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 to continue publishing high-quality original papers from both Italian and international scholars, with the aim to further becoming a main outlet for 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, and 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 a 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.
A plagiarism check is also performed using Crossref Similarity Check (iThenticate), to ensure the originality of submitted manuscripts.

Replicability and Transparency Policy

QOE-IJES seeks to foster the fundamental principles of research replicability and transparency. In this light, QOE-IJES follows these guidelines:

• Authors of quantitative works are encouraged to either make their original datasets available upon acceptance and publication of their work; or, alternatively, indicate the length of “embargo” periods (i.e., when the dataset will become available) and intended data sharing modes. In this regard, we encourage authors to upload their data on existing data repositories. Regardless of whether empirical analyses rely on original or secondary data, both the Editors and reviewers may additionally ask for the employed software code.
  
  
• Authors of qualitative works are also encouraged to make their data available, so to enhance research transparency. In line with other international political science journals, ways in which this could be achieved are, e.g., sharing list of the places and dates of the interviews; longer interview excerpts that are relevant to the submitted work, to the extent that they do not breach confidentiality; and lists of employed archival and documentary sources. Authors are more than welcome to reach out to the Editors of QOE-IJES, in order to assess and discuss individual situations.

More generally, we encourage perspective authors to get in touch with the Editors of QOE-IJES to discuss ways in which their research can be made replicable and transparent.

Publication Frequency

QOE-IJES is published bi-annually

Revenue Sources

QOE-IJES is a diamond open-access journal, which is published in both online and print versions thanks to the financial support of Regione Toscana. 

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.

Marketing and Advertising

QOE-IJES does not carry out any direct marketing activity, including telemarketing, promotion, and communication activities to attract more authors to submit to the journal. QOE-IJES does not endorse any product or service marked as an advertisement or promoted by a sponsor in publications. Editorial content is not compromised by commercial or financial interests, or by any specific arrangements with advertising clients or sponsors.

Open to all authors

Italian Journal of Electoral Studies (IJES) is committed to openness and inclusivity in scholarly publishing without author-facing charges for reading or publishing. We welcome submissions from all authors, regardless of their institutional affiliation, geographical location, or academic status. Submissions only must align with the aims and scope of the journal and meet the required quality standards once the reviewing process is completed.

Community-owned

Italian Journal of Electoral Studies (IJES) is owned by Firenze University Press, a public institution/organisation dedicated to advancing research and scholarship. The journal’s ownership and governance structure reflect its mission to support open and accessible academic publishing. We confirm that any commercial service providers involved in our operations only deal with service-related aspects of journal publishing. All content-related aspects of publishing, such as submission, peer review, acceptance, publication frequency, and scope of the journal, are controlled by the editors of the journal.