Farewell note

Dear readers,

thank you very much for your interest in TDE.

After vol. 6 went online in 2020, we, as editors, focused on how TDE could be continued once we both retired at the end of 2021. However, after discussions with colleagues and professional associations, it became clear that TDE’s unique working methods meant that no one could or was willing to take over TDE. This is because—with the exception of the professional copy editors—everyone involved in TDE, i.e. authors, reviewers, and editors, worked on a volunteer basis; their salaries were covered by their employment at universities and other research institutions. Consequently, no article processing charges were levied, yet the publications were still completely freely available (“diamond open access”).

Meanwhile, that is, in 2026, advances in the ability to automatically translate texts from many languages into English have taken place and these would need to be taken into account regarding the workflow of any potential new edition of TDE (“TDE 2.0”).

We hope that you, dear readers, will find the articles published in volumes 1 through 6 useful and that they will continue to contribute to fostering ethnomusicological discourse across linguistic boundaries.

The editors