Institute Publications
The Max Planck Institute publishes an array of works addressing fundamental questions in all fields of its eponymous areas of research: comparative and international private law. These in-house publications are supervised by the Directors, and by research fellows and associates working on their behalf. Editorial work on the publications takes place largely within the Institute, where we coordinate cooperation with authors, reviewers. In doing so, it is a declared goal of the Institute to make research results freely accessible and readily reusable through open access to the greatest extent possible.
Current Publications
The Institute publishes several legal journals and print series in its own name, and its academic staff contributes in a variety of ways to other publications aiming at a scholarly treatment of the Institute’s fields of research. In addition to its own output, the Institute also supports the publication of suitable external research efforts. Particularly in the field of comparative and international law, the demand for thorough academic analysis and a clear presentation of research findings extends beyond boundaries based on geography or language. Accordingly, the Institute is part of an international network and cooperates with renowned German and foreign publishing houses.
Open Access. The Max Planck Society and our Iinstitute are committed to making the results of scientificacademic research freely accessible and easily to rereuseable. To this end, more and more pathsavenues are being opened up towar ednable open access publishing. Open access publication is being performed not only through the archiving of texts in institutional repositories (the “green route” achieved by means of secondary publication rights secured statutorily or contractually) and fee-basis publication (the “hybrid” or “gold route”), but increasingly on an institutional basis as a method of original publication (the “diamond” route).
The Journal was founded in 1927 by Ernst Rabel as the principal German forum for fundamental research on the international aspects of private, economic, and procedural law. Areas of specific interest are thus comparative law as well as foreign law in comparative analysis, the conflict of laws, the law of international transactions, and the unification of law, including the law of the European Union. Since 2024, the Rabel Journal has been published gold open access using the “subscribe-to-open” model.
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The three Institute series on comparative and international private law are not limited to the publication of research completed by Institute staff. Rather, they are also open to external authors and editors for monographs and edited volumes on topics in the Institute's fields of inquiry. More and more volumes are being published open access, with the Max Planck Digital Library or the Institute's own publication fund providing financial support for Institute staff.
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Die deutsche Rechtsprechung auf dem Gebiete des internationalen Privatrechts [German Court Rulings in Private International Law], abbreviated “IPRspr”, is a collection of German court decisions on private international law and international civil procedure. From 1926 to 2020, it was published in print form annually. Since 2024, all decisions filed since 2003 have been made freely accessible in an online database that is independently maintained by the Institute (diamond open access).
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On behalf of the German Council for Private International Law (
Deutscher Rat für Internationales Privatrecht), the Institute has since 1965 been part of a cooperative effort publishing selected expert reports (
Gutachten) that have been prepared by the Institute or other academic entities for use primarily by German courts. Currently, the reports are being produced in cooperation with a publishing house in the form of printed multi-year volumes.
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Together with the German-Japanese Association of Jurists, the Institute has published the J.Japan.L. since 2004. Offering a timely documentation and analysis of the myriad lines of development Japanese law in western-languages, the Journal is an international periodical serving the needs of individuals interested in Japanese law. With an embargo period of two years, previous issues are available in open access green.
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The GJCL is published by the German-Chinese Association of Jurists together with the Sino-German Institute for Legal Studies in Nanjing, and since 2015 in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute. The Journal publishes reports and analyses of current developments in China as well as translations of important new Chinese legislative acts. Starting from 2025, all articles are being published gold open access.
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The Institute’s Research Paper Series is published on the online platform of the Social Science Research Network. In existence since 2010, the Accepted Paper Series presents a selection of articles authored by Institute staff members which have recently been accepted for print publication in journals or edited volumes. Regardless of the intended primary publication format, the findings from Institute-based research can thus reach an international audience in a timely and cost-free manner via the green open access route.
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The Re-Publication Series of the Institute came into existence in 2022 and operates in connection with the repository of the Max Planck Society. Consistent with the notion of green (self-archiving) open access, the Institute’s editorial team works to see that all publications by Institute staff can be republished here where this is feasible, both legally and factually.
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Subsequent to the print edition release of the “Handwörterbuch des Europäischen Vertragsrechts” (2009) as well as its English-language counterpart, the “Max Planck Encyclopedia of European Private Law” (2012), the Institute has made both works available as digital editions. These are now conveniently searchable on the internet via green open access and can also serve as a point of reference for terminology and translation issues.
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