transfer is an interdisciplinary academic publication platform in the area of provenance research and the history of collection as well as adjacent fields of investigation, like art market studies, reception history, cultural sociology, or legal history. Semiannual issues are published online in Diamond Open Access. Research Articles and Research Reports, to be submitted in English or German, are subject to a double-blind peer-review process. All articles undergo an internal evaluation by the editors and receive professional copy-editing before publication. The journal is based at the Research Centre for Provenance Research, Art and Cultural Property Law at the University of Bonn and at the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts and receives funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Webhosting is provided by our partner institution Heidelberg University Library via arthistoricum.net.
Website: https://ahnp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/transfer/index
Editors: Felicity Bodenstein, Ulrike Saß & Christoph Zuschlag
Managing Editor: Florian Schönfuß
Advisory Board: Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung e.V., dbv-Kommission Provenienzforschung und Provenienzerschließung, Didier Houénoudé, Larissa Förster, Gilbert Lupfer, Antoinette Maget Dominicé, Barbara K. Murovec, Gesa Vietzen
Open Call for Special Issue Proposals
Besides its regular semiannual issues, transfer also publishes topic-oriented Special Issues at irregular intervals. These are initiated in cooperation with guest editors. For each Special Issue, about 8-12 Research Articles and/or Research Reports (each of no more than 60,000 characters) written in English or German and focusing on a specific topic, context of injustice, field of methods, a specific category of objects, epoch, region, or group of sources is obtained and supervised in terms of content by the guest editors. Editorial assistance and publication processing, including professional copy editing, peer-review management, author mentoring, typesetting/layout and technical realization is provided by the editorial team of transfer. As a Diamond Open Access platform, transfer does not demand any charges for authors and/or guest editors. In addition to the initial evaluation by the guest editors, all articles are subject to a double-blind peer-review process (two reviews) which is initiated and supervised by transfer. Potential guest editors are invited to submit proposals for Special Issues, explicitly including conference proceedings, on the following fields of interest:
- Provenance research on individual objects or object groups
- Collections, History of collection
- Translocation of art and cultural assets
- Art and cultural property law
- Culture of remembrance, Cultural identity, Collective memory
- Art trade, Art market studies
- Art policy, Sociology of art, Cultural sociology
- Restitution, Return, Repatriation, Compensation, Reconciliation
We welcome proposals for possible Special Issues in the form of an exposé of no more than 750 words together with a short CV of all participating guest editors to be submitted under redaktion.transfer@uni-bonn.de. The publication is planned for 2027/28. Please do not hesitate to contact us in case of any questions.
The submission deadline is 15 September 2026.