About the Journal

Quaderni dell'Osservatorio elettorale (QOE) – Italian Journal of Electoral Studies (IJES) - is an international scientific journal dedicated to all different dimensions of elections and voting.

Founded in 1977 by Mario Caciagli (University of Florence), QOE-IJES is a reference for electoral studies in Italy. Almost half a century later, QOE-IJES is now the official journal of the Italian Society for Electoral Studies (SISE). The Journal aims at continuing publishing high-quality original papers from both Italian and international scholars, with the aim to further becoming a main outlet of elections and voting, public opinion, political behavior, and party studies in Italy and beyond.

Along with the contributions of established scholars, the journal hosts and encourages the work of younger researchers.

Published two times per year, each issue contains five to six original research articles in English or Italian.

Submitted articles will be evaluated by the Editorial Board and assessed for publication through an anonymous double-blind peer-review process.

Aims and Scope

QOE-IJES embraces all approaches to electoral research, without restriction to any particular theory, method or topic. Articles should seek to engage with current debates and disciplinary developments, whether theoretical or empirical. Within broad topics concerning democracy and its new challenges - like e-voting, big and open (electoral) data, citizenship, and elections - contributions are welcome from all perspectives, covering aspects such as turnout, voting behavior, public opinion, campaigns, political parties, and electoral systems, amongst many others.

The journal is a political science review, but it is traditionally open to scholars working in any of the major social science disciplines such as political economy, sociology, contemporary history, social policy, social anthropology, socio-legal studies.

On specific topics of particular interest to the scientific community, QOE-IJES accepts articles for special issues, supervised by guest editors. QOE-IJES also publishes short research notes.

Rigourous Peer Review

Each submission to QOE-IJES is subject to rigorous quality control and double-blind peer-review evaluation process before receiving a decision. The initial in-house quality control check deals with issues such as competing interests; ethical requirements for studies involving human participants or animals; financial disclosures; full compliance with QOE-IJES's data availability policy, etc. 
Submissions may be returned to authors for queries, and will not be seen by our Editorial Board or peer reviewers until they pass this quality control check.
Each paper is then subjected to critical evaluation and review by the Editorial Team and/or some members of the international Editorial Board before being sent out for review.

Publication Frequency

QOE-IJES is published biannually

Publication Fees

Unlike many open-access journals, QOE-IJES does not charge any publication fee. 

Sponsorship

QOE-IJES acknowledges the financial contribution of the Regione Toscana for its publication.

Waiver Information

Fee waivers do not apply at Firenze University Press because our funding does not rely on author charges.