transfer – Zeitschrift für Provenienzforschung und Sammlungsgeschichte / Journal for Provenance Research and the History of Collection

Abstract

The 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, the Gurlitt case of 2012, the 2017 speech of President Emmanuel Macron at the University of Ouagadougou fueling a fervent restitution debate about art and cultural objects stemming from colonial contexts – these are just a few well-known milestones of a development recently labelled the “Provenancial Turn”, which at present is clearly reflected in a downright booming of provenance research and collection history. Spanning a multitude of academic subjects, fields of research and historical epochs, and being viable only in often far-reaching international contexts, the publication of provenance research puts high requirements on transparency, accessibility, quality assurance, interdisciplinarity and connectivity towards digital methods of investigation. Since its launch in 2021, transfer –Zeitschrift für Provenienzforschung und Sammlungsgeschichte / Journal for Provenance Research and the History of Collection, edited by Felicity Bodenstein, Ulrike Saß and Christoph Zuschlag, therefore serves to meet the rapidly growing community’s demand for a Diamond Open Access publication platform. Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and webhosted by Heidelberg University Library via arthistoricum.net, the e-journal successfully practices a double-blind peer-review policy closely supported by its multinational Advisory Board. However, it also provides close guidance and mentoring support for young, early career researchers like graduate students gaining their first experiences in acade-mic publishing. By now in its second funding phase and based on a constantly high number of submissions, transfer is increasing its frequency of publication, offering the publication of topic-specific Special Issues in cooperation with guest editors as well the implementation of open research datasets for individual articles. The various challenges going along with this, the experiences made so far in providing a Diamond Open Access epublishing platform to a widespread and morally very sensitive international research community and, last but not least, the overall concept of the journal are addressed by the report at hand.