Verfassungsblog for Libraries
Verfassungsblog publishes analyses by scholars on current topics in constitutional law and policy. Founded in 2009 as a “blog” by Max Steinbeis, about 3,000 experts from around the world have now published, discussed, and shared their research with their colleagues and the general public on Verfassungsblog. Each of the approximately 800 texts that Verfassungsblog publishes each year undergoes at least one internal review by the 4-member editorial team. If necessary, this is supplemented by an external review by one or more of the Associate Editors, who have particular expertise in individual areas of public and constitutional law. There are no access barriers: Texts are published Diamond OA – i.e., without fees to readers or scholars – under a CC-BY-SA license, although authors may also choose a more open or stricter license. The copyright of the contributions remains, of course, with the authors. Verfassungsblog’s publications also maintain a high standard of technical quality as they provide metadata, have DOIs and are archived. Verfassungsblog is a non-profit organization and transparent in its costs.
Facts & Figures
2.1 million visits have been counted to Verfassungsblog in 2023. Two thirds of readers access the blog from Germany and one third from abroad. Every year, Verfassungsblog records almost 3 million clicks, not counting interactions on social media.
3,000 authors have published on Verfassungsblog so far. These are academics – from students to doctoral students to professors – or practitioners from the judiciary, journalism or politics from all over the world.
9 editors oversee the submissions. They are lawyers with a university degree. The editors are employed for an unlimited period and are paid according to German public service pay scale TV L-13. The editorial work includes (i) the acquisition of contributions, (ii) the review of and response to solicited and unsolicited submissions, and (iii) the substantive and formal editing of contributions in one to three loops with the author. The editorial team is supported by 20 associate editors who have special expertise in individual areas of public and constitutional law and help ensure the academic quality of the publications.
800 articles are published every year on Verfassungsblog. The articles cover legislative proposals/amendments, court decisions, and debates in public law (especially constitutional law) and related disciplines. Verfassungsblog is not solely focused on German law, but also on the emerging common European constitutional space and beyond, which means that many contributions deal with detailed analyses of legal debates in France, Hungary, India or Kenya and include authors from all over the world.
Metadata, Discoverability, Open Source
The academic quality of Verfassungsblog’s publications is complemented by their technical quality. The texts of the Verfassungsblog have a DOI, are long-term archived in the subject-specific repository <intR>²Dok, and are provided with metadata in the common standard formats. Verfassungsblog and its publications are indexed in DOAJ. Verfassungsblog is continuously working to improve the technical quality of its publications. A survey conducted by Verfassungsblog among library staff as part of the BMBF-funded project “Open Access to Public Law” has provided valuable guidance on what is needed to achieve this (if you read German, you can learn more about the results here). As part of the project, it was also possible to develop plugins in collaboration with a software developer to further improve the technical quality of the publications. The metadata of our publications is now provided directly on our website in the standard formats MARC21 XML, MODS and Dublin Core and are exposed via OAI PMH 2.0. In addition, we are now able to assign GND keywords and our publications automatically receive Crossref DOIs, which resolve to the html versions of the articles on Verfassungsblog. Access to Crossref is made possible by a cooperation with Front Matter. The plugins were deliberately developed in such a way that they do not offer a solution just for Verfassungsblog. The plugins and their documentation are freely available on GitHub so that other academic blogs that use WordPress can also make use of them.
Where possible, Verfassungsblog uses open source solutions and is committed to collecting as few data as possible. For example, only Matomo is used for data analysis on the website, and the staff use Element for their internal communication.
Collective Funding
Verfassungsblog is transparent in its costs. As a non-profit limited liability company, it does not act commercially and its income is used to finance the blog operation. The labour costs for the employees of Verfassungsblog account for 85% of the budget. Verfassungsblog publishes open access and does not charge APCs in order to enable every author to publish without administrative effort and regardless of their financial means (or those of their academic institution) – the quality of a contribution alone determines whether it will be published.
Academic libraries’ funding ensures that Verfassungsblog can continue to make legal expertise available to researchers and the interested public beyond borders and without barriers. In that way, they support free, scholarly discourse and help researchers at their institutions gain visibility far beyond national borders. Institutions that contribute to the funding of Verfassungsblog also receive more visibility through the inclusion of the logo in the contributions of affiliated authors on the website. Supporting institutions receive Verfassungsblatt, which compiles and edits a month’s worth of published blog timeline texts into a PDF. In our Contributors Board Meeting, we inform the supporting institutions annually about what we have worked on in the previous year, about revenue and expenses, and what projects and publications we are planning. Exchanging with libraries helps us make our publications better while supporting institutions that contribute to funding Verfassungsblog can learn what we do with their funds.
Institutions that participate in the financing of Verfassungsblog are free to choose whether they pay the regular price (“full sponsoring”) or participate in the form of “sponsoring light I” or “sponsoring light II”. The latter is particularly suitable for small library budgets and for institutions without a law faculty; “full sponsorship” is particularly recommended for institutions with a law faculty. If you would like your institution to participate in funding Verfassungsblog or if you have any further questions, please contact us: oa@verfassungsblog.de.
| Amount per institution | |
|---|---|
| Full sponsoring | 3.000 € |
| Sponsoring light I | 2.000 € |
| Sponsoring light II | 1.500 € |
What makes Verfassungsblog
Discursive: The concise format and short publication times make it easier to initiate an academic discourse in which researchers can engage directly which each others’ arguments. This makes it possible to publish a number of articles with different, interrelated analyses on important topics within a few days – for example, on the German Federal Constitutional Court’s climate decision or a blanket visa ban for Russian citizens.
Clear: Articles are comprehensible and brief (usually around 2,000 words). The editorial team supports the authors in shortening their texts where necessary, making the arguments more precise and keeping the language simple. This enables readers with or without legal expertise to form an opinion on complex legal and legal policy debates such as “scholactivism” or Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine.
Quality control: As a discourse platform at the interface between academia and the political public, a high standard of the publications’ academic quality is crucial. The editorial team, themselves lawyers with at least one university degree and in some cases many years of experience in research and academia, ensure the quality of the contributions. If necessary, the editorial review is supplemented by one or more of the 20 associate editors, who have special expertise in individual areas of public law.
Independent: Verfassungsblog is not an annex of a university, research institution, or publisher. Verfassungsblog is a non-profit limited liability company where anyone can publish independently of affiliation, as long as academic quality is maintained. The funding of Verfassungsblog is based on various sources and can be traced in more detail here.
Expeditious: Due to their expertise, academics are able to quickly write well-founded analyses in a concise manner. The digital blog format and the permanently staffed editorial team make it possible to publish an article within a few days or even hours after an event. This was particularly evident at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when Verfassungsblog provided a platform for a large number of experts to document and legally assess the emergency measures taken in real time.