Heinz Pampel

Catharina Ochsner, Heinz Pampel

The long-term accessibility and reusability of scholarly knowledge is a central concern of Open Science. Research and infrastructure development in this area have so far focused predominantly on how traditional scientific outputs, such as journal articles, monographs, and conference proceedings, can be preserved and made openly available over time. Alternative forms of scholarly communication such as scholarly blogs, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention, even though they have become an established medium for disseminating research and for fostering dialogue within academia and with the wider public. The lack of preservation of scholarly blogs puts them at a risk of information loss, which poses the threat of leaving a gap in the scholarly record. Prior research has examined how blogs are integrated into information infrastructures and what requirements scholarly bloggers have for an information infrastructure that ensures long-term access to their blogs. What is needed now are recommendations for the implementation of these results into the library practice. Based on a convergent mixed-methods design that merges a quantitative analysis of 866 German scholarly blogs, a qualitative interview study with 13 scholarly bloggers, and an open, participatory review process with the scholarly blogging community, we propose a catalog of requirements for the integration of scholarly blogs into information infrastructures in order to ensure their long-term accessibility, reusability and citeability.

Dorothea Strecker, Heinz Pampel, Rouven Schabinger et al.

Currently, there is limited research investigating the phenomenon of research data repositories being shut down, and the impact this has on the long-term availability of data. This paper takes an infrastructure perspective on the preservation of research data by using a registry to identify 191 research data repositories that have been closed and presenting information on the shutdown process. The results show that 6.2 % of research data repositories indexed in the registry were shut down. The risks resulting in repository shutdown are varied. The median age of a repository when shutting down is 12 years. Strategies to prevent data loss at the infrastructure level are pursued to varying extent. 44 % of the repositories in the sample migrated data to another repository, and 12 % maintain limited access to their data collection. However, both strategies are not permanent solutions. Finally, the general lack of information on repository shutdown events as well as the effect on the findability of data and the permanence of the scholarly record are discussed.

Catharina Ochsner, Heinz Pampel

Scholarly blogs have become an important venue for scholarly communication, yet they remain insufficiently integrated into digital research and information infrastructures, which places their long-term preservation and citability at risk. This study investigates what challenges German scholarly bloggers perceive concerning blog preservation and what requirements they articulate for a sustainable information infrastructure. Drawing on Star and Ruhleder's (1996) dimensions of information infrastructure as a theoretical lens, we conducted and qualitatively analyzed 13 semi-structured interviews with scholarly bloggers. The analysis reveals three connected themes. First, bloggers perceive a structural deficit in institutional responsibility and support: the long-term preservation of blogs is not systematically assumed by libraries, universities, or platforms, while bloggers are not sufficiently supported by their affiliated institutions. Second, bloggers articulate heterogeneous requirements like persistent identifiers, structured metadata, technical interoperability, and organizational sustainability. Third, governance preferences are characterized by distrust toward commercial and public infrastructures, compounded by concerns about geopolitical dependencies on non-European platforms. These findings demonstrate that no single centralized infrastructure can adequately address the diverse and context-dependent needs of bloggers. We argue for a decentralized information infrastructure for scholarly blogs and offer concrete recommendations for information infrastructure facilities, platform providers, bloggers and research performing organizations.

Johannes Schneider, Heinz Pampel

As Open Access continues to gain importance in science policy, understanding the proportion of Open Access publications relative to the total research output of research-performing organizations, individual countries, or even globally has become increasingly relevant. In response, dashboards are being developed to capture and communicate progress in this area. To provide an overview of these dashboards and their characteristics, an extensive survey was conducted, resulting in the identification of nearly 60 dashboards. To support a detailed and structured description, a dedicated metadata schema was developed, and the identified dashboards were systematically indexed accordingly. To foster community engagement and ensure ongoing development, a participatory process was launched, allowing interested stakeholders to contribute to the dataset. The dataset is particularly relevant for researchers in Library and Information Science (LIS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), supporting both empirical analyses of Open Access and the methodological refinement of indicators and policy instruments in the context of Open Science.