across its 10 campuses accounts for up to 10% of yearly scholarly output in the United States, plays hardball with Elsevier […]

Alte Universitätsbibliothek, Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, January 30, 2018 | © Courtesy of Rüdiger Stehn/Flickr.

The Conflict over Open Access between Elsevier and German Academic Institutions Shows the Importance of Journal Subscriptions

As an agreement on terms of access to paywall-protected journals between Germany’s educational and scientific organizations and the international publishing house Elsevier continues to elude the negotiating parties, a growing criticism from the side of scholarly publishers and university representatives indicates that journal subscriptions are critical for scientific research and publication processes, in spite of the expected transition to Open Access. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. Since the subscription contract deal talks between the Project DEAL, the German consortium of research universities and institutes, and Elsevier have been taking place for about two years, the current lack of clarity […]

At the library, Haidhausen, Munich, Bavaria, Germany, January 7, 2013 | © Courtesy of Foto Schlachthof/Flickr.

Open Access May Involve Hidden Costs for Journal Publishers, as Conflicts over Subscription Agreements Indicate

Elsevier’s hard line in negotiations with German and Swedish universities over journal access and publishing contracts can follow from the limited financial attractiveness of Gold Open Access in the long term. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. Since late July, 2018, Elsevier had cut off German university libraries that have failed to reach a satisfactory agreement with this publisher to its journal databases. Whereas a conglomerate of German scientific organizations and academic institutions has been unsuccessfully discussing with Elsevier the terms of its futures subscription contract since 2016, this situation could stem from several factors that give this publisher cold […]

Ex Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 18, 2010 | © Courtesy of verovera78/Flickr.

Open Access Skyrockets in Latin America, as the Number of Repositories Surges and Open Science Gains in Support

In recent years, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries increasingly recognize the status of scientific knowledge as a public good. The spectacular growth of Open Access in these primarily Iberoamérican countries, thus, stems from the increasing relevance of free access to research findings to both scholarly communities and non-specialist audiences. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. In his recent blog article published on June 19, 2018, Victoriano Colodrón has explored the reasons due to which, over the last decade, the rates of Open Access adoption have been exploding in Latin America. While no consensus among commentators or scholars concerning the underlying factors […]