The evolution of Open Encyclopedia System (OES)

In recent years, online encyclopedias have become a significant form of publication in the humanities and social sciences. Academic encyclopedias are increasingly published exclusively online or in dual or hybrid formats. However, they are predominantly implemented using proprietary and individual solutions, and existing solutions frequently do not tap into the full potential of e-publishing, especially in the areas of multimedia, interactivity, collaboration, incremental publication and web-based editorial workflows.

Building on the experiences made with the custom-made software solution for the “1914-1918-online: International Encyclopedia on the First World War"  (German Research Foundation (DFG), 2012-2016), the follow-up project From 1914-1918-online to the Open Encyclopedia System (DFG, 2016-2020) (read more on the DFG project) took up the above mentioned ideas when designing the Open Encyclopedia System (OES): OES adds a web-based open source software for lemma-based publication formats to already available options for electronic publishing and thus closes existing gaps in the Open Access publishing landscape, and is currently used to create and publish a number of academic online encyclopedia (read more on use cases)

OES offers flexible workflows, configurable participation models, various options for customizing the peer review process and features that facilitate the engagement and management of a community

• Publishing online encyclopedia using OES
• Software architecture
• Using OES software (download)