Editorial Procedures

The Institute of Germanic Studies attach great importance to the portfolio of reviewed articles appearing in their open access journal.

To ensure the scientific quality of the publications, submissions have to be accepted by the editorial team in order to be published. To ensure swift processing, independent and external reviewers will also be appointed besides the editorial team.

All submitted manuscripts will be checked by the editorial team to determine whether they are properly prepared. Manuscripts that do not meet the standards of the journal will be rejected before peer review.

Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to two experts for peer review. A double-blind peer review is applied. The independent reviewers are asked to evaluate the paper on the following criteria: is the main question addressed by the research scientifically relevant and interesting? Does the article meet the academic standards of the research field? If the recommendations of the two reviewers are contradictory, a third reviewer will be assigned. The anonymous reviews will be sent to the authors of the accepted articles for revision of the manuscript (1st proofreading). During the second proofreading cycle, authors will receive a typeset document (in pdf), and are asked to check for typographical errors, spelling errors, errors in punctuation etc.

The publishers endeavour to publish the accepted, edited and corrected articles within four months after submission.

Submission of articles:

The articles can be sent continuously to the specified e-mail address.

Data Privacy Protection

Names and email addresses submitted during the process of submitting papers will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Guidelines for Reviewers

All manuscripts will receive two reviews. To make the decision easier for the editorial team, the reviewers are asked to make one of the following recommendations:

  • accept as is;
  • modifications are required (with suggestions from the reviewer);

The reviewers are asked to give a short recommendation whether or not the paper is publishable. Reviewers are not asked to edit for language. If a manuscript is rejected, or several modifications are required before publishing, reviewers are asked to be as detailed as possible in their comments, providing suggestions to authors on how to strengthen the manuscript and where revision is necessary in order to get the paper to a publishable standard.