Publications and OpenQDA

Since OpenQDA is a tool for applied research, chances are high that you will publish your work, involving on your work done within OpenQDA.

Citing OpenQDA in your work

Our license does not enforce you to cite OpenQDA in your publications. However, we would greatly appreciate if you cite OpenQDA as tool used for your QDA.

Zenodo releases and DOIs

Every released version of OpenQDA obtains a new DOI from Zenodo. This allows you to cite the very specific version you have used. The live version at https://openqda.org is always using the latest release.

there is also a base DOI for the project as a whole, which will always redirect to the latest current release: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11195871

If you prefer manual citation, then please use the following citation example (APA style):

Belli, A., Küster, J., Matayeva, L., Hohmann, F., Sinner, P., Krüger, G., Wolf, K., & Hepp, A. (2025). 
OpenQDA (1.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14772936

We also provide a citation file to enable automated citations of this work.

License implications for your publications

OpenQDA is free software, as it is licensed under the AGPL-3.0 license. The license implies no restriction for your publications.

However, the "aTrain" plugin for transcription is developed and licensed by Armin Haberl, Jürgen Fleiß, Dominik Kowald, Stefan Thalmann and is published under

Haberl, A., Fleiß, J., Kowald, D., Thalmann, S., 2023. “Take the aTrain. Introducing an Interface for the Accesible Transcription of Interviews.”, University of Graz, School of Business, Economics and Social Sciences Working Paper 2023-02.

Please note, that if you use the auto-transcription feature in OpenQDA then you must cite their work in your publication under certain conditions. Please read their license for this.