Continuous growth of our publishing activities
Dagstuhl Publishing's open-access initiatives saw continued success in 2024. Our main series LIPIcs, dedicated to affordable open-access publishing of high-quality conference proceedings, achieved a significant milestone with 38 volumes and 1648 articles published, which is a considerable increase from 34 volumes and 1455 articles in 2023. The reputation of LIPIcs remains strong, evidenced by numerous conferences (re-)applying for inclusion in the LIPIcs portfolio. Notably, publication agreements with APPROX, RANDOM, ITP, SAND, TYPES, CCC, ICDT, CONCUR, and SoCG have been renewed for another five years.
The scientific journal Transactions on Graph Data and Knowledge (TGDK), launched in 2023, expanded its output slightly in 2024. While 12 articles were published in its founding year, TGDK published 15 articles across three issues in 2024, reflecting steady growth and interest.
Metadata improvements
In March 2024, the metadata interface has been migrated back to the DROPS publication server and has been extended, now supporting formats such as Dagstuhl XML, ACM-XML, DOAJ-XML, and Schema.org. The Schema.org metadata is also embedded in the HTML of published articles to provide search engines with structured data for improved discoverability.
Our increased effort to encourage ORCID adoption among authors yielded significant results: For LIPIcs conferences that published consecutive volumes in 2023 and 2024, ORCID usage increased from 58% to 77%, ensuring improved author identification and better linkage between publications.
In early 2024, Dagstuhl Publishing launched the Bib2Doi tool which assists authors in enriching their bibliography files by adding DOIs, URLs, and missing metadata. This service has been widely adopted and has significantly improved cross-linking of published articles. For instance, references with persistent identifiers in LIPIcs volumes published between October and December 2024 rose from 50% to 80% compared to the same period in 2023. (See also https://www.dagstuhl.de/en/institute/news/2024/new-service-for-authors-bib2doi)
Supplementary Materials and Artifact Publications
Dagstuhl Publishing expanded its publication workflow to include metadata submission for supplementary materials such as software and data. Starting in November 2024, supplementary materials collected throughout the year were published on DROPS (https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/collection/supplementary-materials), with over 90 items being released simultaneously. Moving forward, these materials will be published continuously alongside corresponding research articles.
Simultaneously, more than 170 snapshots of the dblp database are now available on DROPS in RDF and XML formats (https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/collection/dblp), complete with DOIs for improved discoverability. Previously, these datasets were hosted on the dblp website as files without persistent identifiers. These snapshots, archived monthly since 2015, are now publicly accessible in compliance with FAIR principles. (See also https://www.dagstuhl.de/en/publishing/news/2024/dblp-dump-releases-now-have-a-doi)
Additionally, two open-source components for long-term software archiving were released as part of the FAIRCORE4EOSC project in late 2024: the SWH Archive Client and the SWH Deposit Client. These tools enable the preservation of software projects and their metadata on the Software Heritage platform. (See also https://www.dagstuhl.de/en/publishing/news/2024/dagstuhl-publishing-new-open-source-software-components-as-results-of-the-faircore4eosc-project-now-available)
APC adjustment
In recent years, rising costs, particularly for wages and energy, have had a significant impact on our operating expenses, which is why at the end of 2024, we decided to raise the article processing charge (APC) in order to be able to continue providing the high-quality service you have come to expect from us. With effect from January 1, 2026, the APC will increase from €60 (net) to €80 (net) per article or per 20 pages. This is the first price adjustment since 2019, a decision we have carefully considered. (See also https://www.dagstuhl.de/storage/media/0006/6339/increasing-apc-2026-information-letter.pdf)
Outlook for 2025
Starting in mid-2025, Dagstuhl Publishing will introduce HTML versions alongside PDFs, particularly for LIPIcs and OASIcs series, in response to the Accessibility Strengthening Act (Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz). The potential to extend this service to all series and retroactively to previously published articles is under review.
Support for supplementary materials is being further expanded as part of the NDFI projects: this year, the main focus is on expanding support for supplementary materials beyond software, with particular emphasis on research data sets.
