Open Access in Information Science
Information science can generally be considered quite a small discipline in the German-speaking area. The Hochschulverband Informationswissenschaft (Higher Education Association for Information Science, HI) lists only 19 higher education institutions (HEIs) at which the subject is taught. Most of these HEIs are universities of applied sciences. The German-language publishing landscape in information science is thus modest in size. Although open access is considered an object of research in information science, it has not dominated publishing practice in the discipline to date. In January 2022, the HI published its Open Science Guideline, which calls for open access to texts, data, software, and methods. This was preceded by the discussion of a first draft of the guideline by members of the HI in autumn 2021. The HI signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities on 15 November 2021.
Open Access Journals
Journals of information science in the German-speaking area, for example Information – Wissenschaft & Praxis, the journal of the German Society for Information and Knowledge (DGI), are published in closed access. This is also true of journals further afield, for example Aslib Proceedings, the journal of the Association for Information Management (ASLIB), all journals of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (asis&t), and the Journal of Information Science.
As of December 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 1,075 indexed journals under “information science“ and 205 entries under the related search term “library science“.
With the spread of diamond open access journals, the subscribe-to-open model, and transformative agreements, the number of open access articles in information science has been increasing in recent years.
Open access journals of relevance to information science include:
- Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis
- Big Data & Society
- College and Research Libraries
- Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics
- Information Research: An International Electronic Journal
- Information
- Journal of the Medical Library Association
- Library and Information Research
- Libreas: Library Ideas
- o-bib. Das offene Bibliotheksjournal
- Scientific Data
- Quantitative Science Studies
Video zur Finanzierung von Open-Access-Artikeln
Quelle: Brinken, H. (2020). Finanzierung von Open-Access-Artikeln, open-access.network. https://doi.org/10.5446/49536 (CC BY 3.0 DE)
Open Access Books
As of December 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 79 titles under the subject “library & information sciences”, while the online library OAPEN listed 75 titles under “library & information sciences”. The proceedings of the International Symposium of Information Science (ISI), which is organised by the HI, are published in open access; the contributions can be found on the HI website.
Disciplinary Repositories
Important disciplinary repositories include E-LIS (eprints in library & information science) and arXiv, in whose category "Digital Libraries" many information science research publications can be found. As in many other disciplines, Zenodo is also increasingly being used in library and information science (LIS). In the German-speaking information science community, publications are often also self-archived and made available in the institutional open access repositories of the institutions at which researchers are working on the topic.
Practical Tip
Finding Open Access Literature (in German)
Literatur
Further Reading
- Asef, E. (2021). Analyse von Open Access Publikationen in der Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft 2003 bis 2016. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. https://doi.org/10.18452/2302
- Chen, M., & Du, Y. (2016). The status of open access library and information science journals in SSCI. The Electronic Library, 34(5), 722–739. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-05-2015-0070
- Sahoo, J., Birtia, T., & Mohanty, B. (2017). Open access journals in library and information science: A study on DOAJ. International Journal of Information Dissemination and Technology, 7(2), 116. https://doi.org/10.5958/2249-5576.2017.00008.5
- Way, D. (2010). The open access availability of library and information science literature. College & Research Libraries, 71(4), 302–309. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl-38r1
Content editor of this page: Ulrich Herb, Saarland University and State Library (Last updated: January 2022)