Assessing Humboldt University in Berlin’s Open Access policy with a Marginalised Feminist Policy Analysis Framework

Open Access (OA) promises to ensure equality and inclusion among researchers, scholars and other members of academia. OA’s values align with intersectional feminism superfcially. However, to what degree do institutional Open Access policies represent key values of intersectional feminism according to the used marginalised feminist policy analysis framework? In this thesis I am going to show in how far OA policies align with feminist values by using a feminist policy analysis framework. To answer the RQ, I chose Humboldt University’s OA policy and a marginalised feminist policy framework, to demonstrate the (mis)alignment between the two. The method includes commenting by selected questions on the policy in order to systematically generate the answer to the overall research question. I conclude that it is true what scholars before have observed: policies act rather performative than active, at least in the case of HU’s OA policy. At the end I give a variety of pathways what further research should do in order to transition from the mere idea to actual OA for all regardless of background.