Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic Studies

Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic Studies – also known as sciences relating to the MENA region (the Middle East and North Africa), and formerly known as Oriental studies – comprise a range of disciplines with a philological, cultural studies, religious studies, and area studies orientation (e.g., Arabic studies, Islamic studies, Iranian studies, Turkology). These disciplines, together with other "small disciplines", belong to the subject group "Non-European Language, Literature and Cultural Studies". At individual universities there are also departments that focus on the politics, economies or societies of the MENA region.

While inter- and transdisciplinary work is a key feature of many disciplinary cultures, the orientation of the respective disciplines varies depending on their location and facilities. This variety is reflected in a heterogeneous publishing landscape. As is the norm for humanities and social science disciplines, works are published predominantly in journals and books with either a thematic, regional or chronological orientation. In addition, there are more generalist periodicals of national and international scholarly societies (e.g., the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft ZDMG, which has a retro-digitised issue archive and has been published as a hybrid open access journal through Verlag Harrassowitz since 2016).

Key scholarly societies include the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG), the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, the European Association for Modern Arabic Literature (EURAMAL), the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS), the Societas Iranologica Europaea (SIE), the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vorderer Orient (DAVO), the Deutsche Orient-Stiftung, the Deutsche Vereinigung für Religionswissenschaft e.V. (DVWR) and die Royal Asiatic Society.

In the sciences relating to the MENA region, the publishing culture is still shaped by print publishing and publishing with a publisher. In the case of electronic publications, the file format PDF is often preferred in order to model the appearance of the print publication (also in terms of page numbering and layout). Furthermore, as in other humanities and social sciences disciplines, scientific reputation is established via publication venues and editorships.

Scholars often publish with renowned publishers with a rich tradition, even if their offerings do not include an open access option – or if they do, it is not affordable

In the case of monographs and edited volumes, the share of open access publications is higher than in the case of journal articles. As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 556 publications under “Middle East”, of which the largest shares were published by Taylor & Francis (47 in total) and MDPI – Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (22 in total). Open access books are published primarily with established publishers. However, the publishers have successfully established models for the open access publication of series and individual volumes. One reason why open access is more widespread in the case of monographs and conference proceedings may be that researchers are increasingly required to make the results of publicly funded research and conferences available in open access. The team behind the blog Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR) provides information on freely accessible material about the MENA region, including information about newly published open access books.

As a major part of research is text based, methods of the digital humanities are of particular importance for sciences related to the MENA region. Digitised copies of text-based sources can be supplemented with technical or contextual metadata and published under an open licence. The opening of research is taking place inter alia through the digitisation of manuscripts and periodicals, for example Jara'id: A Chronology of Arabic Periodicals (1800-1929). Thus, materials that are stored at great physical distances from each other can be brought together in different ways and published under an open licence, thereby enabling them to be reused. Important networks include the Islamicate Digital Humanities Network (IDHN) and the Open Islamicate Texts Initiative (OpenITI).

• Arabic Collections Online (ACO) is a publicly available digital library of public-domain Arabic-language content.
• Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library (AMEEL) is a web-based portal and a digital collection of information for the study of the Middle East, including its history, culture, development, and present situation.
• The Digital Assets Repository (DAR) is a system developed at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Library of Alexandria, to create and maintain the Library's digital collections, which include digitised books in the public domain.
• The Hindawi Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation based in England, which publishes freely accessible Arabic-language books and translations without an open access licence.
• The Qatar Digital Library is a growing archive that covers the modern history and culture of the Gulf and wider region. Its holdings include archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs, and much more, complete with context-related explanations and links, both in English and in Arabic. The objects may be used and reused free of charge.
• Efforts are being made to digitally archive Master's theses and dissertations and to make them available to the public, inter alia via the Egyptian Universities Libraries Consortium.
• Qalamos offers direct access to metadata and digitised copies of Oriental manuscript collections in Germany. Its mission is "to provide the metadata and digitised copies of Oriental holdings of all German memory institutions". 
• A further offering is the online database of the Museum für Islamische Kunst (Museum for Islamic Art) in Berlin, which provides information on objects and works. It is part of the online portal "Islamic·Art", which provides further open access materials.
• Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers is an open access collection sponsored by the Center for Research Libraries.