Constitution
Collective Vision
FolkloreStudies.org is a platform for practitioners of folklore and those who study it to come together and promote folklore and folkloristics in an egalitarian and democratic manner. It brings together artists, practitioners, groups, communities, students, researchers, scholars, activists, academics, folklorists, and others to seek, find, and propagate ways to give the discipline of folklore and folkloristics its due recognition. The founding members of FolkloreStudies.org hope to establish it as a facilitative platform for all those engaged in the study of people and their lores.
Shared Objectives
Create and maintain a global, open-access digital commons for folklore and folkloristics — comprising a Living Folklore Atlas, peer-reviewed scholarship, collaborative archives, and community-driven content.
Safeguard the folk traditions of humankind, recognizing them as an irreplaceable heritage of immeasurable cultural, intellectual, and spiritual value.
Ensure pan-global representation in content, governance, and community — no tradition too local, no language too uncommon, no practice too obscure for inclusion.
Uphold the highest standards of scholarly integrity through peer-reviewed publication, citable collections, and indexing for global discovery.
Operate as a non-commercial, grant-funded endeavor. No content shall be paywalled, and no contributor shall be required to pay for access or participation.
Core Values
Egalitarian & Democratic Governance
Every voice carries equal weight — from village elders to university professors, from oral storytellers to digital archivists. No rank, title, or institutional affiliation confers privilege in matters of governance.
Universal Open Access
All content published on the Platform is freely accessible to every person, without exception. Knowledge of human folk traditions is the common inheritance of all peoples and shall not be enclosed.
Community Sovereignty
Moderation, editorial decisions, and matters of platform policy are determined by the community through transparent, democratic processes. No individual or institution holds unilateral authority over the commons.
Cultural Respect & Indigenous Rights
The Platform honors Traditional Knowledge labels, upholds cultural verification protocols, and places indigenous rights at the forefront of all content governance. Communities retain sovereign authority over the representation of their own traditions.
Academic Rigor
The Platform maintains the highest standards of scholarly integrity through peer-reviewed publication, citable collections, DOI assignment, and indexing for global discovery — ensuring that folklore studies stands as a recognized and rigorous discipline.
Article IMembership & Contribution
Section 1. Membership in the Platform shall be open to all persons who affirm the Core Values set forth above, without regard to nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, institutional affiliation, or economic status.
Section 2. Members shall have the right to contribute content, participate in peer review, vote in community governance, and stand for elected positions within the Platform.
Section 3. Contributors whose work demonstrates sustained quality and commitment may be elevated to the rank of Trusted Contributor by community consensus, granting them the privilege of direct publication without prior review.
Article IIContent & Licensing
Section 1. All content submitted to the Platform shall be licensed under terms that preserve open access, including Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC), or Traditional Knowledge Labels as appropriate.
Section 2. The Platform shall generate persistent citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats for every published work, and shall assign stable permalinks to ensure the enduring discoverability of each contribution.
Article IIIAmendments
This Constitution may be amended by a two-thirds supermajority of the active membership, provided that any proposed amendment has been published for community deliberation no fewer than thirty (30) days prior to the vote. No amendment shall contravene the Core Values set forth in this Constitution.
So constituted and ordained, that the folk traditions of all peoples may be preserved, studied, and celebrated — now and for all time.