About the Journal

SUMMARY

S:I.M.O.N. is the open-access peer-reviewed e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). S:I.M.O.N. is committed to immediate open access for academic work. All research articles undergo a rigorous peer review process, based on initial editor screening and anonymised refereeing by at least two external scholars. SWL Readers, Coming to Terms, Events, Essays, and Reviews are reviewed by the Editorial Team and the Editorial Board. All of the journal articles are free to access from the date of publication. There are no author charges prior to publication and there is no charge for readers to download articles for their own use. S:I.M.O.N. is free to all in perpetuity. To this end, S:I.M.O.N. relies on the dedicated work of its Editorial Team and Editorial Board and the much appreciated support of its international network of peer reviewers.

PUBLICATION FREQUENCY

S:I.M.O.N. appears twice a year. S:I.M.O.N. publishes Special Issues and Special Sections consisting of original papers focused on a particular topic. The current editorial strategy is that Special Issues (about 6-10 papers) or Special Sections (about 3-5 papers) should only appear in fewer than half the issues that make up the journal each year.

JOURNAL HISTORY

S:I.M.O.N. was founded in 2014 by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI).

FOCUS AND SCOPE

S:I.M.O.N. aims at both a transnational and comparative history of the Holocaust and Jewish studies in Central and Eastern Europe within the broader contexts of the European history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including its antecedents, consequences, and legacies as well as the history of memory.

S:I.M.O.N. serves as a forum for discussion of various methodological approaches. The journal especially wishes to strengthen the exchange between researchers from different scholarly communities and to integrate both Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust in different ‘national’ narratives. It also places a special emphasis on memory studies and the analysis of politics of memory. In its articles section, the journal uses a single-blind review system, which means that the reviewer’s identity remains concealed to the author throughout the review process.

Shoah. The journal deals with the history of the Shoah from multidisciplinary, transnational, and comparative perspectives. It seeks to integrate studies on Jews as well as on other groups of victims of the Holocaust, especially on Roma, and of hitherto less researched regions of (East) Central and (South) Eastern Europe.

Intervention. The journal reports on research projects and their transmission in public events. It also informs about current educational and remembrance programmes.

Methods. The journal serves as a forum for the discussion of methodological approaches as, for instance, the everyday history, oral history, gender history, the history of violence, antisemitism, and racism, and the theory of memory and memory politics.

DocumentatiON. The journal contributes to critical approaches on using and interpreting archival materials in the twenty-first century.

S:I.M.O.N. has six rubrics:

Articles includes both the final papers of the VWI fellows presenting their research results at the VWI and contributions either suggested by the Board of Editors or the editors, or that have been sent to S:I.M.O.N. and accepted.

SWL Reader publishes the manuscripts of the Simon Wiesenthal Lectures held at the institute if provided by the lecturer.

Coming to Terms provides a forum for personal accounts of survivors, their children, and grandchildren. The contributions range from personal essays and family history research projects to historical studies. Before publication, these texts are copy-edited and proof-read by the journal editors.

Events reproduces texts and audio-visual material presented at the institute’s interventions in the public sphere.

Essays reflects on sources, methods, and texts presented within the Methods and Sources Seminar of the fellows, presenting these and adding interpretations, problems, and possible approaches.

Reviews discusses publications in the research field of S:I.M.O.N. from smaller language areas which the Editorial Board and the editors regard as important and which might otherwise not get the attention they deserve.

PUBLICATION ETHICS & OPEN ACCESS STATEMENT

Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of information published in S:I.M.O.N. Any infringements of professional ethical codes, such as cases of plagiarism, the fraudulent use of data, and bogus claims of authorship are taken very seriously by the editors, who apply a principle of zero tolerance. S:I.M.O.N. follows the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and uses COPE Flowcharts to resolve cases of suspected misconduct.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been previously published in any form in English or German and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission. Authors who include tables or other data in their manuscripts that have been published in earlier research or who faithfully reproduce a section or component of a table from a pre-existing publication should check who owns the original copyright and obtain permission to reuse the relevant data/material.

Authors are required to obtain permission to reproduce any proprietary text, illustrations, tables, or other material, including data, audio, video, film stills, and screenshots, and any other supplementary material that is submitted to S:I.M.O.N. This rule applies to direct reproductions as well as ‘derivative reproduction’ of source material (the creation of a new figure or table substantially deriving from a copyrighted source). The reproduction and inclusion in a manuscript of short extracts of text, excluding poetry and song lyrics, may be possible without obtaining formal permission on the basis that any quotations are reproduced accurately and are fully attributed to the original author/s.

Upon request, data on which analyses are based must be made available to the editors and reviewers for the purposes of manuscript evaluation. Authors are also asked to make relevant data available to readers without undue qualifications.

Copyright allows the author to protect original material and stops others from using their work without permission. The name of any and all third-party sources of funding must be provided and the complete names and numbers of any supporting grants must be included in the acknowledgments section of articles.

Any and all opinions and views expressed in the journal are the opinions and views of contributing authors and do not necessarily represent, nor are endorsed by, S:I.M.O.N. The journal and its editors will not be liable for any losses, claims, legal proceedings, costs, damages, or any other liabilities howsoever generated, directly or indirectly, from the use of data and information published in the journal.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

S:I.M.O.N. 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. 

PEER REVIEW POLICY

S:I.M.O.N. applies a double-blind review system. Reviewers are invited by the editors or – if necessary – by suggestion of the Editorial Board. The reviewers are experts in the given field and are neither institutionally nor personally associated with the author. Reviews are provided by way of a uniform editorial form. Reviewers should decline to review manuscripts in which they have a competing interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors or institutions connected to the papers.

Decisions on Accepting, Revising, or Rejecting a Manuscript
The decision to accept, rework, or reject an article is governed by the following rules:

  • If both reviews are favourable (“Accept”), the final decision on acceptance is taken by the editors.
  • Likewise, if both reviews are unfavourable (“Reject”), the final decision on rejection is taken by the editors.
  • If both reviews suggest minor revisions (“Minor revisions required”), the author is invited to revise the manuscript, which is forwarded to the editors.
  • If both reviews suggest major revisions (“Resubmit for review”), the author is invited to revise the text, which is then sent for a new assessment either to the reviewers who raised the original objections, or to a third reviewer.
  • If the reviewers fail to reach consensus even after reviewing a revised version of the article, the editors will either contact a third reviewer (if such action was not taken earlier) or put the article forward to the editors for a final decision whether to accept or reject.

The editors have two weeks after having received the reviews to make their decision.
The author(s) will receive a Report to the Author(s). The editors immediately inform the author about the decision. The entire procedure should be completed within ten to sixteen weeks from receiving the manuscript, depending on the number of reviews required. The editors and the Editorial Board are not liable for any delays caused by reviewers.

Guidelines to the Peer Reviewing and Editing Process

Peer review helps validate research, establish a method by which it can be evaluated, and increase networking possibilities within research communities. Despite criticism, we regard peer review still the only widely accepted method for research validation. The Peer Reviewing Process of S:I.M.O.N. follows the Best Practice Guidelines recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Reviewers are invited by the editors upon suggestions made by the Board of Editors of the Academic Advisory Board or own one’s discussed and finalised in an editorial meeting.

If invited please consider

  • whether the article actually matches your area of expertise,
  • if there is a potential conflict of interest – and
  • if you can meet the given deadline.

Reviewers should decline to review manuscripts in which they have a competing interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors or institutions connected to the papers.

For Reviewers: Respond to the invitation as soon as you can – and if you decline, please provide suggestions for alternative reviewers. Once you have accepted, please regard the documents as confidential, do not share information about the review with anyone. Your review will help the editors decide whether or not to publish the article. The editors confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision final. First read the article thoroughly, consider it from your own perspective. Then mark any comments, changes, suggestions with “track changes” in Word in the text itself. These remarks should be courteous, not contain any personal or offensive remarks. Finally, please fill in the downloadable form thus giving an overall opinion and general observations of the contribution. If you wish, you can also summarise the article in a short paragraph, give a main evaluation of it, whether it is in any way novel, innovative or interesting, what approach, method or source is new. If you suspect plagiarism or other ethical concerns, contact the editor, providing details. For further guidance on writing a review, read the Reviewer Information Pack of Elsevier, which contains helpful assistance.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

S:I.M.O.N. operates under the Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives). This allows for the reproduction of all articles, free of charge, for non-commercial use, and with appropriate citation information. Authors publishing with S:I.M.O.N. should accept these as the terms of publication. The copyright of all articles remains with the author of the article. The copyright of the layout and design of articles published in S:I.M.O.N. remains with S:I.M.O.N. and may not be used in any other publications.

PRIVACY STATEMENT

We take our responsibility to process your personal data in a fair and transparent way seriously. We collect and manage user data according to the following policy. S:I.M.O.N. follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.

Why we collect your data:
Registering and creating an account allows you to log in, manage your profile, and participate as an author, as a reviewer, or as an editor. When registering an account, we ask you to log in and provide your name, email address, profession, and – if applicable – academic affiliation.
As an author: The personal data submitted will be used in the review process – which is single-blind – and will eventually become a part of the published article in order to attribute your work and the provenance thereof correctly.
As a reviewer: After an invitation by the editors and your registration, your data will be used as a contact address during the review process solely by the editors. Your data will not be shared publicly and will only be accessible to the editors and system administrators of S:I.M.O.N. The data will only be used in connection with this journal.

Why we store your data:
Published personal data that accompanies an article forms part of the official published record in order to document the provenance of the work and to attribute the work correctly.
What to do if you want to get a copy of your data or want your data to be removed:
As an author: You are able to view, change, and remove your data associated with your profile. Should you choose to delete your account completely, please contact us at simon@vwi.ac.at. To conform to publication ethics and best practice, any personal data that is published alongside an article cannot be removed.
As a reviewer: If you would no longer like to be registered as a reviewer, you can edit your profile. This will remove your role as a reviewer and you will not receive any more review requests. However, any existing reviews you may have carried out will remain.

ARCHIVING

The PKP Preservation Network (PN) provides free preservation services for any OJS journal that meets a few basic criteria. The PKP PN plugin for OJS 3 is currently in development and will be available in the plugin gallery soon. Additionally, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) is committed to the preservation of the journal content, and therefore provides webserver storage space for long-term content hosting.

ISSN: 2408-9192

PUBLISHER

Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI), A-1010 Wien, Rabensteig 3, Österreich

S:I.M.O.N. is indexed by DOAJ, EBSCO, CEEOL, ICI Journals Master List database and RAMBI. The evaluation process is at an advanced stage with SCOPUS and Clarivate.