Digital publishing in the faculties of arts and humanities: prospects, chances, and risks

As access to the internet has become absolutely common and data throughput has increased enormously by new transmission techniques, online accessible texts have more and more become an alternative to scientific publishing in books, anthologies, and journals. Texts that are openly accessible in online journals, forums for discussions, on university servers or on the personal homepage of a scientist are immediately available to everybody. Publishers and libraries that traditionally have played the central part in organizing the communication of the scientific community are principally open to this change––however, to a very differing extent; they supply their specific competences to related processes, whereas their influence on availability and usage of scientific texts decreases. However, it is uncertain in how far the community should leave the progress of change to the decentralized and rather uncoordinated developments of the internet and the initiative of a few ‘‘avant-gardists’’: in order to guarantee a successful scientific communication, the texts do not only have to be made accessible, they also have to be retrieved systematically––and for as long a time as possible. In view of the accumulating masses of data and information, a reliable, non-selective and transparent supply and storage of data is necessary. Moreover, free availability of neutral––especially not ideologically biased––research instruments are to be guaranteed. At the same time the desideratum for efficient procedures to assess––with respect to pure disciplinary measures––the relevance and validity of online accessible texts increases with their quantity. In the tradition of scientific publishing, a highly complex system of reputation ascription (e.g. peer reviewing) and reputation documentation (e.g. place of publication) has been developed. Nowadays not only is the text-based research of the academic recipients widely dependent on these means,