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Submission checklist

As part of the submission process, corresponding authors are asked to confirm or accept the following conditions on behalf of all authors of the article.

☑ The submitted manuscript is previously unpublished and has not been submitted to any other journal (otherwise a statement is attached in "Comments to the Editor").

☑ The corresponding author grants the journal the unrestricted right of first publication on behalf of all authors.

☑ The corresponding author declares in their own name and in the name of all authors to have written the submitted workthemselves and to be its author in the legal sense (in the case of several authors: jointly co-author).

☑ The corresponding author assures that they are authorized by all authors to make the declarations listed here, and that they and all other authors can dispose of the rights to the extent stated; in particular, that no rights of third parties conflict with the publication. In this respect, they jointly and severally indemnify the journal, the Hamburg State and University Library, and the publisher Hamburg University Press from third-party claims.

☑ All published articles in this journal are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. By submitting a manuscript, the corresponding author accepts publication after successful peer review on behalf of all authors under the CC BY 4.0 license.

☑ The corresponding author accepts distribution of the article's metadata after successful peer review under the CC0 1.0 universal license on behalf of all authors.

☑ The privacy policy of the journal is acknowledged.

☑ The manuscript file is saved as Microsoft Word dokument (*.docx).

☑ A blinded and an unblinded version of the manuscript are prepared. Please remove all identifying information from the blinded version, including source file information. This can be done through i.e., the MS office Document Inspector.

☑ Text, tables, and figures follow the stylistic and bibliographic guidelines found in the formatting guidelines.

☑ Citations in the text are linked (cross-linked) to references within the MS Word document (*.docx). Digital object identifiers (DOI) have been added to the references where available and linked (hyperlinks).

☑ All figures can be provided in vector format (e.g. *.pdf / *.eps) or as high-resolution pixel images (e.g. *.png) in case of a successful review process. See formatting guidelines of the journal.

☑ In accordance with the journal's ethical guidelines, the paper contains the following statements: (1) author contributions following the CRediT taxonomy, (2) data availability, (3) funding information, (4) conflicts of interest, and (5) use of Artificial Intelligence.

☑ The journal's author guidelines not named here are also met.

Author guidelines

Please read the author guidelines carefully. Submissions that do not meet the author guidelines may be rejected according to the journal's review process.

In the author guidelines you will find additional information on all mandatory metadata that must be provided during the submission process.

Detailed guidelines for the formatting of contributions and a template in MS Word format (*.docx) can be found in the formatting guidelines.

Journal sections

Taking Stock
The “Taking stock” section aims to aggregate, describe and discuss the current state of research for a sub-area either through a comprehensive, systematic literature review or in the form of a meta-analysis of empirical studies. Authors are encouraged to limit their manuscript to a maximum of 10,000 words (excluding literature and appendices). Longer manuscripts will still be considered for review if the additional context is necessary to follow the argument or helps to reproduce the study in the future. Submission to this section is possible at any time. The assignment by the authors takes place during the submission process.
➟ Make a new submission to Taking stock.

Next Steps
The “Next steps” section makes it possible to submit a theoretical contribution or an empirical study at any time and thus continuously expand the state of research. Authors are encouraged to limit their manuscript to a maximum of 10,000 words (excluding literature and appendices). Longer manuscripts will still be considered for review if the additional context is necessary to follow the argument or helps to reproduce the study in the future. The assignment by the authors takes place during the submission process.
➟ Make a new submission to Next steps.

Focus
The “Focus” section aims at a specific topic of the subject area or a specific problem. The content and submission deadlines are communicated via calls for papers (CfP). The maximum length for the manuscript is communicated via the CfP. The assignment by the authors takes place during the submission process.
➟ Make a new submission to Focus.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

This journal is a pure open access journal. The journal neither charges article processing charges (APCs) nor article submission charges. For authors, neither the submission nor the publication of articles in the journal incurs any costs.

License information

Articles in this journal are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.