Pioneering Open Access Legal Scholarship Since 2000

The German Law Journal has been a pioneer in developing free on-line publishing of legal research. It has proudly and decisively been an open access forum since its launch in 2000.  Moreover, the GLJ is an example of the fact that an open access journal can maintain the highest standards of scholarly quality.  Ourcommitment to open access has given our authors a remarkable readership that is impressive both numbers and geographic scope. It has also facilitated a scholarly discourse among our authors and readers that helps to realize the very best vision of academic research.  From the beginning, the Journal understood these advantages – and the ways that open access fulfills the scholarly mandate for transparency and collaboration.

The world is catching up with the German Law Journal. Now, research across the disciplines and around the world is following our lead. The paramount examples include, among others, the visionary initiative of the Germany’s Max Planck Society and its 2003 “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”; an open-access manifesto by the provosts of a dozen of America’s leading research universities (2012); the policy adopted by the Faculty Senate of the University of California and the European University Association (nearly 1000 institutional members in 46 countries) in 2013; and last, but not least, the wide-ranging policy of the European Union endorsing open access objectives through its various research funding programs and the recent Open Science Initiative.

Our Open Access Principles

• Our content is and always will be free to access online
• We aim to reinforce transparency and collaboration within the academic community
• Free on-line access to our content promotes dissemination of legal research and scholarship and removes barriers to advanced knowledge-access world-wide