The Open Access Journal coMMents Goes Online

Last week, the Mauthausen Memorial launched the first edition of its new online open access ejournal coMMents. The new format functions as a successor to the Yearbook, which was discontinued in 2017. It provides a forum for short, academic texts that deal with topics relating to the Mauthausen concentration camp complex.

Since the beginning of the year, much of the work of the Mauthausen Memorial has been focused on the development of the memorial site on the grounds of the former Gusen concentration camp. Consequently, the history of the Gusen concentration camp was chosen as the special topic for the first collection of academic articles in the new open access journal coMMents.

As an exclusively online medium, the journal has many advantages in terms of reach and general accessibility. In addition, it provides young researchers with the opportunity to publish their work for free. Alongside creating international networks and promoting knowledge at a global level – English abstracts are available for all articles – one of its aims is to be included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Each January a special topic is announced and researchers are invited to submit hitherto unpublished papers in German or English. Articles are also accepted which deal more generally with the history of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and its over 40 subcamps, which take an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of different Nazi-era types of ‘camp’, or which offer new findings in the field of memory culture. Further details can be found on the website.

Submitted articles go through an evaluation process based on the principle of editorial review. External experts are also involved in the form of the Editorial Advisory Board and the Scientific Board. Following the review stage, five to ten articles are selected for publication and appear at intervals throughout the year. At the end of the year, all the published articles are compiled to create a new edition of coMMents.

Five articles have been published to date and the ejournal coMMents can be accessed here: https://comments.mauthausen-memorial.org