Target groups

SSOAR regards scientists and scholars as "prosumers", addressing them in their double-role as producers and consumers of scholarly knowledge. Since we are committed to the principles of open access, documents deposited here may be downloaded without charge by interested parties and used in accordance with the stipulated rights.

Our editorial team welcomes your advice, questions, comments and information.

Multi-disciplinary orientation

At a later stage, all social scientists and their colleagues from neighbouring disciplines will be able to deposit papers in SSOAR. In the pilot phase, however, qualitative research will be used as a prototype. This area was chosen because it is genuinely multi or trans-disciplinary. Thus, from the very beginning, qualitative researchers from many fields will be welcome to post papers in SSOAR. In view of the fact that the server will be extended later beyond qualitative research, documents submitted need not have a strictly methodological focus but may also be empirical or theoretical in nature.

Different target groups

In addition to manuscripts deposited by individual authors, SSOAR aims to recruit peer-reviewed series and journals in cooperation with the respective editors and publishers. Separate web pages furnishing more detailed information can be created within SSOAR for these series and journals, and for research groups wishing to deposit large amounts of data.

International scope

At first, SSOAR will bring together manuscripts by German authors which are written in German or in another language. Gradually, we will expand our scope to encompass contributions by authors from other countries.