DuEPublico - Duisburg-Essen Publications online

DuEPublico – Duisburg-Essen Publications online is the institutional repository and scholarly publishing platform of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) in Germany. It provides a central online location for the university's researchers, students, and affiliated scholars to deposit, manage, and make publicly accessible their academic outputs, including dissertations, habilitation theses, journal articles, conference papers, research reports, and other scholarly materials. As an open-access repository, DuEPublico is designed to increase the visibility, discoverability, and long-term preservation of UDE research, while supporting the university's compliance with funder and institutional open-access mandates. The platform is operated by the University Library of Duisburg-Essen, which oversees its technical infrastructure, metadata standards, and curation workflows. DuEPublico typically assigns persistent identifiers such as URNs or DOIs to deposited items, enabling stable citation and linking. Content is indexed by major search engines and scholarly discovery services, helping to connect UDE publications with the global research community. The repository also serves as the official publication venue for electronic dissertations and postdoctoral theses submitted at the university, replacing or supplementing print deposit requirements. As a brand, DuEPublico represents the university's commitment to open science and digital scholarship. It is not a commercial product in the traditional sense but rather a public, non-profit service brand tied to a state-funded higher education institution. Its user base includes UDE faculty, doctoral candidates, students, and external researchers who consult its collections. The platform's name combines the university's location (Duisburg-Essen) with the concept of public online access, signaling its mission to make research freely available. DuEPublico is part of a broader landscape of German and international institutional repositories, and it interoperates with standards such as OAI-PMH for metadata harvesting. While exact founding dates and usage statistics are not provided in the available evidence, the repository is known to be active and maintained by the university library. Its continued operation reflects the growing importance of open-access infrastructure in academic institutions worldwide.

DuEPublico – Duisburg-Essen Publications online is the institutional repository of the University of Duisburg-Essen. The university itself was formed in 2003 through the merger of the University of Duisburg and the University of Essen, and its library system inherited the responsibility for scholarly communication and digital collection management. DuEPublico was established as part of the university's efforts to provide an open-access platform for its research output, aligning with the broader open-access movement that gained momentum in Germany and Europe during the 2000s. The repository was developed and is maintained by the University Library of Duisburg-Essen. Its primary function is to collect, preserve, and disseminate the intellectual output of UDE scholars. Over time, DuEPublico has become the mandatory deposit location for electronic dissertations and habilitation theses at the university, ensuring that these works are openly accessible and permanently archived. The platform also accepts other document types, such as articles, conference papers, and research reports, subject to quality and rights checks. Technically, DuEPublico has evolved to meet contemporary repository standards. It supports persistent identifiers, metadata export in various formats, and interoperability protocols like OAI-PMH, which allow its content to be harvested by aggregators such as BASE and OpenAIRE. This integration enhances the global discoverability of UDE research. The repository's web presence at duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de serves as the primary access point for users. While specific milestones such as launch date and major software migrations are not detailed in the available evidence, the repository's Wikidata entry (Q108286452) confirms its existence and identity as a distinct entity. DuEPublico continues to operate as a core service of the university library, reflecting UDE's commitment to open access and digital scholarship. Its history is intertwined with the university's broader strategic goals in research dissemination and compliance with funder mandates.

• University of Duisburg-Essen formed through merger, providing the institutional context for DuEPublico.

• DuEPublico repository established and maintained by the University Library.

• Wikidata entry Q108286452 created, documenting the repository as a distinct entity.

Public, non-commercial open-access repository and publishing service of the University of Duisburg-Essen, supporting open science and institutional visibility.

• Institutional repository

  Open-access platform for depositing and accessing UDE research publications.

• Electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) service

  Mandatory online publication of dissertations and habilitation theses.

• Persistent identifier service

  Assigns URNs or DOIs to deposited items for stable citation.

1. 1DuEPublico - Duisburg-Essen Publications onlinewikidata.org
2. 2DuEPublico websiteduepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de