The Max Planck Society and De Gruyter sign an agreement to share bibliographical references

The Max Planck Society, which runs a large number of research institutes throughout Germany and beyond, and academic publisher De Gruyter have reached an agreement to share bibliographical data.

Under the agreement De Gruyter will provide the Max Planck Society with bibliographical records for all of its past and future publications on language and linguistics. For its part, the Max Planck Society will incorporate these records into Glottolog, an open access database of the world’s languages which contains a comprehensive bibliography. A link will be provided within each reference on Glottolog to the publication’s page on De Gruyter Online, De Gruyter’s integrated platform. “It seems clear that this agreement will benefit both sides: Glottolog will get even more bibliographical references, and De Gruyter will have all its works represented in this important database”, says Prof. Dr. Martin Haspelmath from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The first data transfer, consisting of the bibliographical records of roughly 4000 books and about 5000 journal issues, has already been completed. Together they contain the individual references of tens of thousands of book chapters and journal articles.

“This is a classic win-win arrangement, benefitting both sides as well as the linguistic community in general”, adds Dr. Anke Beck, Managing Director of De Gruyter. “Glottolog is a very important point of reference for linguists working on the world’s languages, and especially on poorly studied and endangered languages. Increasing knowledge on such languages has been part of the De Gruyter owned brand Mouton since the 1970s. There is no better place to publish in linguistics than here and the cooperation with Glottolog will help to make the work of scholars even more visib