Open-Access Repositories Decolonial. How to Set Up a Subject Repository for Documents on International Cultural Relations

To meet the information needs of subject experts, so-called open-access subject repositories have been established since the early 1990s, which make relevant documents available as a collection. These repositories are still exclusively operated in the “Global North”. Can they meet the global diversity of requirements? How can these platforms be managed with cultural humility? A planned open-access knowledge sharing platform for the field of international cultural relations is the occasion for this study. The production of knowledge in this field takes place globally in institutions of different type: academic, educational, political and economic. The communities of practise produce classic publishers’ publications, but also so-called “grey literature” which often is hard to discover and preserve. The report is based on desk research, supplemented by a three-months open commenting period, and a public workshop whose participants dispose over substantive experience with the analysed technologies and practises, or are members of the communities of practise, amongst them experts who work in “Global South” contexts. In result, a recommendation matrix was developed which tackles the most important issues: balancing “Global North” privileges by subtraction instead of just adding diversity, working towards social justice by involving the communities of practise from the very start, setting up a polycentric governance structure based on values defined by the communities, establishing ethics of care and translation processes to mediate different roles and to accommodate individual needs, supporting multilingualism, low connectivity environments, interoperability and experiments, all with a critical stance towards standardisation and rationalisation, planning for the long term sustainably, collaborating and cooperating, doing everything transparently, at a moderate pace, learning humbly and perpetually.2nd Draf