Editorial

Dear Readers,

In 2015, the editors made a number of important decisions to boost the international visibility of the Journal and these took effect in 2016. First and foremost, all articles published since 2016 have been made available via “open access”. This means free, unrestricted online access to scholarly research – and in this case even without any fees to be paid by the authors. This again means a greater chance for each article to be cited. Secondly, as of 2016 the Journal only accepts submissions in English (if an article is in German it was submitted before 2016). This step was prompted by the practical fact that articles in English are more likely to be read and cited by the scientific community than ones in German. In doing so, the Journal is incorporating a development which has been taking place anyway in recent years: while in 2009 the number of submissions in English still amounted to 41 per cent, it increased dramatically thereafter and has now been hovering at between 80 and 90 per cent since 2013. This trend has gone hand in hand with a substantial increase in the number of submissions in general: Since 2009 the number of submissions to regular issues has more than doubled. At the same time, the presence of the Journal in international indexing services like SCOPUS has expanded and this, again, has increased the likelihood that articles published in the Journal will be found and read. One example is the inclusion in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) provided by Thomson Reuters in 2016.

In 2017, the Journal is planning to take yet another step forward by becoming part of SpringerOpen, a portfolio of over 200 peer-reviewed, fully open access journals – and thereby profiting, among other things, from the comprehensive marketing activities, not only within the framework of the portfolio but also specifically tailored to the features of the journal. Most importantly, these journals are based on the principle of “consecutive article publishing”. This means that articles will no longer be allocated to issues. Instead, they will be published immediately after acceptance and production processing. Moreover, authors will profit as they retain the copyright to their work under the terms of a Creative Commons licence. This means that they can deposit the final version of their work in any digital repository immediately after publication. With the integration into SpringerOpen, the Journal for Labour Market Research will become a pure e‑journal. Hence, issue 4/2016 will be the last one available in the printed version.