About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Open Access eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government (JeDEM) is owned and published by the Department for E-Governance and Administration, University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria.

JeDEM is a platinum/diamond scholarly-led open-access e-journal managed by an interdisciplinary team of scholars at the Department for E-Governance and Administration at the University Continuing Education Krems. JeDEM has been listed as a Q2 journal in 2023 by the Scimago Journal and Country Rankings. A new Chief Editor, an external scholar in the journal's key area, is invited every four years to advise on the journal's strategy. 

It provides a platform for those interested in discussing possibilities, issues and challenges that societies face today regarding digitalisation. Its inception was stimulated by the high-speed development of information and communication technologies, data and information-sharing policies and their use, which rapidly change and mutually influence society, governance and policies. 

JeDEM promotes contributions to the emerging science of the information age following the highest standards of peer review. JeDEM welcomes submissions related to e-democracy, e-society, e-participation, e-government, open data, data sharing and use, open science, open access and open source. Within this scope, JeDEM particularly welcomes, but is not limited to, submissions related to the following topics:

• e-Democracy
• ICT and communication technologies to promote democracy or (re-) democratisation;
• digital divide, social inclusion and related political strategies;
• data divide and algorithmic accountability;
• policy analysis;
• the role of security and privacy;
• democratic innovation, governance models and alternative solutions.
• e-Society and e-Participation
• civic technologies and platforms (e.g. evaluation, critical and innovative approaches, national or international solutions);
• collaborative decision-making and participatory budgeting;
• the role of civil society and organisations;
• stakeholder analysis, tool assessment and evaluation (e.g. political parties, government);
• analysis of platform engagement (e.g. semantic analysis, computational or discourse analytical approaches);
• co-decision, co-creation, co-production, decision-making and e-voting.
• e-Government
• general government services, evaluation of public policies (e.g. platforms for digital communication, virtual organisations and solutions, organisational training);
• decision-making, Artificial Intelligence and automatisation;
• environmental, social and smart governance solutions;
• governmental innovation.
• Open data, including both social and technical aspects and the intersection between them 
• open data policy, governance, decision-making and co-production;
• technical frameworks for open data and metadata (e.g. ontologies, data formats, standards and APIs, data visualisation, or data quality);
• evidence and impacts of open data on society or public administration; value of real-life applications based on open data, costs and benefits of providing or using open data; emerging good practices; value generation (e.g. transparency, accountability, economic value, public service provision).
• Data sharing and use, including but not limited to:
• data with different levels of openness;
• the role of public, private and societal stakeholders in data sharing and use, data end-users and intermediaries;
• challenges and solutions for data sharing and use by various actors, including governments, researchers, companies, citizens, journalists, students, NGOs, librarians and intermediaries.
• Open science, open access and open-source software, including but not limited to:
• best practices of open science;
• benefits and challenges of scholarly publication, publishing data, information, articles, and code through portals and platforms with different levels of openness;
• safe and responsible sharing of data, information, articles and code with others
• communication platforms to get more exposure and enhance the usability of (open) data information, publications and code.

We advise authors who are uncertain whether their article fits within JeDEM's focus to contact the journal manager, Andrea Chapman.

We encourage a diversity of methods and theoretical lenses, including critical studies in the above-mentioned thematic fields. The journal’s mission is to promote interdisciplinarity, unconventional ideas and multiple perspectives, and to connect leading thinkers and young scholars in inspiring reflections. JeDEM is an innovative journal that welcomes submissions from all disciplines and approaches. We publish both theoretical and empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative.

Submission Categories and Types of Reviews

When submitting your contribution, you will need to select one of the following categories:

• Research papers undergo a double-blind peer review:
• Regular submissions (submitted throughout the year, unrelated to a specific call for papers);
• Special issue submissions (related to a call for papers);
• Enhanced conference papers;
• Reflections (reviews, comments, discussions, interviews, project descriptions) undergo an editorial review.

Thus, double-blind reviewing is applied to submitted research papers, whereas reflections will be allocated to editorial review (see Section Policies under Submissions for more information).

Article Publication and Review Process

The typical double-blind peer review process for a research paper is as follows.

Authors submit a paper to our journal. The Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editors decide whether the paper will be sent out for review or whether it will be rejected immediately (i.e. a desk reject). To maintain our high-quality standard for research publications, we immediately reject papers of insufficient quality (about 50 per cent of all papers submitted to JeDEM). 

If the paper is selected for review, then at least two external peer reviewers will be assigned. Reviewers submit their reviews, and editors decide based on the submitted manuscript. Approximately 50 per cent of all papers sent out for review are rejected at this stage. The first review lasts four to six weeks.

Either the paper is accepted, the author(s) is/are asked to make revisions before acceptance, the author is asked to make major revisions and resubmit the article for a second review, or the paper is rejected.

The managing editor informs the author about the decision and forwards the reviews. The author has one month to revise an accepted manuscript and re-submit for a second round of reviews. The second round of reviews typically lasts four weeks.

Final decisions will be communicated to authors four months after submission.

Publication is usually quicker than in traditional journal publishing, and, depending on whether authors submitted to a special issue, the enhanced conference proceedings issue, or as an ongoing manuscript, their publication will be added to these issues; 

Open Access Policy

JeDEM provides full open access to its authors and readers. Publishing with and reading JeDEM is free of charge. We ask authors to register with JeDEM to manage the publishing process. To gain all the benefits of the JeDEM community we recommend authors, readers, editors and reviewers to register their interest with JeDEM. JeDEM is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal (ISSN: 2075-9517). All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence.

Archiving

This journal utilises the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries. It permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Publication Frequency

Ongoing submissions to JeDEM are published twice a year. We also invite the best papers and keynotes from the EGOV-CeDEM-ePart and E-Vote-lD conference series to publish in Special Issues. JeDEM has several sections per issue, so different sections can be included within one issue (for instance: submissions to a special issue might be published together with ongoing submissions).

We encourage authors to contribute to the open submission phase - all our usual policies apply. 

For special issues we will provide an open call on a specific topic, to be edited by guest editors. Watch for our announcements, or register a user on our platform!

Publication Ethics

JeDEM is committed to the standards of publishing integrity and academic honesty held up by the scientific community. We encourage editors, reviewers and authors to consult The Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) guidelines and to follow its code of conduct and procedures for peer review. We take misconduct (for example, plagiarism, unreferenced use of another’s published or unpublished ideas, or falsification) seriously, and the editors are committed to ensuring the highest possible quality of the publications. We are committed to publishing ethical, accurate and relevant information and declare that we are not dependent on or influenced by political or commercial factors. In the case of a conflict of interests, we will communicate those and the editors might step back from their role and be replaced by another editor. All decisions for acceptance, revisions or rejection of papers are based on the quality of submissions and relevance to our journal. In the case of errors, we commit to correction or retraction.

We commit to the usage of a double-blind peer-review process conducted by experts in the field. These experts should provide unbiased, constructive and fair feedback aimed at improving a manuscript. If we detect a reviewer's personalised or unfair treatment of a manuscript, editors commit to assigning another reviewer or overrule the reviewer. 

If editors detect unethical conduct regarding submissions, the following sanctions shall be applied: we will formally withdraw the paper and inform the relevant editors, indexing authorities and the appropriate institution. Authors will be informed about the issue, and further submissions from the author or research unit will be refused until further notice. 

As part of our ethical standards, authors are requested to confirm that they will comply with a list of items regarding their submission to JeDEM; for instance, all co-authors have approved the work and it is not accepted or published or simultaneously submitted elsewhere. 

JeDEM accepts extended and updated versions of conference proceedings for publication as research articles. These updated versions of previous work will be double-blind peer-reviewed. We encourage authors to fully disclose the previous publication or the publication of parts of the article within the acknowledgements section of the submission. 

If guest editors are working for the journal, editors will ensure that they adhere to the submission process, peer-review process, and the ethical standards of JeDEM.

Plagiarism

We take plagiarism very seriously and aim for transparent publishing. All submissions to JeDEM will be checked for plagiarism using Turnitin software before the peer review. We  have the following guidelines regarding plagiarism and re-use of previously published material:

1. It is the author/s responsibility to ensure correct referencing to others and their work.

2. We accept submissions that contain up to 30% of the submitting authors' previously published material;

3. If the submission to JeDEM contains material from a previous submission, authors are expected to reference the material accordingly;

4. Authors are to point out the re-use of previously published material in the acknowledgements section of the submission to indicate where it has been previously published/where the original can be found, and how the contribution to JeDEM represents a novel contribution or is different from the original publication.

Policy on Re-Use

JeDEM publishes (revised) papers as part of conference proceedings. If this applies, all conference papers may be subsequently updated or enhanced for further publication as regular journal articles. Articles published as reflections or project descriptions can be extended, further developed or integrated into other research that might later be published.

Benefits of JeDEM

What are the main benefits of publishing with JeDEM? 

• Open access – JeDEM publishes your work free from access barriers, allowing for global distribution and more citations.
• Free of charge – Submitting to and publishing in JeDEM is not tied to processing charges or APCs (fair, open access).
• Peer-reviewed – JeDEM offers a rigorous double-blind peer-review for research articles by experts in the field.
• Rapid publishing process – JeDEM offers a quick online publishing process while maintaining high academic standards. We aim for a one-month peer review period and publish two issues per year.
• Ongoing submissions – You can submit to JeDEM throughout the year.
• Licensing – JeDEM content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), allowing for the distribution of your work.
• Archiving policies – All articles are archived with LOCKKS You can deposit your paper in any repository or archive and post articles on your personal or institutional websites.
• Indexing - Once published, your article will be comprehensively indexed within Scopus, EBSCO, DOAJ, Google Scholar, and the Public Knowledge Project metadata harvester.   
• DOIs – Each article is identified with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier).
• Post-publication statistics - Metrics shown with each article make it easy to check how often your paper is downloaded via JeDEM's website and how frequently it is being mentioned and shared through social media.
• Add supplementary material - You can make data sets, protocols, large illustrations, videos, questionnaires, etc., available to readers alongside your article.
• Established journal within the e-governance and e-democracy community - JeDEM is recognised within the scientific community and supported by leading scholars in the field.
• Paper categories and reuse policy - JeDEM also accepts submissions in the categories of project descriptions and reflections. These sections are not peer-reviewed and can be extended and re-used for further publication, e.g. as regular peer-reviewed journal articles.

Indexing

All documents are indexed in major bibliographic databases. JeDEM is indexed with Scopus,  EBSCO, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Google Scholar, and the Public Knowledge Project metadata harvester. 

JeDEM has been listed as a Q2 journal in 2023 by the Scimago Journal and Country Rankings.

Each document receives a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) from Crossref.

JeDEM articles are also available in DOOR, the online repository of the University for Continuing Education Krems. 

As authors, please update the metadata in our publishing system during the publishing process, as this metadata will be used for indexing - not the data and terms you put into the file. We do our best, but we strongly suggest you use our publishing system and update your metadata when you change an article.

Commenting on Articles

All published articles can be commented on by readers (if you want to make a comment, register as a reader and then use the "add comment" section, which is visible on the right-hand side of the abstract of a paper).