Access Denied

In January 2025, we were notified that Verfassungsblog had been removed from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). For us, this not only came as a surprise but created severe uncertainties on our end – after all, a substantial part of our funding depends on us being able to verify that we are a legitimate Diamond OA publication upholding high academic standards.

The removal notification left us puzzled and we did not find the reasoning to be convincing, not least because it appeared to fundamentally question Verfassungsblog’s scholarlyness because of its chosen format, i.e. brief analyses, expeditious processes, and referencing via hyperlinks. We therefore decided to appeal the decision but that appeal was denied at the end of May 2025. We are worried about what this might mean for our funding and, ultimately, for our ability to continue our work. At the same time, we remain firm in our position that Verfassungsblog is in fact an academic publication that should have its place not only in the community of legal academia and political science but also in the OA community.

We know that we need to actively communicate this decision to our community and partners. We think that our best course of action now is to not only share both our and DOAJ’s reasoning in this matter but to take this as an opportunity and initiate a debate about standards, formats, and diversity of the Diamond OA publishing community. In our exchange with DOAJ, we suggested for Verfassungsblog and DOAJ to have that discussion together and we are extremely grateful that they immediately took us up on that. As a first step, we are publishing our appeal as well as DOAJ’s appeals decision so that our community and partners are able to follow the respective reasonings. We will now be working on kicking off that debate together with DOAJ and wish to invite all our partners and members of our community to take part in that discussion, candidly and critically.

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Dear DOAJ Appeals Committee,

Verfassungsblog (ISSN: 2366-7044) is appealing its removal from the DOAJ.

Your initial removal notification of 27 January 2025 as well as the subsequent email exchange suggest that your decision was based on four points: 1. insufficient review, 2. lack of references, 3. communication on our website regarding publication fees, and 4. non-classification as a research journal. We would like to add some general remarks regarding 5. the process of our removal that we believe to be of importance beyond our individual case.

1. Review

In the email of 3 February, you write that Verfassungsblog “relies solely on editorial review. To ensure academic rigour, at least two external peer reviews should be conducted”. Regarding the first point, this is not correct. As elaborated in the initial application process, Verfassungsblog conducts an editorial review that is complemented by an external review if required. The requirement of conducting an external review without exception does not reflect the established and accepted practice of legal academia in Germany. Verfassungsblog is a community-driven publication and our editorial staff is committed to ensuring academic rigour and quality of our content. Law scholars writing for Verfassungsblog frequently stress that its review is far more rigorous than what is common for German law journals. If two external peer reviews is the standard requested by the DOAJ, German law journals are in effect almost entirely excluded from the DOAJ. It is not only generally acknowledged that scholarly publications in German legal scholarship deviate from international review standards¹⁾ but legal scholars even actively resist any changes and argue against establishing such rigorous review practices²⁾.

We absolutely agree that this standard is deplorable which is why we chose to exceed it within the bounds of our publication profile. That being said, we do acknowledge that the high quality of our review process is poorly communicated on our website which can be easily fixed, though.

2. Referencing

In your email of 18 February you highlight two publications that “were found to lack proper references or had none at all, such as https://verfassungsblog.de/blinded-by-legality/ and https://verfassungsblog.de/das-dunkelfeld-aufhellen/. It is expected that academic work contains full and complete reference lists”.

We absolutely agree that academic work requires appropriate referencing. The publications that you name as examples do in fact contain references in the form of hyperlinks (11 and 36 respectively, each on less than 5 pages). It is a deliberate decision that Verfassungsblog encourages authors to make use of hyperlinks instead of footnotes due to its specific format that is aimed at accessibility through, inter alia, readability in language and form. We are not aware of academic journal publications specifically requiring a reference list and personally, I do not know of any (law) journal publication where separate reference lists are included. If this is, in fact, what you had in mind and if this is an established standard for inclusion in the DOAJ, we would appreciate to have this explicitly confirmed in order to assess how we could approach that.

3. Communication on the website regarding publication fees

We acknowledge that the information on publication fees can no longer be found on the site provided when we first made our application to the DOAJ. We have since made various changes on our website in general and failed to update our information in the DOAJ which we regret. This particular information can now be found on our website “Funding & Membership”. We would like to add that we are in the process of critically assessing the entire presentation of our work and publication, including against the background of the concerns raised by the DOAJ. We maintain that our removal is not justified in substance but we understand that this may not be immediately clear to someone not familiar with Verfassungsblog.

4. Classification as a research journal

During the email exchange you write that Verfassungsblog is not “classified as a research journal” and that a “significant portion of your journal’s content consists of daily blog posts. While these contributions foster discussion, they follow a flexible and informal format that differs from traditional academic papers and is therefore not considered scholarly work”.

Obviously, this is absolutely fundamental and if this is, in fact, the DOAJ’s position I am honestly wondering why Verfassungsblog’s application was accepted in the first place. Publishing scholarly work in the form of blog posts has always been Verfassungsblog’s chosen and established practice, nothing has changed in that respect since we first applied to the DOAJ. We appreciate that the DOAJ itself is constantly evaluating their standards and adjusts them when necessary and I believe that this is actually one of the reasons why the DOAJ is highly regarded and trusted within the OA community. So if your classification of Verfassungsblog is based on changed criteria on DOAJ’s end, we would be grateful to have this confirmed.

Apart from that, I am not sure if I fully understand the underlying assumptions of what constitutes scholarly work. How is flexibility in and of itself not considered scholarly? How do you define informal? Our review process is formalised, our authors are required to provide references for their claims, albeit in a form other than end notes or footnotes. Verfassungblog’s publications provide PIDs, metadata and longterm-archiving. I fail to understand what constitutes that formality that appears to be the basis of your suggested classification criteria. Since there is mention of “traditional academic papers” I am – with all due respect – wondering whether the key argument here goes along the line of “it doesn’t look like what scholarly work usually looks like so it cannot possibly be scholarly work”. If this is the underlying reasoning, we not only disagree with it but would be rather surprised. Verfassungsblog has always perceived the DOAJ as an institution within the OA community that aims to foster bibliodiversity and welcomes new and innovative publication formats. This request is after all also formulated more broadly in the transformation of the academic publishing system, e.g. by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment or in the EU Council conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing (para. 4). Learning that the DOAJ follows a more strict and “traditional” approach would certainly be discouraging for the academic publishing community as a whole.

To be clear: We do not deny that Verfassungsblog’s publications differ from traditional journal publications. We believe that this is a good thing and our authors, i.e. law scholars, agree with us on that. The blog format has always defined Verfassungsblog. Its academic merit is accepted within the legal academy, not only internationally but even in the notoriously conservative academic law community of Germany. Our publications are cited in traditional scholarly publications³⁾ as well as decisions by the highest courts⁴⁾ that only reference legal arguments of acknowledged sources publishing content of scholarly merit. We are proud that Verfassungsblog has been able to establish itself as a renowned publication within the landscape of legal publishing in Germany and beyond. We furthermore consider this position as an opportunity to advocate for open publication formats in a discipline that is known to be rather reluctant to move in that direction. Although it may be of little relevance to your deliberation on this appeal, the truth is that not being considered an Open Access scholarly publication fundamentally questions how Verfassungsblog understands itself and how the community of law scholars understands what we can offer them.

5. (Due) Process

While not strictly part of Verfassungsblog’s appeal, we want to address some points in relation to our removal from the DOAJ and the subsequent email exchange. Based on our experience, we would like to suggest that you evaluate this process for reasons that we believe are also of significance to other publications, particularly when they are community-led and Diamond OA.

We first want to make clear that we are aware the DOAJ is an organisation relying on community engagement and support that is to a large extent voluntary and that this structure sets limitations to what is feasible. This is even more the case when such an organisation is as successful in establishing itself as a trusted and relevant actor as the DOAJ since this tends to increase the demand and accordingly the workload even more. Regular review of the publications that are included in the DOAJ and removing them when necessary is obviously a prerequisite for maintaining this position. Accordingly, Verfassungsblog considered the acceptance of its initial application as an external confirmation of its quality. Beyond that, however, our inclusion was absolutely crucial in building a community of currently 58 university libraries and institutions that financially support our work and thus help finance our publications. Being listed in the DOAJ is often even mandatory in order to qualify for OA funding. Removal thus comes with potentially grave consequences that could put our work at risk in its entirety. As contracts with libraries are mostly concluded on an annual basis, there is a chance that we might loose a substantial part of our funding for next year.

We trust that the DOAJ is conscious of the weight that their decision carries and recognises that such decisions may occasionally warrant correction. We understand the possibility to appeal removal from the DOAJ as a testament to that effect. However, considering that removal can severely impact the funding model of a given publication we believe it would be appropriate to notify publications before they are being removed and give them the opportunity to address your concerns and resolve possible misunderstandings. This could help avoid potentially severe damage for publications that may be difficult to undo afterwards.

Apart from that, the email exchange following the notification of removal has created some uncertainties on our end. First of all, we wish to thank the reviewer for their effort to elaborate on the grounds for our removal. The latest email, however, contained an additional point that had not been raised before. We are now wondering if we have addressed all relevant concerns or if the decision about our appeal may be based on yet other reasons. We therefore feel not entirely confident in our position to “make our case” and appeal effectively. It would be immensely helpful to have more clarity about the decision-making process and the grounds that form part of the appeals review.

Regardless of the outcome of this appeal, we would like to express our sincere appreciation for the DOAJ’s work. Our lengthy elaborations are meant to emphasise how highly we esteem its value and importance.

Thank you for considering our appeal and please do not hesitate to reach out if anything else needs clarification.

We look forward to hearing from you and are sending our best regards,
Evin Dalkilic on behalf of the Verfassungsblog team

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DOAJ’s Response

Dear Evin Dalkilic,

Thank you for your appeal and for the efforts you have made to address the concerns raised, particularly in regard to the publication fee transparency.

The Appeals Committee has carefully reviewed your case. We acknowledge that the initial acceptance of your publication has caused confusion, and we sincerely apologize for not conducting a more thorough review at that earlier stage. We would also like to emphasize that, as part of DOAJ’s routine re-evaluation process, it is possible that additional issues may be found during the new assessment; this is what happened in your case.

We understand the potential implications this decision may have for your publication, and please be assured that the appeals committee has carefully reviewed your case and deliberated extensively before reaching a conclusion.

Upon reconsideration, the committee has found that the original reasons for the decision remain valid. Specifically, the publication does not consistently perform external peer review and does not fully align with our current criteria for scholarly journals. This decision is based on your publication not meeting the scope of our index.

As previously communicated, we are currently reviewing our policies to determine whether editorial review may be acceptable for certain types of law journals.

We are also reviewing our criteria to consider whether we can be more inclusive of diverse scholarly formats in the future. While Verfassungsblog does not meet our current standards, we respect the value of the work it publishes.

With regard to referencing practices, we understand that it is common in law journals to integrate citations in the footnote rather than provide a separate reference list. However, the use of in-text hyperlinks as the primary referencing method does not appear to be a widely adopted format within traditional legal journals.

In light of the above, the appeals committee has decided to uphold the original decision.

We appreciate your understanding and your ongoing commitment to maintaining high academic standards.

Best regards,
On behalf of the DOAJ Appeals Committee