About the Journal

The Korea Europe Review (KER) is an interdisciplinary platinum open access, peer-reviewed journal specializing in Korean studies while encompassing the social sciences in a broad sense. KER will be open for contributions from the following fields:

Social Sciences

  • Anthropology (where it intersects with a humanities or social science focus)
  • Economics (with a strong emphasis on non-econometric, qualitative, and comparative work on Korea-Europe relations)
  • Political Geography (where it intersects with a humanities or social science focus)
  • Politics (international relations, comparative politics)
  • Regional & Area Studies
  • Sociology (comparative, political, cultural, economic, social conflict)

Humanities

  • History (social, political, cultural, conceptual)
  • Media Studies (where it intersects with a strong humanities or social science focus)
  • Political Philosophy
  • Society & Culture

While the primary focus is on the Korean peninsula, the journal’s perspective aims to transcend the traditional boundaries of regional and area studies in its mission to integrate scholarship on Korea in a multidimensional context of regional as well as global social, cultural and political discourse.

The launching of KER answers to the growing demand for scholarly expertise in these fields. In a methodological sense, it also addresses the need to transcends traditional, disciplinary confines of regional and area studies in order to integrate scholarship on the Korea peninsula in just such multidimensional contexts. Beyond longstanding discourses in security and non-proliferation studies, KER thus aims to reflect the region’s increasing importance in terms of geo-cultural and geo-economic dynamics. This pertains to developments of new old and new forms of political, cultural, social, economic, and epistemic hegemony in East and South-East Asia, both on a theoretical-conceptional level as well as in terms of concrete phenomena of transregional, international and indeed global power structures.

By firmly situating the study of the Korean Peninsula within the analysis of regional, global and international transformations KER endeavours to provide a platform for such multifocal perspectives and innovative research designs and create an opening for broad and indeed global, cross- and interdisciplinary research beyond the journal’s immediate regional focus. As a scholarly journal, KER does not publish articles that primarily centre on explicitly advocating specific public policy recommendations or state policies.

We therefore seek to promote intellectual and scholarly dialogue between Korea and Europe and foster cooperation among scholars of the Korean peninsula throughout Eurasia and elsewhere. At KER we not only understand the term Korea to encompass both North and South Korea and also seeks to give voice to scholarship beyond the Anglo-American and European academia.

 

KER will be published bi-annually. It will contain both regular sections (original research articles, policy insights, review essays) and periodic content (roundtables, forum, new approaches, creative encounters, next generation). In addition, the journal will publish special issues on select topics at least once a year. Potential guest editors interested in curating a special issue are encouraged to contact the editors at an early stage to discuss their ideas and the suitability of their topics.

We welcome submissions on a rolling, year-round basis. We also aim to make the review process as short and transparent as possible. (Please refer to our submission guidelines.) Submissions must be made electronically in the appropriate format (OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format). Please contact the editors if you have any queries regarding the submission process or are unsure whether your article fits the journal's thematic scope.

The journal’s editorial team also endeavours to go the extra mile in supporting the next generation of scholars and working with them to get their work published in accordance with the high standards set by our editorial and peer review processes. While authors should not expect to use the editorial review process as a means to structure their arguments and ideas, and we will have to turn down submissions of insufficient scholarly quality, our editorial focus is on constructively engaging with, improving and strengthening the arguments that scholars wish to make.

 

Korea Europe Review journal content is freely available to download, store, reproduce, and transmit for non-commercial, scholarly, and educational purposes.

By choosing to forego access barriers such as subscription paywalls or submission fees and publish open access, the KER endeavours to further the dissemination of knowledge and facilitate free educational access to high quality scholarly research. Although scientific and scholarly journals are typically made institutionally available to university-based researchers throughout the Anglo-American and European academia, there are significant numbers of scholars and researchers—including those in other countries—who typically lack institutional subscriptions via their departments or university libraries, or who cannot afford to subscribe to or pay for journal content pertinent to their work. Maintaining monopolies on scholarly content or barricading it behind paywalls, we believe, goes against the essence of the scientific endeavour and hinders rather than advances the cause of scholarship.

Though authors grant KER the exclusive right of first publication, they also retain full publishing rights with the sole restriction of acknowledging first publication in KER.

Reproduction and transmission of KER journal content must credit the author and KER as its original source. Use, reproduction, or distribution of KER journal content for commercial purposes will require express permissions, either from KER (editorial content) or from our authors (scholarly content).

Finally, a note on article processing charges (APCs): At no stage of the publication process will KER charge author fees for publication. All publication services rendered, e.g. peer review, editing, formatting etc., are completely free to our authors.