The Open Encyclopedia System (OES) on GitHub
The Open Encyclopedia System (OES) is a modular, configurable software for creating and maintaining scholarly online encyclopedias, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. It was developed at Freie Universität Berlin with funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and was first published on GitHub in 2020. Since then, OES has been continuously developed further in the context of various projects and collaborations. Here you can read more about the origins of OES.
The goal: Researchers, editors, and institutions should have a tool with which they can digitally publish citable, quality-assured content and make it accessible in the long term—independently of commercial providers.
Why Open Source?
OES is open source because openness, transparency, and collaborative development are important to us:
- Sustainability: Academic projects can continue to run the system even after the original funding ends.
- Transparency: The source code is accessible; technical processes are verifiable and documented.
- Adaptability: Features can be tailored to project-specific requirements, research questions, and workflows.
- Collaboration: Scholarly communities can participate in further development and share experiences.
Components of OES
An OES installation generally consists of:
- OES Core Plugin – basic functions
- Project Plugin – project-specific extensions
- (Optional) OES Theme – customizable frontend design
- Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) – required additional library
The central repository on GitHub is OES Core, which contains the basic functions of the software. Additional plugins, OES modules, and themes are organized in separate repositories. Each of these repositories provides a detailed installation guide in its respective README.md file. This enables developers or technically skilled teams to install, customize, and extend OES independently.
Setting up an OES application
A detailed installation guide can be found in the README.md file of the OES Core repository.
1. Set up WordPress
- Install locally or on a server
- Configure database, run setup wizard
2. Install dependencies
- Activate Advanced Custom Fields
3. Download OES Core
- GitHub repository: github.com/open-encyclopedia-system/oes-core
- Unpack into the folder
/wp-content/plugins/ - Activate in the WordPress dashboard
4. Add project plugin & theme
- Implement a suitable OES project plugin or install the OES demo plugin
- (Optional) Activate an OES-compatible theme
- (Optional) Install additional OES modules
5. Create content
-
Create content or import demo data
Third-party plugins
OES can be extended through additional components. As a WordPress plugin, OES can be combined with other WordPress plugins and themes, for example to connect external data sources such as Zotero.
Contribute
OES thrives on collaboration between technology, editorial work, and scholarly communities.
If you would like to contribute adaptations and extensions, suggest improvements, or report bugs, please contact: info@open-encyclopedia-system.org
