Research Group Information Management @ Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Forschungszentrum Jülich

University of Regensburg

Am 19. September 2025 führten die DFG-geförderten Projekte OA Datenpraxis, openCost und Transform2Open gemeinsam den Workshop „Praktiken und Infrastrukturen des Open-Access-Monitorings“ auf den Open-Access-Tagen 2025 durch (Pampel et al. 2025). Nach einer kurzen Vorstellung der beteiligten Projekte diskutierten mehr als 30 Teilnehmende aktuelle Fragestellungen des Open-Access-Monitorings im Format World Café.

Praktiken und Infrastrukturen des Open-Access-Monitorings

On November 6 2025, we participated in the Workshop “Resilience in Times of Crisis: Strengthening Open Science Against Geopolitical Pressures” at the CWTS in Leiden. The workshop made reference to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (UNESCO 2021), which presented an extensive and inclusive vision for Open Science when they were published in 2021.

Workshop Report: Resilience in Times of Crisis - Strengthening Open Science Against Geopolitical Pressures

In my PhD research, I look at DataRescue or Data Refuge movements, for example through the work of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) (“Environmental Data &amp; Governance Initiative” n.d.) to understand how people respond when they fear data is at risk.

What happens when public data infrastructures aren’t save? A look at past and current developments in the US

On December 6th, 2024, we hosted the first workshop of our project Infra Wiss Blogs (Ochsner and Pampel 2024), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The aim of the workshop was to bring together scholarly bloggers and experts from information infrastructure institutions, so they could exchange experiences, wishes and challenges concerning scholarly blogs.

Perspective on Future Infrastructure for Scholarly Blogs in Germany

At last year’s Open-Access-Tage, OA Datenpraxis held a workshop together with the Open Access Monitor at Forschungszentrum Jülich as well as the state-wide Open Access initiatives of Berlin (Open Access Büro Berlin) and Brandenburg (Vernetzungs- und Kompetenzstelle Open Access Brandenburg). The workshop ‘The state and prospects of open access reporting’ outlined different approaches - qualitative and quantitative - to Open Access reporting and

Workshop ‘The state and prospects of open access reporting’ at Open-Access-Tage

In recent years, transformative agreements (TAs) have become a go-to strategy for publishers and research performing organizations aiming to open up access to research (Farley et al. 2021). These agreements promise to bridge traditional subscription-based journal models to an Open Access (OA) future (Borrego, Anglada, and Abadal 2021). But are they delivering on that promise?

New preprint on Transformative Agreements

Wir laden Sie herzlich zur Veranstaltung “OA Datenpraxis Webinar: Erfassung von Publikationskosten an wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen in Deutschland” ein, die am 28.03.2025 von 10:00 bis 11:00 CET über Zoom stattfindet.

OA Datenpraxis Webinar: Erfassung von Publikationskosten an wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen in Deutschland

The Research and Teaching Group Information Management is conducting a survey on the topic of recording publication costs at research performing institutions in Germany.

Survey announcement: Recording publication costs at research performing institutions in Germany

I recently had the opportunity to speak on Deutschlandfunk about the Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive. The occasion was the recent cyberattack on the Internet Archive (Schräer 2023). The Wayback Machine plays a crucial role in preserving websites and providing access to our digital past—for researchers, journalists, and the interested public alike.

Interview on Deutschlandfunk about the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive

This week marks the fifteenth annual International Open Access Week. Since 2010, the week has provided a platform to discuss the state and challenges of open access to scientific knowledge. While the early years focused on access to scientific articles (“Open Access Week” 2024), this year’s activities increasingly address other aspects of Open Science.

Our Contribution to Open Access Week 2024

Front Matter

Scholarly blogs can disseminate current research content quickly and beyond their own specialist community and put it up for discussion. Open communication without paywalls increases the visibility of scholarly research. Researchers as well as information infrastructure and cultural institutions therefore have an interest in supporting scholarly blogs as an Open Access publication format.

Blogs as a blueprint for community-led Open Access publishing

We are thrilled to announce that our group at the Berlin School of Library and Information Science has been honored with the Open Access Award 2024 of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. This recognition, valued at €5,000, underscores our commitment to advancing Open Access in research, education, and knowledge transfer.

Open Access Award from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for Our Team!

As part of the Infra Wiss Blogs (Pampel and Rothfritz 2024) project, we are organizing a first networking workshop for blogging researchers and employees from infrastructure facilities on 06.12.2024. The aim is to share initial experiences of the various stakeholders and promote their exchange. We will also present the initial results of our survey of German science blogs. When? Wednesday, 06.12.2024, 10:30-15:00  Where?

Invitation to the networking workshop of the Infra Wiss Blogs project

Research is inherently dynamic, leading to equally dynamic data. This dynamic nature of research data raises numerous questions for professionals in information management at research institutions, libraries, and computing centers. Despite the conceptual establishment of research data citation through persistent identifiers (PIDs) in some communities, practical challenges remain.

Research Data Publications Between Dynamism and Persistence - Insights from the #PIDsBUA Workshop

The conversation about advancing the open access transformation has been revitalized by the “Council Conclusions on High-Quality, Transparent, Open, Trustworthy, and Equitable Scholarly Publishing” issued by the EU Science Ministries in May 2023 (Council of the European Union 2023).  In September 2023, we organized the conference “Community-Driven Open Access Publishing” as a satellite event of the Open Access Days 2023 (Bibliotheks- und

Perspectives on the future of community-driven Open Access publishing

Welcome! This is the first post in our new group blog.

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We, the research group Information Management at Humboldt University’s Berlin School of Library and Information Science, explore the role of digital research and information infrastructures in science within the context of digital transformation.

Welcome

Technische Universität Berlin

The Long Night of Science (Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften - LNdW) is one of the most well-known public science events in Germany, providing research institutions with a platform for science communication. During this annual event, researchers present their work to an interested and engaged public.

Long Night of Science 2025: Communicating Information Management with a Data Puzzle on Open Science

We are excited to announce the launch of our new project, “Infra Wiss Blogs - Kooperative Informationsinfrastruktur für wissenschaftliche Blogs” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG 2023).  Blogs have become an indispensable component of digital science communication, serving as a platform for scholarly communication, a diary for documenting research findings in the context of open science, or a showcase for communicating

Project launch: Infra Wiss Blogs - Ensuring Permanent Access to Scholarly Blogs

Wie wird aus einem geförderten Pilotprojekt eine dauerhaft tragfähige Infrastruktur? Diese zentrale Frage stellten sich viele der Teilnehmenden des Hands-on-Labs „Vom Drittmittelprojekt über die Community zur etablierten Struktur – Erfahrungsaustausch und Erarbeitung von Empfehlungen“ (Arning et al. 2025) auf dem 9. Bibliothekskongress / der 113. Bibliocon in Bremen am 26.06.2025.

“Vom Drittmittelprojekt zur etablierten Struktur”. Bericht über ein Hands-on Lab auf der 113. Bibliocon

Göttingen State and University Library

Hamburg State and University Library

In the beginning of June 2024, Nature reported on the Japanese Ministry of Education’s plan to invest 10 billion yen in expanding institutional Open Access Repositories (Singh Chawla 2024). This initiative provides a good opportunity to discuss the future of Open Access Repositories at the https://2024.bibliocon.de/.  In collaboration with the project “Professionalization of the Open Access Repositories Infrastructure in Germany” (Pro OAR DE)

Report on the Hands-On Lab ‘Scenarios for the Development of Open Access Repositories’ at the 112th BiblioCon

Regardless of whether one is just starting out or has already arrived in the community, as young librarians and information scientists, there are many interesting fields and new developments.

Die Bibliocon 2024 - ein studentischer Reisebericht

I am pleased to share that our research group is a partner of the “Berlin – City of Open Knowledge for Academia, Administration, Civil Society &amp; Culture” conference. The conference will take place on October 23, 2025, from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM, as part of the international Open Access Week 2025. This event will bring together experts, practitioners, and engaged citizens to explore the future of open knowledge-sharing in Berlin.

Berlin – City of Open Knowledge for Academia, Administration, Civil Society &amp; Culture

Presentations   On June 11, 2025, the webinar of the project Infra Wiss Blogs funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) took place on the topic of “Blog archiving with Rogue Scholar using the example of WordPress hosted blogs”. The webinar highlighted the possibilities and challenges of archiving scholarly blogs. At its core was the presentation of Rogue Scholar, a platform for archiving scholarly blogs. Around 50 people took part.

Recap: Infra Wiss Blogs Webinar on Rogue Scholar

Last week, I was interviewed on the program Breitband on Deutschlandfunk Kultur about the ruling of a Belgian court against four shadow libraries, as well as the Open Library of the Internet Archive (Krempl, 2025). The broadcast is now available online. Enjoy listening! Further information about the research group can be found on our official website.

Interview on Deutschlandfunk Kultur About Belgian Ruling Against Shadow Libraries

How can scholarly publications be made more visible, discoverable, and interconnected? This question is the focus of a student practical project conducted as part of the seminar within the module Information Production and Management (BP3) in the summer semester 2025.

Connecting Knowledge with Wikidata: A Practical Project with the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin

Am 28.03.2025 veranstaltete das Projekt OA Datenpraxis (Pampel et al. 2024) das erste Webinar zum Thema ”Erfassung von Publikationskosten an wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen in Deutschland”. In dem Webinar wurden Ergebnisse einer Umfrage vorgestellt, die im Jahr 2024 durchgeführt wurde.

Rückblick: OA Datenpraxis Webinar zur Erfassung von Publikationskosten

Open Access Dashboard Collection Launched

As Open Access becomes increasingly central to scholarship and science policy, understanding the proportion of open publications within the overall publication output, whether at the level of research-performing organizations, individual countries, or globally, is gaining importance.

Open Access Dashboard Collection Launched

As part of the Infra Wiss Blogs project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), we invite you to a webinar on the topic of archiving scholarly blogs. This webinar will focus on the Rogue Scholar service by Front Matter. After an introduction to the Infra Wiss Blogs project, we will present and discuss how WordPress-hosted scholarly blogs can be archived with Rogue Scholar.

Webinar: Blog archiving with Rogue Scholar using the example of WordPress Blogs

In April, two members of our research group were featured in interviews:  Dorothea Strecker, who has been studying shadow libraries for many years, was interviewed by the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen (Stormyren Larsen and Ugelstad Aas 2025). The interview was prompted by the investigation “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem” published in The Atlantic (Reisner 2025).    Heinz Pampel was interviewed for the @mediasres program

Interviews on Shadow Libraries and AI in Publishing

The Pro OAR DE project, running from September 2023 to August 2026, has dedicated the past two years to collaborating with German Open Access (OA) repository managers and and the global Open Science community to professionalize repository infrastructure. On October 30th, 2025, following a series of six networking forums, we hosted a pivotal session marking the culmination of these efforts.

Integrating Open Access Repositories into the Broader Open Science Landscape: OpenAlex and COAR

Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), our research project Pro OAR DE investigates current challenges in operating institutional repositories (IR) in Germany. Since completing our initial research phase—which included a systematic review and an interview study with IR managers at academic institutions—we have organized four networking forums since November 2024.

Networking for the Advancement of Institutional Open Access Repositories in Germany

Background As part of the project module

 Open Science as a Field of Action for Scientific Institutions

, students from the Institute for Library and Information Science at Humboldt University zu Berlin (HU), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Heinz Pampel, organized an event. During the winter semester of 2024/25, the students examined strategies on how scientific institutions shape and promote the topic of Open Science.

Is the German Scientific Landscape a Strong Driver for Open Science?

We are pleased to announce that the projects OA Datenpraxis and Infra Wiss Blogs of the Information Management Research Group from the Berlin School of Library and Information Science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin will be represented at this year’s BID Congress. Furthermore, Heinz Pampel will be involved in several other events during the BID Congress.

The Information Management Research Group at the BID Kongress 2025

In a time when research data is increasingly at the heart of research integrity, discussions about data sharing, openness, and reusability have gained prominence. Yet, the ethical complexities surrounding research data—who collects it, how it is used, and whose interests it serves—are often sidelined.

Critical Data Discourses: A Lecture Series on the Ethics of Research Data

The Ambassadors for Open Science program of the Berlin University Alliance, BUA aims to promote the knowledge and application of Open Science in various subjects.

Promoting Open Science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as BUA Open Science Ambassadors

In the latest episode of “Breitband” on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, there is an interview with Dorothea Strecker from our research group at the Berlin School of Library and Information Science on shadow libraries (Belanger 2024). The occasion for the interview was the lawsuit for damages against LibGen in the United States.

Interview on Shadow Libraries on Deutschlandfunk

Together with Christian Agi, Michael Beurskens, Marion von Francken, Judith Ludwig, and Bernhard Mittermaier, I have been working on recommendations for the inclusion of artificial intelligence in license agreements with publishers over the past few months.

Recommendations on Regulations for Artificial Intelligence in License Agreements Published

I had the great opportunity to be part of the CERN-NASA working group “Infrastructure for Open Scholarship”. This working group was established following the 2023 CERN-NASA Summit “Accelerating the Adoption of Open Science”. As a result of the summit, a closing statement was published, outlining key areas of action for Open Science (Tananbaum et al. 2023).  Under the umbrella of the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) and with financial support

Recommendations for Funding Organizations on Open Science Infrastructures

Das Projekt OA Datenpraxis verfolgt das Ziel, die Open-Access-Transformation in Deutschland voranzubringen, indem der Umgang mit Publikations- und Kostendaten untersucht und unterstützt wird. Das Projektteam hat nun Informations- und Lernmaterialien zu Monitoringaktivitäten mit offenen Datenquellen veröffentlicht.

Neue Informations- und Lernmaterialien aus dem Projekt OA Datenpraxis

We are pleased to announce the publication of our fourth guide from the BMFTR-funded (Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space) project “Professionalisierung der Open-Access-Repositorien-Infrastruktur in Deutschland (Pro OAR DE)”: “Publikations- und Kostenmonitoring: Handlungsfeld für institutionelle Open-Access Repositorien” (available in German only).  Matthias, L., Pampel, H., Khamis, C. O., &amp; Rothfritz, L. (2025).

New Guide on Publication and Cost Monitoring through Institutional Repositories

We are pleased to announce the publication of our third guide from the BMFTR-funded (Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space) project “Professionalisierung der Open-Access-Repositorien-Infrastruktur in Deutschland (Pro OAR DE)”: “Zweitveröffentlichung: Handlungsfeld für institutionelle Open-Access-Repositorien” (available in German only).  Matthias, L. Pampel, H., Khamis, C. O. &amp;

Institutional Repositories and Secondary Publication: A New Guide from Pro OAR DE

The Infra Wiss Blogs project by the Research Group Information Management was represented at this year’s Open Access Days with the workshop “Scholarly blogs as an integral part of the open access landscape”. The workshop was organised by Catharina Ochsner and Heinz Pampel (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin), Berlin School of Library and Information Science (IBI) in collaboration with Björn Gebert (Mittelalterblog &amp;

Scholarly Blogs as an Integral Part of the Open Access Landscape

I recently returned from a research stay at the University of Ottawa: A grant by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) - through the BUA Fellowship Program of the Objective 3 - Advancing Research Quality and Value - allowed me to visit Stefanie Haustein, associate professor at the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa and co-director of the Scholarly Communications Lab.

Report from the BUA fellowship: Metadata flows in the context of research data

We are pleased to announce that the event series “Quo vadis Open Research in Berlin and Brandenburg” will continue throughout 2025 and 2026. This marks the fifth round of the series, bringing together experts and practitioners to discuss the future of Open Science in the Berlin-Brandenburg region. An overview of all events and participating organizations can be found on the official event website.

Panel Discussion to Kick Off the International Open Access Week 2025

To support repository managers and institutional decision-makers, we are pleased to present our second guide from the BMFTR-funded (Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space) project “Professionalisierung der Open-Access-Repositorien-Infrastruktur in Deutschland (Pro OAR DE)”: “Forschungsinformationssysteme (CRIS): Handlungsfeld für institutionelle Open-Access-Repositorien” (German only.)  Matthias, L., Pampel, H., Khamis, C. O.,

Guide Published: Interplay of Institutional Repositories and CRIS

We are excited to share our first guide from the BMFTR-funded (Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space) project “Professionalisierung der Open-Access-Repositorien-Infrastruktur in Deutschland (Pro OAR DE)”: “Preprints: Handlungsfeld für institutionelle Open-Access-Repositorien” (German only.)  Matthias, L., Pampel, H., Khamis, C. O., Rothfritz, L., &amp;

Scholarly blogs have established themselves as important platforms for making research findings and discourse accessible both within scientific communities and to the general public. Considering the changing social media landscape, the role of non-commercial infrastructures such as blogs or the Fediverse is becoming increasingly important.

Libraries as operating and preserving institutions for scholarly blogs: Report on a Hands-on Lab at the 113th Bibliocon

In my PhD research, I investigate how metadata for research data are generated and maintained. I have started by analyzing how metadata records of the DOI registration agency DataCite change over time (Strecker 2024a, 2024b). Recently, I was awarded a grant by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) - through the BUA Fellowship Program of the Objective 3 - Advancing Research Quality and Value.

BUA fellowship: Metadata flows in the context of research data

Am 04.04.2025 veranstaltete das von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) geförderte Projekt OA Datenpraxis ein Webinar zum Thema “Offene Metadaten für Hochschulrankings am Beispiel des Leiden Ranking”. Für das Webinar konnten Nees Jan von Eck (CWTS Leiden) und Anja Oberländer (Universität Konstanz) als Vortragende gewonnen werden.

Rückblick: OA Datenpraxis Webinar zu offenen Metadaten für Hochschulrankings am Beispiel des Leiden Ranking

We are excited to announce the launch of our new project, “Data Practices for Shaping Open Access Transformation - Analysis, Recommendation, Training &amp;