From now on, German-speaking authors will also be able to submit articles in English to our journal "Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft (M&K)" [Media & Communication Studies]. Until now, this was only possible for those who did not speak German. M&K is published with texts in both languages but German remains important to us.
For many years, we have discussed again and again in the M&K editorial team how we want to deal with English-language articles. So far, we have only accepted such submissions from authors who do not speak German. With the newer Software Reviews section, we have already deviated from this policy and now want to do the same for the other articles. In future, we will also accept English-language texts from native German-speaking authors in our peer review process. M&K will therefore be published with texts in both languages.
Those Who Want to be Noticed Publish in English
In the course of the discipline's increased orientation towards international discourse and the understandable desire for more visibility of one's own work, publishing colleagues have for years increasingly chosen international journals as their place of publication, which has meant noticeably fewer submissions for German-language journals. As long as M&K was published exclusively as a printed German-language journal, it also made less sense from an impact point of view to publish an English-language text in it, because M&K was not perceived by the English-speaking world.
International through Open Access
This situation has changed decisively with the publication as an open access publication in its most open form as CC-BY since 2021. The author's own article can be freely redistributed and posted in repositories, and the possibility and likelihood of international reception is therefore significantly greater than before. In certain cases, it can now also be interesting for native German speakers to publish their work in M&K in English.
German Remains Important
M&K sees itself as an interdisciplinary forum for excellent contributions from the entire field of media and communication studies with all its current developments, oriented towards the international state of research, open in terms of content and structure. M&K aims to promote education in the subject and the transfer of scientific findings in the German-speaking world and to provide further impulses in (inter)national research. However, the geographical focus of the articles published in M&K is often on the German-speaking region, for example when reporting on German media offerings or referring to German theories. Many articles are also aimed at a public that likes to receive content in German. A communication science that articulates itself academically largely in English will have a hard time making the relevance of its research clear to political, economic, social and cultural actors at the national level.
Thinking and Writing in the Mother Tongue
Furthermore, we remain convinced that thinking and formulating in one's own language is often much more differentiated and precise within one's own specific discourse framework and tradition. In the sense of a diverse and innovative academic discourse and in order to avoid a divergence between English professional discourse and German education, we therefore want to continue to publish German-language contributions in M&K.
(Excerpt from the "Editorial" in M&K 1-2/2023)
Hamburg, 11 May 2023
