DFG project launched at Freie Universität Berlin and University of Cologne - joint funding as part of KOALA Social Sciences starting in 2023

The Open Gender Journal is an interdisciplinary publication venue for intersectional gender research. With its Open Access model, the journal implements the demand for free and open access to scientific publications. The DFG project "Open Gender Journal - Expansionshilfe", (Expansion Assistance) launched in summer 2022, is currently working on making the Open Gender Journal sustainable in the long term and further establishing it as an attractive, interdisciplinary journal for intersectional gender research. The Open Gender Journal has already reached an important milestone: starting in 2023, the journal will receive funding within the framework of "KOALA Sozialwissenschaften 2023" (KOALA Social Sciences 2023. The KOALA project of the German National Library of Science and Technology has set up a collaborative funding scheme in which 70 institutions are participating. In this way, it enables journals to adopt an open access model that is also free of charge for authors.

The DFG project aims to initiate concrete processes for the further development of the journal and, if possible, to prepare it in such a way that other journals can also use it. This concerns, among other things, the quality assurance of the journal, its governance and the Open Gender Collections. The project team is also developing workflows for monitoring journal activities and will address the question of how research data can be referenced in articles in line with FAIR principles. Finally, another focus is public relations. In the coming year, among other things, a newsletter will provide regular information about current new publications and calls of the Open Gender Journal.

As a publisher-independent journal, the Open Gender Journal is published jointly by the Fachgesellschaft Geschlechterstudien, the Margherita von Brentano Center for Gender Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, the central academic institution GeStiK (Gender Studies in Cologne) at the University of Cologne, the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Gender Research Department at the University of Vienna.

The DFG project "Open Gender Journal - Expansionshilfe" is funded within the DFG funding program „Infrastrukturen für wissenschaftliches Publizieren“ (Infrastructures for Scientific Publishing) in the priority area "Digitales Publizieren" (Digital Publishing). The cooperation project between the University of Cologne and the Freie Universität Berlin is led by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Susanne Völker (University of Cologne) and Prof. Dr. Martin Lücke (FU Berlin). As research assistants, Sabrina Schotten (FU) and Sara Tewelde-Negassi (UzK) are responsible for the implementation of the project goals, supported by Kai Münch (FU) and Jule Schabernack (UzK). Dr. Kathrin Ganz (editor-in-chief) and Dr. Anita Runge are involved in the project from the editorial side of the Open Gender Journal.