Maintaining Conformity and Staying Visible: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar Implements Affiliation Regulations
Officially approved by the Presidential Board on 12 March and published as an MdU on 23 April 2025, the new Affiliation Regulations for Research-Related Publications at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar apply to all university members carrying out research. They provide mandatory specifications for how researchers should refer to the university in their academic work. This ensures consistently standardised information, allowing university publications to be clearly recognised as such and easily assigned in libraries, archives, and databases.
»The new Affiliation Regulations are an essential tool for making the achievements of our researchers even more visible while also presenting the university's achievements as comprehensive collective research«, says University President Professor Peter Benz.
In addition to other things, the Regulations explain how to correctly name the university – in German and in English – and how authors can include additional information on the faculty, discipline, or project reference. This makes it easier to find the work in academic search engines and also supports the status of the university in national and international competition.
This is the university's response to a problem that affects many research institutions: Inconsistent or incomplete affiliation information makes proper categorisation difficult and reduces the visibility of scientific achievements. Anyone who cites »Weimar University« or only the faculty name runs the risk of not having their work recognised as members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
The initiative behind the Regulations came from Kevin Lang, a member of the Research Data Management Department at the University Library. He was responsible for developing the guidelines based on his own scientific research. As part of a professional development course at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Lang analysed affiliation regulations at German universities and published his findings under the title »Eine qualitative Inhaltsanalyse von Affiliationsrichtlinien an deutschen Universitäten« through the o-bib Open Access journal.