Call for Abstracts: Special Issue of Comma 2024:1 on “Archives and Theft”

Comma, the Journal of the International Council on Archives (ICA), invites abstract submissions for a special issue dedicated to the theme of “Archives and Theft,” set for publication in November 2026.  

Theft has long posed a threat to archives, compromising the integrity, accessibility, and trustworthiness of historical records. This special issue focuses specifically on non-political, “ordinary” forms of archival theft, those not connected to war crimes, politically motivated removals, or acts of state aggression. Instead, the emphasis is on cases occurring in institutional settings, affecting both public and private collections, often involving insider threats, opportunistic theft, or lapses in security protocols. 

Beyond deliberate acts of theft, related concerns such as illicit trade in archival materials, unauthorized access, and vulnerabilities in digital recordkeeping systems also merit urgent attention. This issue aims to explore these multifaceted challenges, shedding light on practical prevention strategies, recovery and restitution efforts, and the ethical implications for the global archival community. In addition, contributors are encouraged to explore the underlying motivations behind archival theft, including monetary gain, personal or familial claims to ownership, and the desire to possess a historical artefact as well as the short- and long-term consequences of theft. Such impacts may include loss of contextual integrity within fonds, diminished value of collections, reputational harm to repositories, and adverse effects on staff morale. 

1. Types and Cases of Theft 

• • Historical and Contemporary Cases 

• • Physical Theft Case Studies 

• • Digital Theft and Cybersecurity (including issues such as deliberate scraping of digital content by large language models (LLMs) without consent or attribution, and related vulnerabilities in the age of AI) 

2. Actors and Institutions: including the roles and responsibilities of users, employees, contractors, and other external staff as potential actors in archival theft. 

• • Users, employees, external staff 

• • Role of Institutions 

• • Community Archives and Vulnerability 

3. Legal and Ethical Dimensions 

• • Legal and Ethical Considerations  

• • Illicit Trade and Black Markets 

4. Responses and Consequences 

• • Preventive Measures and Security Strategies 

• • Impact on Cultural Heritage 

• • Recovery and Restitution Efforts 

Submission Guidelines  

Abstracts should be a maximum of 250 words, accompanied by a brief biography for each author of no more than 75 words. The abstract must clearly outline the article’s focus, the research context or methodology, and the anticipated conclusions or contributions. Each article, if accepted, can be up to 6,000 words but may be shorter if appropriate to the subject matter. Comma welcomes articles in any of the journal’s seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. 

We encourage submissions from a diverse range of contributors, including archivists, records managers, conservators, administrators, community leaders, scholars, early-career professionals, and first-time authors from across all ICA regions.   

Please submit your questions to the Editor-in-Chief for Comma, Forget Chaterera-Zambuko (comma@ica.org), and the “Archives and Theft” Special Issue editors, Jörg Ludwig (joerg.ludwig@sta.smi.sachsen.de) and Rosana De Andrés Díaz (rosana@interior.es). 

Submit your abstract 

Please use this form to submit your abstract by 15 October 2025. 

Refer to Comma’s submission guidelines for further details on article requirements. 

All articles published in the journal (including in any special issues) are subject to peer review by objective experts in the field prior to acceptance by the journal editor(s). The journal employs a double-anonymous review (anonymity strictly observed between author and reviewer).