Publikationsverbot und Zwangslöschung von Veröffentlichungen auf Betreiben des Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege Hessen (LfDH)

Abstract

Between 2016 and 2019, the author of this paper (with several co-authors) made nine excavation reports of commercial development-led excavations available in open access on the platform Academia.edu. The excavations of these reports pertained to had long been completed by the time they were made publicly available. The LfDH (“Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Hessen”, also named as “hessenArchäologie”, ~ Hessian State Heritage Agency), claiming this violated its excavation guidelines and terms attached to the NFGs (research permits) under which these excavations had been conducted, exerted informal pressure to have the reports removed from this public online repository. It also generally prohibited for the future to make other such excavations reports publicly available, even if edited appropriately. In this paper, it is discussed whether this censorship is compatible with the ethical principles of science, international and German law, and in particular the freedom of publication guaranteed in German constitutional and intellectual property law.