transfer Journal for Provenance Research and the History of Collections

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Christoph Zuschlag, since 8/2022
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 452888084

The aim of the project is to launch transfer, an open access online journal for provenance research and the history of collections. As a medium for scholarly publication transfer would meet the requirements and needs of the German and the international scholarly community, actively support research, and disseminate its results.Provenance research and the history of collections are two closely related and highly specialized sub-areas of the disciplines of art and cultural history. They have become increasingly important over the last 10 years in collecting institutions, in university teaching and research, and among the general public. A journal of its own would meet the demands of the emerging field of research while at the same time serving the already urgent needs of the research community. By establishing a new focus on provenance research, the University of Bonn’s Institute of Art History has finally created a prerequisite for realizing this project and ensuring its long-term and sustainable success. Our planned journal transfer provides the scholarly community with a communication medium that grants flexibility both in the size of individual contributions and in the timeliness of their publication. And it does so while satisfying scholarly standards and current technical requirements. We consider an open access online journal as the optimal way to realize this set of aims, since it offers worldwide visibility, full-text indexing, and digital interlinking. Heidelberg University Library would provide the technical platform for transfer by hosting the software Open Journal Systems (OJS) in its current version 3.1. The hosting model chosen in arthistoricum.net ensures both sustainability and citability: it does so by assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and Uniform Resource Names (URNs) and by having the contributions included in online literature research databases.The scope of the journal has deliberately been defined in a wide and interdisciplinary manner in order to promote synergy effects among the different disciplines. Submissions may include longer or shorter essays, reports or miscellaneous pieces and may be submitted in German or English. The journal will be published online in one annual issue with an early-view option for each of its articles; as an open access journal, all of these articles will be freely accessible. The main goals of transfer are as follows: the prompt publication of current research results while maintaining scholarly standards, the establishment of the periodical as a communication medium for the research community, the promotion of interdisciplinary exchange, the linking of topics of art and cultural history with those of morality and ethics, and the transparency of research for the general public.

• DFG Programme: Science Communication, Research Data, eResearch (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Dr. Ulrike Saß, until 8/2022