Frequently Asked Questions

Our transition to the new software began on July 7, 2025. We are making good progress with returning to business as usual, although some challenges remain.

After the planned downtime, orders placed are now being processed, invoiced, and shipped.

Here is an overview of our current status:

• Order processing for print books, eBooks, databases, and journals is largely working normally, with some restrictions due to bugs and errors with migrated data.
• POD books remain subject to delays.
• Journals orders are still subject to delays in shipment and access being granted.

Please note: the update is only for De Gruyter; Brill, V&R, Böhlau and other Brill imprints are not affected and ordering via ABS is still possible. De Gruyter print books can still be ordered via Ingram in the USA.

Due to the planned downtime, our Customer Service Team has a large backlog of orders and queries going back to July, which we are working through as quickly as possible. Please understand that we will answer your queries as quickly as possible. It would help us if you did not send reminders or follow-ups to initial queries.

As a customer, you will experience delays in the fulfilment of orders:

• Order processing
• Order fulfilment
• Invoicing
• Claims
• Cancellations
• Returns
• Refunds

This applies to both print and online products from De Gruyter.

Order processing for eBooks is largely working normally again, with some restrictions due to bugs and errors with migrated data. We are unfortunately not yet able to provide automated confirmation of access being granted, but please be assured that access is working.

The degruyterbrill.com webshop is now operating normally, with orders being invoiced and shipped as usual.

Products from Brill, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and other Brill imprints will remain available via their websites, and you will automatically be redirected to the right website for purchase. No delays are expected here.

Yes. Although order processing for eBooks is largely working normally again, you may still experience some delays and restrictions due to bugs and errors with migrated data.

Yes, but because of the switch, our Customer Service Team currently has a large backlog of orders and queries going back to July, which we are working through as quickly as possible. Please understand that we will answer your queries as quickly as possible. It would help us to reduce the backlog quickly if you did not send repeat queries and reminders.

Librarians: Please contact your regional sales contact.

Trade customers: Please contact your usual sales representative at De Gruyter.

Authors: Please contact your regular publishing / editorial contact at De Gruyter.

Due to a significant internal software update, payments are currently experiencing delays. Our teams are actively working to resolve the issue, but at this time, we are unable to provide a definitive timeline for when the workflow will return to normal.

If you have questions regarding a delayed payment, please reach out to your journal manager or editor at De Gruyter Brill.

We sincerely appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

As we transition to a new system, there may be temporary delays or disruptions in the delivery of metadata, MARC, and KBART updates for De Gruyter books, journals, and online resources. We currently expect this to continue until mid-September. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your understanding.

To support ongoing publication activities, we’ve established a temporary process to ensure that metadata for newly released book titles is made available on degruyterbrill.com and to institutional customers.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your regional sales contact.

Due to a major software update, there are currently delays in uploading data and updates to our website. This also affects title data. Our teams are working hard to resolve these delays. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and ask for your patience in the meantime.

Recipients of complimentary copies will no longer receive a delivery note, but an invoice with a 100% discount. If the recipient is the author, the invoice will include an additional 30% discount.

Due to the transition to our new publishing software, there are unfortunately delays in the dispatch of complimentary copies. Our internal teams are working hard to process the outstanding deliveries and to return to our usual fast dispatch times. We apologize for any inconvenience and ask for your patience in the meantime.

When your order was processed in our system, a user account was created for you under the email address you provided. You must first set up a password for this account. Please select ‘Manage access’ via ‘Log in’ at the top right and enter your email address under ‘Other access methods’. Then click on the link to reset your password under ‘Forgot password’. You will receive an email with a link that you can use to set a (new) password.

After you successfully logged in, your content will be available in your account under "My Publications" via degruyterbrill.com/myPublications.

Usually when you do not receive an email from us it's because the email address does not yet have a registered user account on degruyterbrill.com. For data protection reasons, we are not permitted to display a message during the login process as to whether an email address already has a registered user account in our system. You can register a new user account here.

The reason could be that the title was published by one of our publisher partners.

Due to security concerns most of our partners have requested us to remove the complete PDF for download from the platform, since our eBooks are all DRM free.

Those titles can be read and downloaded chapterwise only.

Partners for which full texts are available are:

• Amsterdam University Press
• Central European University Press
• DETAIL
• Gütersloher Verlagshaus
• Iberoamericana Vervuert
• Verlag Dr. Otto Schmidt
• RWS-Verlag
• transcript Verlag
• Vincentz Network

To access your publication, you must log in with the email address you used in your communication with us. This email address is linked to your content, and our system will automatically provide access to the content once you register and log in.

After you log in, you can find your available content in your account under "My work" in the "My Publications" area via degruyterbrill.com/myPublications.

You probably registered on our platform with a different email address than the one to which you received the access confirmation. To gain access to your published work, you must register with the email address you used to communicate with us. This email address has been linked to your content so that our system automatically grants you access to your content when you log in. As we can of course only use an email address that is known to us for the link, access will not work for other user accounts that you create.

Due to a major software update, there are currently delays in uploading data and updates to our website. This also affects title data. Our teams are working hard to resolve these delays. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and ask for your patience in the meantime.

Please send all orders, inquiries and claims to Customer Service De Gruyter. You will receive a confirmation email with a ticket number.

Important: Please quote this ticket number on any further inquiries about your order.

You can reach our Customer Service Team Monday through Friday except on holidays. Incoming orders are processed within 24 business hours and inquiries within 72 business hours. Please note that responses may take longer than 72 hours if we have a high volume of inquiries.

For orders through our webshop, delivery is free of charge worldwide.

Handling usually takes a maximum of 2 days after order processing. After this the following terms that apply to delivery times can be found at www.dhl.de.

For further information on delivery times please see:
https://www.dhl.de/content/dam/images/Paket/GK/downloads/dhl-infoblatt-paket-international-laenderinfo-de-03-2022.pdf

As soon as the order has been processed by our invoicing system the ordered item will be transferred to the online account of the end user and notification will be sent out to the email-address specified in the order. The activation may take up to 24 hours after receipt of the confirmation. After access has been activated the purchased content will be marked with a Licensed Access icon and can be used on Degruyter.com.

For licensed access please send all your technical queries concerning the webshop or online access to our Sales Operations.

Books, eBooks and standing orders for book series:

• Title

• ISBN (please select the ISBN for the chosen format)

• Quantity

• Billing address

• Shipping details (if different from billing address)

• Full shipping address if using freight

• Email address for invoices, credit notes and other correspondence

Journals, Yearbooks, Databases:

• Title

• Print or electronic format

• Quantity

• Automatic or manual subscription renewal

• Purchase or subscription for databases

• Billing address

• Shipping details (if different from billing address)

• Full shipping address for freight

• Email address for invoices, credit notes and other correspondence

If you're ordering digital products for an institution or library you'll also need:

• The complete address of the end user

• Email address for access confirmation

• IP range

And if you're ordering a digital product as a private customer, we'll need your email address.

Books, eBooks, series (orders): DFÜ, Nielsen Book Data, EDIFAKT (trade book supply).

Journals, yearbooks (subscriptions): ICEDIS, agent to publisher format

• Wire transfer

• Check

• Credit card

To receive monthly statements electronically please send your email address to our accounting team.

• Two days after an account has become due the first payment reminder will be sent.

• If there is no response from the customer within 14 days a second reminder will be sent.

• If there is no response from the customer within a further 14 days a third reminder will be sent and a block will be placed on new deliveries.

• After a further 14 days without a response a fourth reminder will be sent and an attempt will be made to collect payment by telephone.

• If an invoice remains unpaid after the fourth reminder payment, a collection process will be initiated.

To receive monthly statements please send your email address to accounting@degruyterbrill.com.

Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that can generate new content, such as text, images, music, or code, producing original results based on input data. Examples are models that generate images (like DALL-E), text (like ChatGPT), music, or videos.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are a specific type of AI model that is trained on large datasets of text. These models can perform tasks such as text generation, translation, summarization, and answering questions.

LLMs are a type of generative AI. When you use a large language model to generate text, you're using generative AI.

Given the rapid advances in AI technology over the past months, we have been consulting and discussing challenges, opportunities and threats of artificial intelligence with academic authors, librarians, and partners. We have also been speaking to providers of generative AI.

We plan to enter into formal agreements with generative AI providers to exert our influence on how and when scholarly content is used in generative AI development, and to make sure that research published by De Gruyter Brill is included and made use of in in an accountable, responsible and sustainable manner.

When negotiating agreements, we seek outcomes that benefit us and our authors, strengthen our position as advocates of the scholarly community vis-a-vis technology providers, and help amplify the impact of academic research in a rapidly changing world.

We are convinced that generative AI technologies are changing the way information and knowledge are retrieved, disseminated and used, and that this involves risks and opportunities. But because we believe that artificial intelligence is here to stay, the question for us is not whether academic research should be used in the development of artificial intelligence, but rather, how it can contribute to its improvement.

We think that the use of high-quality scholarly works in the training and development of generative AI can increase its accuracy and usefulness. AI technology providers are working on better ways to cite and attribute sources, which will provide new opportunities for scholarly work to have greater visibility and impact. Like some of our partners, we are developing new AI-based tools to facilitate the research process and improve your publications' visibility and discoverability. Discovery services and vendors that we cooperate with will incorporate AI technology moving forward.

By engaging constructively and critically with generative AI tools and content providers, we hope that we can amplify these benefits, while mitigating the risks.

To do so, we have established these general principles that we follow in all negotiations:

• We carefully define which usage of content we grant technology providers
• We put limits to verbatim text reproduction and / or make sure technology partners use our titles for training purposes only
• We ask technology partners to present a clear vision of how their tools will enable correct and transparent attribution and citation of information sources
• We make sure relevant permission from all rightsholders has been obtained, and, where possible, seek explicit consent from authors
• We seek fair remuneration for author and publisher
• We make sure content is removed once a contract term ends

Because we are dealing with complex questions and do not have all the answers, we hope to continue the fruitful collaboration and debate we’ve had with our authors, librarians, editors, and others in the academic community, to find a joint way forward in a rapidly evolving landscape.

If your work is included in an agreement with a generative AI provider, it may be used for training and testing foundational large language models that are then later used to develop tools and applications, or for creating databases of authoritative content to verify the accuracy of information generated by AI tools. Other use cases will evolve as technology progresses, and we will keep you informed.

We expect to reach agreements with several AI technology providers in the coming months and years. In most cases, we will not be able to share details, especially while agreements are still under discussion, due to contractual non-disclosure clauses. We may be able to share information on new partnerships as they are launched and will do so if possible.

We will be setting up relationships on a case-by-case basis, and so terms will vary. Some will be term-limited, while some others might imply longer-term arrangements.

In all discussions with potential AI technology partners, we emphasize the guiding principles we have established. These principles prioritize proper author attribution, the necessity of formal contractual agreements with AI providers, securing permissions from rights holders, and ensuring fair compensation. We also either limit verbatim citations as much as possible or insist on proper attribution to our authors and ideally a link to our platform.

This depends on each agreement. If a technology partner can guarantee that our authors’ work can and will be properly cited and attributed, we will allow citations, while looking carefully at the amount of text that can be cited verbatim. If an AI provider cannot present us with a convincing solution of how proper attribution will work, we will insist they use our content for training purposes only.

Your approval to use your title enables us to use your work in the development of our own AI technologies, and to work with existing or future partners who use AI to make scholarly works more visible and discoverable for readers and researchers via library catalogs, scholarly databases, and other search technologies.

If your existing publishing contract does not grant us the unequivocal right to include your title(s) in partnerships with AI technology providers, you will shortly receive an email with an addendum to your author or editor contract. If you agree we can use your work to be included in generative AI development, please sign the addendum. If you decide not to sign, your work will not be included.

While AI technology is evolving quickly, the legal framework for AI applications is also being developed further. We are following this closely and want to make sure that our publishing contracts represent a transparent and secure legal basis.

We understand you may have questions, concerns or objections regarding the inclusion of your work in agreements with artificial intelligence providers – if that is the case, please refer to our FAQs for clarification or contact us directly at: legal-support@degruyter.com.

This depends on the conversations with potential partners. Some agreements will extend to the entire De Gruyter Brill program. Other providers will be interested in titles from certain subject areas. There may also be cases where some content is not suitable, for example if it is not available in a file format that partners can use.

De Gruyter Brill authors will receive royalties according to their publishing contracts. For each agreement that De Gruyter Brill signs, authors receive the corresponding percentage share of the royalty we are paid per title.

We are in the process of advancing our internal AI expertise and experience to be able to include AI technology on our website and other digital products to the benefit of authors and researchers moving forward. One example is that we are training an AI system with a very specific corpus of research material, to explore how well this system can answer very specific scholarly queries about this topic. Such technology could later be used to improve search functionalities for digital products like databases, critical digital editions, or our website, so that researchers will eventually be able to ask a chatbot complex and specific questions, like a research assistant, rather than searching for general keywords only.

If you would like to contact us with questions or concerns, or discuss the contract addendum, please email legal-support@degruyter.com.