Recognized for Student-Led Open Publishing
From the nominator:
The top reason this nomination deserves the 2025 Open Education Award for Excellence is its unique model of graduate-led open publishing which empowers students to take full editorial responsibility, fosters early-career research, and has grown from a fragile seed into a widely respected diamond open-access journal in communication and media studies.
kommunikation.medien is a student-led, diamond open-access journal specialising in communication and media studies. It offers master’s students a unique opportunity to engage with scholarly publishing in a practical and collaborative manner. Rather than merely simulating editorial processes, students take on real responsibilities, such as developing the call for papers, managing peer review, and editing, laying out and finally publishing the journal. The journal provides early-career researchers, especially those transitioning from master’s or doctoral studies, with a credible, free platform on which to publish their first academic contributions and enter the scholarly community with confidence.
This project covers several key ideas of openness. It bridges gaps between Open Education and Open Access. It has now got the experience of several editions and of many students trained. As the project writes, the difficulties are turned into challenges and used as lessons from which to learn.
Award Reviewer
The idea of mentoring students so that they can run the editorial functions and everything of an entire journal is wonderful. It is also additionally impressive that they have established a partnership with an Indonesian university. This is a project that challenges academic gatekeeping.
Award Reviewer
Learn More
- kommunikation.medien (journal)
- What Does it Take to Start an Open Access Journal from Scratch? (mp4 video)
- Open-Access-Journal kommunikation.medien (Atlas der Guten Lehre)
