Editorial #48: Transforming the ‘Völkerrechtsblog’ into an Open Science Hub

We are overly excited to share with you the kick-off of the new DFG-funded ‘Infrastructures for Scientific Publishing’ programme on the Völkerrechtsblog! Through this funding line, which was awarded to our two principal cooperation partners, the chairs of Prof. Dr. Michael Riegner (Erfurt University) and Prof. Dr. Pierre Thielbörger (Ruhr-University Bochum), the Völkerrechtsblog is afforded with invaluable resources that will enable it to transform into a sustainable open science hub. The project stands on two legs: The first is the establishment of cooperations between the blog and libraries as well as other academic institutions, which will enable it to operate on the grounds of more sustainable funding as an open network of scientific communication, and second the expansion of our innovative use of multimedia in the knowledge production and dissemination that takes place through the blog and the use of technological developments for the enhancement of the accessibility of the blog’s content for persons with disabilities. To this end, two new positions – that of a ‘Communication Officer’ and that of an ‘Innovation Officer’ – are introduced into the existing structure of our blog’s editorial team and will be held by us.

This project responds to a pressing structural need. The legal community still lacks and thus requires permanent, equitable, and open publication structures. Building on more than ten years of experience in open access publication Völkerrechtsblog will become a model project that shows what academic communication could and should look like in the 21st century: transparent, accessible, collectively organized and supported and epistemically just.

Such a transition surely requires several organizational changes. First and foremost, however, it must start from a deep understanding of how structurally exclusive legal academia in general and the invisible college in international law in particular continue to be. Organizational changes can only take effect, if the underlying structural mechanisms of exclusion and the privileges that have shaped access to and participation in legal scholarship to date are understood, acknowledged and redressed. The question of barrier-free access to knowledge therefore always requires a reflexive approach towards privileges and, ultimately, the will of gatekeepers to replace existing privileges with inclusivity, openness and equity as academic ideals.

In the following, we outline how various structural epistemic inequalities – such as in access to education, financial resources, or institutional infrastructures – perpetuate the exclusivity of who has access to legal knowledge and, thus, of who can contribute to shaping the discourse. We then explain how the Völkerrechtsblog seeks to respond to these challenges and how the new DFG-funded project will further develop this vision.

Access to Knowledge and Epistemic Inequality in Legal Scholarship

Access to knowledge is an epistemic precondition for academic participation. As Miranda Fricker has argued, epistemic injustice arises where unequal social power distorts collective interpretive resources: privileged groups have fitting concepts and frameworks to make sense of their experiences, while marginalized groups are left with inadequate or underdeveloped means of understanding and articulating theirs. Such disparities with a view to access and resources – epistemic inequality – set the stage for these forms of epistemic injustice. Thus, without access, meaningful engagement in academic discussion and knowledge production is impossible. In the context of legal academia, epistemic inequality begins with inequality in the access to legal education. As has been noted, the mere admission of students into prestigious universities often depends on whether the attendance of a particular law school constitutes a family legacy, while tuition fees perpetuate the exclusionary effects of admission policies more generally.

Even where law schools are primarily part of public universities, such as in Germany, commercial and privately paid preparatory repetition courses offering intensive exam-focused training alongside the university curriculum are still considered an almost mandatory prerequisite for success in the final exams at German law schools and for the German bar. Dissatisfaction over the financial burden of for exam preparation is reflected in a recent study on the reform of legal education, according to which more than 83% of students are in favor of strengthening academic repetition courses that are accessible to all.

Already at this early stage of an academic life, access to knowledge is selective, with social status, financial capacity and other privileges acting as filters. Accessibility is, thus, by far not a matter of ‘merit’ – with meritocracy not even being a reliable selection criterion, since what appears as ‘merit-based achievement’ often reflects accumulated advantages resulting from unequal access to education, resources and elite training rather than genuine individual capability.

Those who manage to overcome this first barrier are then called upon to dismantle the paywalls and institutional barriers shielding legal knowledge that is reserved for those who can access up-to-date databases. While other disciplines already have substantial open access infrastructures set up, legal scholarship remains largely stuck in a profit-driven publication system dominated by publishing houses. In Germany, the blogosphere contributes to the dismantling of these paywalls and the Völkerrechtsblog takes pride in having standing cooperations with three publishers (OUP, CUP and Routledge) temporarily granting open access to parts of those books, which we feature in our book review symposia. However, many barriers to access remain, and the indirect push of legal academia to the publication of one’s work through profit-driven publishing houses only exacerbates these barriers.

For example, many law schools in Germany require PhD candidates to publish their theses within one year from their thesis defense. Failure to comply with this requirement means that the researcher loses ‘the rights acquired through the thesis defense’, that is their doctorate degree (see e.g. here, para 17 (I); here, para 19(1); and here). At a time when grants for open access publications are scarce and oftentimes need to be combined in order to allow the author to cover all of the expenses needed for the open access publication of their work, and as these grants need to be requested way before the thesis defense, so as to effectively enable the academic to promptly publish their monography in an open access platform, such regulations evince the indifference of the system in the need to close the accessibility gap. Of course, to this general rule exceptions can be traced, and various institutions in Germany (see e.g. here and here) have taken significant steps towards assisting their doctoral candidates in the open access publication of their theses and journal articles, signing open access agreements with prominent publishers to that end. But this once again perpetuates inequalities in legal academia, as usually such open access agreements are reserved for ‘prestigious’ universities, which can ensure such preferential treatment for the scholars working within them. Conversely, those who do not find themselves in equally renowned institutions will need to face the traditional struggles of having to obtain resources to ensure the open access publication of their work in addition to the work that is inherent in preparing this publication. Meanwhile, for those academics already enjoying the benefits of their institutions’ open access arrangements, it might soon become difficult to empathize with less privileged colleagues, to express solidarity with them and to continue working towards further progressing open access. This bears the risk of a fragmented legal academia, the participants of which publish in different speeds and address audiences of different sizes. Most of all, this bears the risk of a continuingly exclusionary system, in which primarily academics working in privileged institutions can render their findings broadly accessible more easily.

Traditional academia’s blindness to inequalities became particularly apparent during the Coronavirus pandemic. Closed libraries and a lack of workspaces disadvantaged those who had limited private resources to access scholarship and to study or research in the proper conditions. When libraries reopened, access remained de facto unavailable to people with medical conditions or relatives of high-risk groups. Academic productivity became manifestly dependent on financial resources and physical and physiological conditions.

These temporary restrictions were merely a symptom of the structural barriers to accessing knowledge that exist well beyond times of crisis. The pandemic only revealed what otherwise remains hidden in the rush of meritocracy, i.e. the academic system’s general indifference to such exclusions. Indeed, disabled scholars had way before the pandemic warned about the epistemic, testimonial and hermeneutic injustice that is effected through the inaccessibility of scholarly sources and through the systematic devaluation and exclusion of their knowledge, which limits their epistemic and moral agency.

In addition to economic and physical barriers to access to knowledge and knowledge production, the caring responsibilities, such as those linked to parenthood (and in fact primarily linked to motherhood), have significantly harshened academics’ career development. These parameters essentially paint the picture of who is traditionally deemed to be a legal academic, or whom the existing academic legal system has primarily aimed to protect and favor: an able-bodied, wealthy white man, who has no or limited child or other caring responsibilities and has the socioeconomic and time-related capacities to learn and research within an exclusionary environment.

Indeed, all of the above parameters harshening one’s academic career developments are further reinforced by the contemporary antagonistic practices in the neoliberalized ‘academic market’, which moves ever more accelerated and primarily rewards academics, who can demonstrate a long publication portfolio. Indeed, the broader academic impact of one’s publications and their meaningful contribution to existing knowledge and to science as a continuous and collaborative process are often overshadowed by numbers, even if these numbers are formed by overlapping publications that in fact contribute to the fragmentation of knowledge and even to the overburdening of existing scholarship on a topic, which then requires considerable resources by subsequent researchers wishing to explore it. As has been argued previously on Völkerrechtsblog, the very personalization of literary work and its attribution to a specific author is itself a modern and bourgeois invention, while a return to author-lessness would make an interesting place.

This neoliberalized academic market is further reinforced by the persisting focus on metrics, particularly on the views – or even that citations – that academic publications receive. Admittedly, even if our blog has been largely committed to slow and quality-centered blogging, it has itself fallen into the trap of numbers-influenced rewards, publishing a list of its most-read articles on an annual basis (for the most recent one, see here). Such metrics do not actually reflect the quality or true impact of a publication (consider for instance the citation metrics of a largely criticized text) – Which is why the blog is currently reworking this practice. In other words, this dynamic can be largely misleading, all while it deepens existing epistemic inequalities and allows the scientific system to be dominated by economic factors rather than its inherent values.

Ultimately, recent developments have brought (back) to the forefront additional exclusionary parameters in academia. Indeed, attacks on academic freedom have multiplied, targeting specifically those who research or curate academic events on ‘sensitive’ or ‘uncomfortable’ topics, i.e. topics that explore critically the majority’s stance towards a social or political issue. In this environment, the ones who dare to research critically (the Völkerrechtsblog included) may be targeted with attempts of interference with their academic freedom or may even see their employment ended and their academic career adversely impacted. Such classifications of certain research areas as increasingly subordinate to security concerns hinder the free production and exchange of knowledge.

All of the above synthesize an exclusionary system, in which access, participation and visibility are unevenly distributed. Considering the extensive literature on the matter, the gatekeepers of knowledge production and dissemination have no excuses for contributing thereto. Instead, they shall understand and acknowledge these underlying dynamics and ensure through self-observation and frequent re-evaluation that their work counters epistemic inequality and promotes epistemic justice instead.

The Völkerrechtsblog believes in open knowledge, and has worked towards more epistemic pluralism and more inclusivity, as well as at breaking down hierarchies of knowledge in international law and legal thought since its outset. Indeed, through various creative projects it has purported to inter alia highlight the significance of opening access and closing knowledge gaps, the importance of providing a forum for critical and reflective discourse on pressing controversial debates, the value of opening up and diversifying the discourse in international legal scholarship, and the need to bridge epistemic divides in the research on cultural heritage. Two of the blog’s Editors-in-Chief were also involved in the editing of an open access textbook on international law, which provides a comprehensive yet critical introduction to the diverse field of public international law. Yet, the creativity within our ever-growing editorial team is far from depleted and we are, thus, immensely excited that the new DFG-funded project will allow us to build on the blog’s prior work and materialize our vision of the Völkerrechtsblog as an Open Science Hub.

Visions of the Völkerrechtsblog as an Open Science Hub

The term ‘hub’ is used to denote a central part of a circular object, a centre/a focal point of an activity, or a central device that connects multiple computers on a single network. The choice of this term is not incidental. It resonates with how the blog has been envisaged by its members already and with how it will transform in the context of this DFG-funded project. The Völkerrechtsblog has built and continues to build a community around the study and development of international law and international legal thought – a community grounded in core values, such as inclusivity, openness, diversity across formats and participation as well as academic freedom. In this vein, the Völkerrechtsblog aims to serve as the hub that connects the international law community and remains devoted to the advancement of its core values. The Völkerrechtsblog community is synthesized by the blog’s editorial team, which accompanies authors throughout the editing and peer review process. The Völkerrechtsblog community is growing and will almost double with the soon to be effectuated intake of new team members.

It further encompasses the Scientific Advisory Board, which offers scientific advice to the editorial team and is in charge of the peer review procedure, as well as the blog’s partners and funders. The latter include the DFG, which has supported the blog by providing funding that has enabled us to materialize our projects; the Principal Cooperation Partners, with whom we collaborate for the realization of the transformation of the blog into an open science hub; the Specialized Information Service for International and Interdisciplinary Legal Research (intRecht), which ensures the long-term archiving of articles published on the blog; and the German Society of International Law, for the newsletter of which the blog provides information.

We are an open and inclusive community. In that spirit we have and will continue to invite guest for collaborative projects that align with the blog’s mission (for past projects see for example here, here, here or here). We also try to bring external institutions closer to this community, encouraging them to align with our open access values and ideas of diversification. This has resulted in publishers having accepted to open the accessibility of (parts of) the books, which we feature in symposia on the blog.

We envisage the Völkerrechtsblog community as a living, ever-growing and ever-evolving community, that is inclusive and diverse. In this vein, we have enlarged and largely diversified our core, i.e. our editorial team and our scientific advisory board, which has now welcomed more non-German and non-Germany based scholars. We further strive to achieve diversity in the formats that we publish. To this end, our publications include visuals, texts, audios and videos, thus resisting the ableism, which persists in international legal academia.

We are also a discursive community because we aim at bringing diverse voices into conversation with one another. These diverse voices include academics working on similar topics, but also us, the members of the Völkerrechtsblog community, its editors and/or its readers, who enter into discussions with fellow academics and practitioners in search of influence and/or of a better understanding of international law. In this community and its dialogues there is no strict access requirement; adherence to academic quality and good academic practice suffice for anyone to join.

Strengthening the Völkerrechtsblog as an Open Science Hub

In order to improve and strengthen the openness of this academic community, institutional support is needed. This will ensure that the Völkerrechtsblog, as an Open Science Hub, always has the means to hold its community together, to explore new ideas and projects and to continue enlarging its community and nurturing future generations of scholars with accessible, diverse and high-quality scholarship on international law and international legal thought.

Indeed, so far, the Völkerrechtsblog has been almost entirely implemented through voluntary work. Within the next three years, the new DFG-funded project will therefore help us make our open access commitment more sustainable and less self-exploitive. This will be pursued through the expansion of the Völkerrechtsblog’s collaboration with additional actors in science production and science communication, to secure the blog as a common asset of the scientific community in the long term.

At the same time, the new project will allow the blog to further diversify its multimedia publication formats and to ensure that it will be effectively accessible to colleagues and other persons with disabilities. Practicing self-critique, the blog will also seek ways to replace widely followed practices concerning the rewarding of authors based on the number of their article’s views and citations with alternative criteria for honoring outstanding publications, and will experiment with incorporating innovative forms of publications and reviews such as open peer review, already tested in other disciplines, into its workflow.

We hope that you will enjoy seeing these innovations on our blog over the next three years. We also hope you feel our commitment to holding and strengthening the bond of our Völkerrechtsblog community.

We look forward to enlarging, diversifying and strengthening the Völkerrechtsblog community and its activities with all of you soon! Stay tuned!