The University Library (UB) regularly participates in projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and other agencies. These projects include the Specialised Information Service “Educational Science and Educational Research”, as well as initiatives that support free access to scientific information. Thanks to funded digitization projects, the UB can make its valuable historical holdings available worldwide free of charge and open to all. Valuable originals are stored in acid-free capsules or envelopes for protection, and book collections made of acidic paper undergo deacidification.
Ongoing Projects
Free Access to Scientific Information – Open Access
“Establishing the Open Source Academic Publishing Suite (OS-APS) as publishing software and connecting relevant stakeholders” (OS-APS NET)
Duration: 2026–2028 (The project was approved by the DFG with a planned duration of two years.)
Given the challenges associated with XML workflows at university publishing services and university presses—which often manifest as a lack of expertise and limited staff resources—the Open Source Academic Publishing Suite (OS-APS) offers an infrastructure solution that has already proven itself in production use by various stakeholders. However, the OS-APS community network remains loose, and the documentation of workflows and the use of OS-APS still has room for improvement. The proposed project therefore aims to consolidate, expand, and sustainably document the existing knowledge of users. The software’s existing potential is to be identified and leveraged so that, in the medium term, OS-APS can establish itself as a publishing tool for institutional providers and be used independently by interested institutions without a high need for consultation.
Contact: Dominik Baumgartner
Funding by the German Research Foundation
Open Access Publication Funding
Duration: 01.01.2025-31.12.2027
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has extensive experience in the central administration and financing of open access publications, as evidenced by offerings such as its long-standing open access publication fund. The project aims to supplement and optimize the following aspects:
- Simple and centralized financing options for open-access book publications from DFG projects and their processing charges. Currently, these are financed through heterogeneous application procedures via FAU’s foundations and sponsors.
- Sustainable development and co-design of open access transformation models
- Efficient acquisition of funding, centralized administration, and monitoring options are included, as well as process optimization and development of synergies in cooperation within the university.
Contact: Tonka Stoyanova
Funding by the German Research Foundation
Project Network Open Access Consortium Education for E-books and Journals (edu_consort_oa)
Duration: 01.09.2023–30.08.2026
Contact: Dr. Rainer Plappert
Funding by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR)
Specialized Information Services for Science
Contact: Dr. Rainer Plappert
Funding by the German Research Foundation
Completed projects
Free Access to Scientific Information – Open Access
Duration: 01.09.2023-31.08.2025
OS-APS STEMO is the follow-up project to the Open Source Academic Publishing Suite (OS-APS). The suite enables single-source publishing workflows for media-neutral publishing without the need for extensive technical expertise or costly XML editing and content management systems. A demo version of the software is available for testing at https://os-aps.de .
The current funding phase is focused on expanding OS-APS to support more complex STEM publications. Specifically, improvements are being made to how formulas, tables, and diagrams are processed and formatted. Support for LaTeX and MathML will also be implemented.
Another focus is the implementation of an optimized online presentation. The publications produced by OS-APS will be designed to be accessible to people with visual impairments. Additionally, a viewer is being developed that will display dynamic online content independently of the device used on the publisher’s website.
The introduction of JATS/BITS-XML as full-text XML will also meet the indexing or importing requirements of many book trade catalogs, specialist databases, and data hubs.
Contact: Dominik Baumgartner
Funding by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR)
Duration: The initial approval was dated October 14, 2010, and funds were allocated in 2011. Further funding approvals and allocations followed for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017–2018, 2022–2024, and most recently, 2025–2027. These were granted in three-year increments.
The goal was to create an internal university structure to bring scientific communication at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) closer to open access in each subject area. In the long term, the goal is to support a switch to this publication model. To this end, an Open Access Publishing Fund was established in October 2010 using DFG and internal funds. It has been managed and developed at FAU ever since. The fund covered publication fees for articles in quality-assured open access journals. The fund has been made permanent.
Contact: Tonka Stoyanova
Funding by the German Research Foundation
Duration: 01.02.2021-31.03.2023
Development of an Open Source Academic Publishing Suite and its application at university publishers and libraries in Erlangen-Nuremberg and Halle – OS-APS (Open Source Academic Publishing Suite).
Small and medium-sized publishers often lack the resources necessary for open access publishing. The OS-APS project team aims to provide these publishers with open-source software for multimedia publishing. This software will allow them to easily and automatically create the necessary formats (e.g., HTML, PDF, and DRM-free in open access) and formatting. Standardized workflows associated with the software also greatly help the publication process by eliminating the need for time-consuming and expensive manual implementation of individual XML typesetting and review processes. SciFlow GmbH is developing the tool, which the project partners will then embed and test in their university publishing houses and libraries.
Contact: Tonka Stoyanova
Funding by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR)
Duration: 01.01.2016-31.12.2017 and 01.08.2018-30.06.2021
The DeepGreen project aimed to ensure the legally compliant distribution of article data from publishers to repositories. While the first funding phase (DFG number 274939300) tested the feasibility of this objective using a prototype, the second funding phase (DFG number 401038572) established a highly automated workflow in collaboration with publishers, authorized libraries, and other institutions. In this workflow, publisher data, including full texts, is delivered in a legally compliant manner and imported by repositories.
The technical component is a central, intermediate data distribution station that ensures this. The result is a nationwide service based on binding agreements with publishers and libraries that fully implements the terms and conditions of any Alliance, National, or Creative Commons licenses. At the same time, we tested and implemented the transferability of the previous DeepGreen approach to other licensing contexts, such as FID licenses, consortium licenses, and gold open access agreements. Another expansion stage involved connecting to specialist repositories and research information systems.
Contact: Tonka Stoyanova
Funding by the German Research Foundation
Research Data Management
Duration: 2018-2020; 2020-2023
The “eHumanities – interdisziplinary” project focused on designing and evaluating new tools, as well as developing best practice recommendations for research data management (RDM) in the digital humanities. The project was run jointly by the University Libraries of Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Ludwig Maximilian Universität München (LMU), as well as LMU’s IT group for the humanities. The work packages for the second project phase (2020-2023) are as follows:
- Integration of research data entities into established, standardized data systems and semantic indexing.
- Integration of previously developed services and workflows into an FDM service platform.
- Expansion of the DataCite Best Practices Guide and Metadata Generator.
- Central provision of FDM services using the example of the Research Data Management Organizer (RDMO) web application for creating data management plans.
- Training, guidance, and best practices.
- Website relaunch and maintenance; public relations.
Work packages for the first project phase (2018–2020):
- Research on the metadata model.
- Proposal for a data management plan.
- Development of a coordinated training package.
- Description and establishment of research data management services for select subject areas.
- Provide support for research and publication using the appropriate tools.
Contact: Dr. Jürgen Rohrwild
Funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts
Duration: 01.11.2022-31.12.2024
The project LaVe provides support services in the critical area of the long-term availability and usability of research data (RD). LaVe operates on three levels: (1) conceptual and administrative groundwork and considerations for the smooth transfer and preservation of RD; (2) local PID services to better manage and identify RD within a diverse data infrastructure landscape; (3) connecting (supra-)regional services to local infrastructures.
Contact: Dr. Jürgen Rohrwild
Funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts
Digitization and Preservation
Durations: 15.10.2019-30.09.2020; 01.10.2021-30.09.2023; 01.10.2023-31.03.2026
The cataloging and digitization of medieval manuscripts from the libraries of the Heilsbronn and Sankt Jobst monasteries, a project carried out over six years, was successfully completed by the University Library with funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG). These collections represent the only two monastery libraries from the Franconian Margraviates of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Bayreuth that have been preserved in near-complete form. The project encompassed a total of 531 medieval manuscripts from the Heilsbronn Monastery Library that were suitable for digitization, as well as 57 volumes from the former Franciscan monastery of Sankt Jobst near Bayreuth.
- Project I: Liturgical and biblical manuscripts on parchment were cataloged, digitized, and equipped with virtual tables of contents for navigation. The digital collection of the Heilsbronn Monastery Library is available free of charge and open to the public.
- Project II: In this project, 241 medieval parchment manuscripts were processed; these included works on theology, philosophy, and canon law, as well as texts on grammar and the classics, and several historical and medical-scientific works from the former Cistercian monastery of Heilsbronn.
- Project III: In this third and final project, a total of 222 medieval manuscripts—219 paper manuscripts and 3 parchment manuscripts—from the monastery libraries of Heilsbronn and St. Jobst were digitized.
Contact: Jutta Faust
Funding by the German Research Foundation
From 2017 to 2021, the Coordination Office for the Preservation of Written Cultural Heritage (KEK) funded projects that packaged valuable — and sometimes unique — old holdings in accordance with conservation principles, as well as projects that deacidified local historical sources.
- 2017: Protective packaging for medieval manuscripts from the monastery libraries of St. Mary’s in Heilsbronn and St. Jobst in Bayreuth.
- 2019: Dry cleaning and protective packaging for rare historical maps from the 17th to 20th centuries, including oversized formats. (SPE-2019-083)
- 2020: One hundred bequests from scientists and scholars of the 16th to 20th centuries are packaged in acid-free packaging. (SPE-2020-009)
- 2021: Deacidification of volumes of the regional newspaper Erlanger Tagblatt (later Erlanger Nachrichten) from 1858 to 1980. (SP1-2021-006)
Duration: 1.8.2015-15.10.2019
As part of the “Cataloging and Digitization” funding program, 3,250 18th-century prints were cataloged and digitized at the national bibliographic level.
The focus was on selected works from the library of Christoph Jakob Trew, a Nuremberg city physician and owner of one of the most important private natural history collections of the 18th century.
Funding by the German Research Foundation
As part of the program “Kulturelle Überlieferung – Aktionslinie Digitalisierung der in nationalen Verzeichnissen nachgewiesenen Drucke ,” the University Library digitized 5,700 17th-century prints from its collection.
As part of the project, 70 percent of the titles were recorded in VD 17 for the first time.
The project was funded by the German Research Foundation.
The FAU’s graphic arts collection contains over 1,000 woodcuts and approximately 4,000 copperplate engravings and etchings that once belonged to the margraves. As part of the bavarikon project, the prints and city maps have been digitized.
Duration: 2020-2021
Funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts
The Trew letter collection was digitized as part of the bavarikon project. The collection contains over 19,000 letters and drafts from more than 2,200 scholars from the 16th to 18th centuries.
Duration: 2017-2019
Funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts