pedocs

Cooperation with pedocs

pedocs is a repository that has been set up and is maintained by the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education. It collects educational science and subject‑didactic literature and makes it openly available to the public in accordance with the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The advantages of Open Access in science are evident: scientific insights are more readily accessible, they can be processed more easily and they reach a broader scope. To acquire scholarly literature, pedocs collaborates with renowned publishing houses and established editorial boards across different cooperation models. In addition to its long-standing focus on Green Open Access, pedocs also supports Gold / Diamond Open Access through the immediate Open Access publication of first editions. You are welcome to contact us directly.

Content acquisition via cooperations

As a scholarly repository, pedocs pursues a "green way" in Open Access regarding the cooperation with publishers and editors, i.e. a secondary publication or retrospective use of texts that are co-equally published in print, either simultaneously or ahead in time. pedocs deliberately and predominantly acquires full texts in their publishing house layout. Hence, the scholarly community is offered proven quality content that can be cited unanimously. More than 45 constant partners have been acquired since 2008. As a rule, the cooperating publishers demonstrate a strong profile focusing on educational science and subject didactics. You can find an overview of the cooperating partners here. The cooperations are subject to agreements negotiated in written form, based on a sample contract that is individually adapted.

Why pedocs is an appealing partner

The document server pedocs offers an additional distribution channel for educational scientific and subject‑didactic literature. For journals and other periodicals in particular, online accessibility increases visibility thus enabling a significant increase in citation ratios. Key advantages include:

• Increased visibility and discoverability via the German Education Index, i.e. the most comprehensive German language bibliographic database in the field of educational science, and search engines such as Google Scholar.
• Full protection of copyright at all times.
• pedocs collaborates with the German National Library (DNB) and provides a persistent URN, thus assuring that the full texts will be electronically available for a long time, as well as assuring their long-term archiving. Full texts will regularly be re-converted into formats corresponding to contemporary standards; thus, the documents will be accessible via pedocs even in the future.
• Assignment of persistent identifiers (URN and DOI) at no cost.

Publishing houses and other data providers also perceive pedocs as a marketing instrument which, tailored to their individual programmes, has a positive impact on their actual core business of distributing and selling books. To make cooperation attractive for both parties, pedocs offers a variety of cooperation models and additional services, including partner marketing. Regular meetings with cooperation partners provide an opportunity to exchange experiences on current practices in handling Open Access to scientific research results, as required by research and funding institutions.

Models of cooperation

As a rule, we index and provide access to full text monographs as well as other types of literature, such as contributions to collective works and journal articles (but no individual book chapters); publishing houses and other partners are thus offered an additional distribution channel for their publications. To render the full texts searchable and prepare them for long term archiving, we require unprotected pdf files without any protective measures including pertinent metadata as far as they exist.

The models of cooperation that have emerged clearly focus on the endeavor to deliver high quality content to the scholarly community, while on the other hand supporting the publishing houses and their business in a targeted way by fulfilling specific marketing functions.

The "Open Access Direct" model: This model describes a simultaneous launch of print and open access publications. The simultaneous publication may apply to individual contributions from an edited volume or a journal, or—as primarily intended in this model—to complete monographs and journal issues. This also includes publications financed, for example, through crowdfunding activities. Alongside the “Delayed Access” model, this model has become one of the most frequently used cooperation models.

The "Delayed Access" model: "Delayed Access" allows for a secondary publication on pedocs following a period of embargo. The duration of this period is determined by the publishing houses and data providers. "Delayed Access" is often opted for by publishing houses if the costs of a title have been redeemed and the publisher, too, believes an open access provision is desirable. Authors may also exercise their legal right to publish after a 12‑month embargo.

The "Out of print" model: As a specific type of "Delayed Access", publications can be made accessible that are out of print. In most cases, this model is applied to rendering older monographs or complete stocks of journals openly accessible.

The "Retro-digitisation" model: Since older titles are in many cases out of print or not yet electronically available, pedocs advises publishers and institutions on the digitization of books and journal volumes. The aim is to publish these volumes on pedocs and thereby expand the overall collection.

The "Selective Access" model: "Selective Access" refers to making a title accessible by excerpts, i.e. enabling access to contributions from collective works or journal articles. Such a model is associated with a strong teaser effect for the promotion of the complete work. Hence, numerous publishing houses decide to make one or several contributions from a newly issued collective work openly accessible on pedocs simultaneously to the printed edition, or even ahead in time. However, this model can also serve to present older collective works or journals to the scholarly community. As a special "add-on", pedocs offers an "ordering option" inviting the user of a contribution from a collective work to placing an online order for the full work via buchhandel.de.

Further services offered by pedocs: Partner marketing

While the individual cooperation models already offer different marketing options for promoting works and publishing houses already, the hosting institution, the DIPF –  as part of the scientific community and as a provider of central research information infrastructures such as the Fachportal Pädagogik and the Research Data Centre for Education – can provide many further services for supporting the publishing houses and other partners in fulfilling their core enterprises. pedocs offers the following services to this end:

• Standardized flyleaf/title page for all full texts, indicating the source of the original publication by integrating the publishing house/data provider hallmark;
• Promoting the cooperating partner's contents on further portals serviced by the DIPF;
• monthly download statistics for all of the titles delivered by the publishing house/data provider;
• standardized linkage of each title with www.buchhandel.de;
• Promoting the publishing house/cooperating partner on the pedocs cooperation site;
• Organization of regular cooperating partner meetings.

Content scope and collaboration with further sociological repositories

The scope of pedocs addresses general educational science as well as general school education, special needs education, vocational education and training, media education, educational psychology and even educational policy, educational history as well as subject didactics. Owing to usability reasons and the necessary profile demanded by certification procedures, pedocs does not publish any titles that clearly belong to the fields of social science/sociology, psychology or economic science. However, pedocs maintains regular contact with the subject‑specific repositories of these disciplines (SSOAR, PsyDok and EconStor) and, with the consent of the publishers, forwards relevant content and contacts to them.

last update: 2026-03-18