Focus and Scope
Living Reviews in Democracy (LRD) is a web-based, peer-reviewed journal, publishing reviews of research on core themes relating to Democracy. LRD is supported by the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century, headquartered at the University of Zurich and the Center for Comparative and International Studies at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich.
The articles in LRD are solicited from specialists in their fields and are directed towards the scientific community at or above the graduate student level. The articles provide up-to-date critical reviews of the state of research in the fields they cover. They also offer annotated insights (and where possible, active links) into the key literature and describe online resources available in these fields. LRD is unique in maintaining a range of high-quality reviews and all articles are subjected to strict peer-review. In addition, the journal is offered as a free service to the scientific community. One of the most important features of LRD is that its articles are kept up-to-date by their authors. This is the significance of the word Living in the journal's title.
The concept of Living Reviews journals was developed by the Max Planck Institute, which pioneered the Living Reviews in Relativity and the Living Reviews in Solar Physics. Besides the recently launched Living Reviews in European Governance, LRD is only the second Living Reviews journal in the social sciences.
There are many advantages to LRD being an electronic journal. For one, its content can be regularly updated. For another, its content is easily navigable and searchable, and the journal includes useful indexes of print and electronic resources. In this way, LRD can be used by its readers as a database, an encyclopedia, or a research briefing, in addition to a review journal. The goal of the journal is to develop its articles into a carefully screened and edited, well-integrated, topical set of hypertext documents that, taken together, form a valuable research tool for scholars of Democracy.
Section Policies
Reviews
 Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Peer Review Process
The editors solicit articles with a view to achieving uniform coverage of research on democracy. Review articles cannot be submitted without solicitation but we encourage authors interested in writing a review article to contact the responsible subject editor. All submitted articles are reviewed and edited carefully, with attention paid to content, organization, and style. The journal is organized into yearly volumes. Articles appear throughout the year, as they are ready for publication. The journal carries no page charges for authors and no subscription fees for users.
Content
Each article is expected to be a thorough overview of the state of the art and a commentary of its evolution, achievements and gaps. An author specializing in a given area informs advanced scholars from other areas about the latest significant research in his or her area of specialization. Although articles may explain difficult concepts and provide an overall framework for understanding work in a field, they will not be primarily tutorial in nature. Rather than methodically covering every aspect of a given research area, an article published in LRD highlights significant issues affecting the field, provides thoughtful and evaluative commentary on the essential techniques and concepts being used in current research, and offers insight into the challenges facing future research efforts. Rather than presenting a series of reviews of individual publications, reviews should review literatures relating to fields of research. Where appropriate, we also encourage authors to conduct< meta-analyses. Through their commentary, and, where appropriate, by offering direct annotation, authors guide users to the most useful, reliable, and interesting references.Updating
Because LRD offers immediate online access to all its articles and to any online materials cited in those articles, it recognizes that it is essential that all articles and all links stay current. LRD will stay current in the following ways. First, and most importantly, authors will revise articles as important new research developments occur. We encourage our authors to submit annual updates of their reviews, which will be marked by a version number added to the original article’s publication number. Every second or third year these updates should lead into a major revision of the article, which is considered a new publication. As such it is again subject to refereeing and will be published with a new publication number. Errata are added directly to the original review and marked throughout the article. All links to online resources made in articles and in the journal at large will be actively maintained. They will be checked frequently and updated as needed.Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
ISSN: 1663-0165 | LivingReviews.org
