1. Open Access in the Humanities / By Gudrun Gersmann, History Department, University of Cologne
人文科學的開放近用 / 古德茹‧葛思盟, 科隆大學歷史系
Even though dealing with electronic publication is now a normal part of historians’ or literary scholars’
teaching and research work, the debate on Open Access in the humanities has not met with much
response so far. Unlike in the STM disciplines (science, technology and medicine), only a few
representatives of the humanities know in detail what Open Access means, let alone comply with the
call to archive texts on university servers or discipline-specific repositories. The current attitude
towards electronic forms of publication is still predominantly passive. There are a variety of reasons for
this. Often it is simply due to ignorance regarding the creation and stability of digital publications. It
seems that there is a widespread, albeit false, notion that electronic publishing requires such a high
degree of personal data-processing skills that a layperson is not capable of handling it. Another
presumption frequently cited is that electronic publications are per se transient and peripheral since
their long-term archiving can not be guaranteed. A connected argument often used is that large and
important expert contributions can naturally only be presented in books: ‘What are we supposed to do?
Read Hegel on our computer screens? That’s out of the question!’The fact that such statements
combine two completely unrelated issues, i.e. the question of the medium’s material form and the
question of the quality of scholarly texts, is treated as irrelevant. The final worry cited by scholars in
the humanities is that if they were to participate in the ‘fun culture’ of the Internet, they would run the
risk of losing respectability amongst their peers in the field.
即使電子出版物已是歷史學家或人文學者在教學和研究上正常的工作，然而, 開放近用在人文科
學領域裡, 還沒有得到太多的回應。不同於科技醫學學科，只有少數人文學者知道開放近用的細
節，更別提典藏論文於大學的伺服器或學科的典藏所。目前的態度對電子形式的出版品, 仍採取
被動的態度。有多種理由，通常只是漠視數位出版品的生產與保存；還有另一種普遍的錯誤概
念，以為電子出版需要高度的資料處理技術，外行人沒有辦法處理它；另一種經常提到的假
設，電子出版品本身祗是暫時的、過渡的，因為還無法被長期典藏。由此衍生出來的另一個論
點，很多書都提到它：'我們該怎麼做呢？在電腦螢幕上閱讀黑格爾的作品嗎？這是不可能
的！'事實上, 這樣的聲明包括兩個完全無關的議題，即媒體型式與學術文獻的品質。引用開放
近用文獻時, 人文學者還要擔心另一件事, 在參與網際網路的'有趣文化'之後，他們可能在同儕之
間失去尊嚴。
Notwithstanding all these still existing reservations, electronic publications have been able to gain a
foothold in the humanities over the past few years. This is true for example regarding the online review
journals created in the past 10 years, which have become a permanent fixture of expert discussions,
even though the ‘important monographs’ continue to be the main form of publication in history and
literary studies.
儘管這些議題存在多年，電子出版品已經站穩立場。過去十年來，即使'重要專著'仍是歷史及文
學研究的主流，線上評閱學刊已成為專家詩論的固定模式。
Besides the quality of their book reviews, online review instruments such as sehepunkte
(www.sehepunkte.de), which publishes approximately 100 reviews from the fields of history and art
history, or the review service of the Berlin mailing list H Soz u Kult (http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-
berlin.de/) have successfully established themselves in their field, a main reason being that they can
react faster to new publications than printed academic journals.
除書評的品質，「觀點」(http://www.sehepunkte.de/)之類的線上評閱工具，已經出版 100 多種歷
史與藝術史的評論; 位在柏林的電子報「史學家通訊與資訊服務」(http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-
berlin.de/), 在自己的領域裡已經站有一席之地，主要的原因是, 他們比印本學術期刊更快地回應
新出版品。

2. Without the support of large funding organisations such as the DFG (German Research Foundation) or
ministries, Open Access services in the humanities would be inconceivable. Thus, thanks to the North-
Rhine Westphalian initiative ‘Digital Peer Publishing’(55), 10 online journals in different fields of
expertise have been created since 2004, including zeitenblicke (www.zeitenblicke.de), a history and
art-history online journal with a wide readership addressing a specific research focus in every edition.
An important and forward-looking factor for the dissemination of the concept of Open Access is
doubtless the commitment of learned societies: unlike those societies that pay relatively noncommittal
lip-service to Open Access, the German Historians’ Association (Verband der Historiker und
Historikerinnen Deutschlands, VHD) set up a subcommittee for the area of ‘electronic publications and
specialist information’at the historians’ annual congress in Constance in September 2006. The
subcommittee has the mandate to develop strategies to strengthen integration of the new forms of
publication into their field of studies.
沒有德國研究基金會或部級大型機構的贊助，人文領域的開放近用服務是是不可能的。因此，
必須感謝北萊茵威斯特伐利亞提議的'數位同儕出版'(註 55)計畫，2004 年以來, 已出版不同領域
的 10 種線上學刊，zeitenblicke(http://www.zeitenblicke.de/)是其中一個學刊，歷史和藝術史的線
上學刊, 每一期都有具體的研究重點, 頗受讀者歡迎。學會的參與, 無疑地是散布開放近用觀念的
重要與前瞻性的因素之一：不同於僅止於口頭支持的學會，針對'電子出版品與專家資訊', 在
2006 年 9 月的大會上, 德國歷史學家協會(Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands,
VHD) 成立次委員會。其任務是制定策略，將新形式的出版品納入其研究領域。
註 55: Digital Peer Publishing NRW - eJournals, http://www.dipp.nrw.de/journals/
This is a central concern, particularly with regard to the next generation of academics, who will
definitely benefit from the Internet’s multiplying effect, since every manuscript reproduced
electronically by definition has a greater visibility than an article published in little-read journals that
may seem somewhat old-fashioned. In the long term, even the humanities will not be able to escape the
triumphal march of the new informal forms of communication or publishing known as ‘blogs’ or
‘wikis’, which include experiments with collaborative authorship.
對下一代的學者，這是一個特別的主要關注議題，誰將受益於網際網路的相乘效應，電子方式
產的手稿與舊式少有人閱讀的學刊發表論文相比較, 顯然有較大的曝光率。長期來看，人文學仍
無法脫離具有合作撰寫實驗意味的'部落格'或'共筆'的通訊或出版模式。
p. 82-83
開放近用 : 機會及挑戰, http://tinyurl.com/dck7v9
Open Access : Opportunities and Challenges. A handbook [開放近用 : 機會及挑戰] / European
Commission, German Commission for UNESCO. -- Luxembourg : Office for Official Publications of
the European Communities, 2008. -- 144 p., 14.8 x 21.0 cm. -- ISBN 978-92-79-06665-8. -- EUR
23459, http://tinyurl.com/3q8wo5
Open Access : Chancen und Herausforderungen : ein Handbuch. -- Bonn : Deutsche UNESCO-
Kommission, 2007. -- 136 Seiten. -- ISBN 3-927907-96-0.
http://www.unesco.de/fileadmin/medien/Dokumente/Kommunikation/Handbuch_Open_Access.pdf