1. Who is the GenderOpen repository for?
For anyone who is interested in gender studies and/or is carrying out gender studies research. In other words, GenderOpen addresses both authors researching and publishing in the interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary field of gender studies and interested members of the public. GenderOpen is intended primarily to give access to scholarly and scientific texts, publish them, and preserve them for the long term. Because of the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary orientation of gender studies, a wide range of work from many different subject areas can be found in the repository.
2. Is GenderOpen an institutional or a subject repository?
GenderOpen is a subject (discipline) repository. Subject repositories cross institutional boundaries and organize their content thematically. This means that anyone researching and publishing in the various thematic areas of gender studies can deposit a text and make it freely accessible – regardless of which institution they belong to, or even whether they belong to an institution at all. Access to the full texts in GenderOpen is also independent of your affiliation with a university or other research institution. It is open to everyone who is interested in gender research.
3. Who can publish texts on GenderOpen?
Anyone who researches and publishes in a subject area of gender studies and sees their work as belonging to that field can upload their text onto GenderOpen and thus make it freely accessible – regardless of which institution they belong to, or even whether they belong to an institution at all. In other words, authors do not have to belong to an institution or university in order to upload texts into GenderOpen. Please go to FAQ 6 for more detailed information about the types of material we accept.
4. What legal issues should I take into account when depositing texts in GenderOpen?
We gave a lot of thought to this question from the outset, because we want to ensure full protection for both the rights of authors and the rights of publishers. It’s impossible to give a complete answer here. For a first impression, please read our brief overview Copyrights and Licenses, under Information for Authors. If this does not help, or if you have more detailed questions, contact us at info@genderopen.de. We will do our best to help!
5. Are all GenderOpen’s texts in German?
GenderOpen offers access to gender studies research in the German-speaking region. Most of that work, but certainly not all of it, is written in German.
6. What texts and text types are you currently accepting?
In the two-year construction phase of GenderOpen, we are accepting articles from scholarly and scientific journals, papers in edited volumes (such as thematic collections and conference proceedings), monographs, and doctoral or professorial dissertations. For these text types, the original publication process included quality assurance (for further detail on quality assurance, see FAQ 8).
7. Why are you not currently accepting Bachelor’s and Master’s theses?
Especially in the initial phase of this project, we are not in a position to carry out quality assurance for texts that have not yet undergone that process, for example during peer review for a journal. Unlike doctoral dissertations, Bachelor’s and Master’s theses are not primarily designed for publication; they are forms of examination. As a result, even excellent pieces of work are not necessarily suited to publication without first being revised. Because we do not have either the time or the expertise to offer that degree of support without endangering the project as a whole, for now we are excluding Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. This is also intended to protect authors themselves. (For more on quality assurance, see FAQ 8.)
8. Does the GenderOpen team carry out quality assurance? How is quality assured?
In this phase of the project, we do not have adequate resources to check all texts. For that reason, we decided to accept only texts that have already gone through one form or another of quality assurance. These are mainly texts that have been published in scientific or scholarly journals and edited volumes, along with monographs and doctoral or professorial dissertations. Having said that, we will do our best to identify any texts with discriminatory or offensive content and make sure they are not released. If, despite our efforts, you find texts with sexist, racist, homophobic, or transphobic content in GenderOpen, please let us know.
9. How can the GenderOpen repository acquire older texts?
We specifically approach key gender studies authors, asking them to make their work available as a secondary publication on GenderOpen and thus to act as ambassadors for the project. We hope this strategy will encourage more authors to offer us access to their texts. We also cooperate with the editorial boards of relevant journals, who help us contact authors from previous volumes. Thanks to the acquisition of a book scanner, we are able to digitize older gender studies texts.
10. What is the technical basis of GenderOpen?
The GenderOpen repository is operated using the repository software package DSpace. We chose this software because it offers not only the acquisition, storage, and dissemination of documents, but also the option of depositing and administering research data in the repository. DSpace is the most widely used repository software worldwide. Its constantly growing user community means it can be further developed and tailored to repositories’ individual requirements. The Computer and Media Service of the Humboldt University Berlin are our technical service providers. They have extensive experience of the repository software DSpace, and are responsible for installation, hosting, and software support.