The Living Reviews in Democracy (LRD) is now online. It is a new member of the family of Living Reviews journals. One of the most important features of the LRD is that its articles are updated regularly by the authors; this is the significance of the word ‘living’ in the title. Web-based and peer-reviewed, the LRD publishes reviews of research on core themes relating to democracy. Articles are solicited by an international editorial board from scientists who are experts in their fields. They provide critical outlines of the state of the art in the subjects covered and offer annotated insights (and where possible, active links) into the key literature. 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.

LRD is part of the global Open Access movement for free, immediate, and permanent online access to knowledge and research results. The journal is published by the Center for Comparative and International Studies at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich in the framework of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research “Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century”. The Editor-in-Chief is Prof. Dr. Frank Schimmelfennig.

The concept of Living Reviews journals was developed by institutes of the Max Planck Society, which pioneered the Living Reviews in Relativity (LRR) and the Living Reviews in Solar Physics (LRSP). Living Reviews in Relativity has already been online for ten years and became one of the primary resources in gravitational physics. Since 2007, the Living Reviews in Landscape Research (LRLR) is published by the ZALF, an institute of the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft. The journal family is now affiliated with the Max Planck Digital Library, which provides technical infrastructure and software support.

LRD is the second Living Reviews journal in the social sciences, besides the recently launched Living Reviews in European Governance (LREG), which is published by the European Community Studies Association Austria.

Press release (PDF): en | de