International Institute for Religious Freedom

IIRF Scholarly Book Series

The International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) currently publishes two scholarly book series with the Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft (VKW, Culture and Science Publishing) by Prof. Schirrmacher beside other series catering more for professional interests.

The Religious Freedom Series (started in 2008) is dedicated to the scholarly discourse on the issue of religious freedom in general.

The series Christians Under Pressure: Studies in Discrimation and Persecution (inaugurated in 2018) is dedicated to the scholarly discourse on the religious freedom situation of Christians in particular.

While until 2008 the Religious Freedom Series covered both topics, since 2018 the two series are dividing the field in a complementary manner.

Both series are interdisciplinary, international, peer reviewed, and scholarly, serving the interests of religious freedom.

Peer Review Statement

At the outset, the series information reproduced in the first volumes of the Religious Freedom Series simply stated:

“Before acceptance into this series all contributions undergo scholarly peer review according to the criteria acceptable in academia worldwide.”

The Religious Freedom Series emerged jointly with the International Journal for Religious Freedom (IJRF) in 2008, equally published by the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) and the same founding editors. It therefore, from the outset, follows the same editorial standards and practices as the journal in as far as they apply to a book series. As the publications were/are jointly developed with a South African Publisher (AcadSA Publishing) the standards established by the Academy of Science of South Africa are applied.

This existing ongoing practice was more explicitly formalized in August 2024 in the following statement regarding peer review:

The IIRF Religious Freedom Series and the series Christians Under Pressure: Studies in Discrimation and Persecution subscribe to the Code of Best Practice in Scholarly Journal Publishing, Editing and Peer Review of 2018 as well as the National Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Peer Review for South African Scholarly Journals and the supplementary Guidelines for Best Practice of the Forum of Editors of Academic Law Journals in South Africa as far as applicable, and endorses the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

All proposals and manuscripts submitted are assessed in form and content by the editors who are experienced scholars in the field.

Promising manuscripts are then assessed by an independent panel of referees and the decision to publish is made by the editors dependent on their reports. Usually a double-blind peer review is conducted by at least two respected scholars in the field.

Records are kept about the manuscript rejection rate.

Editorial policy for specific cases

For monograph manuscripts emanating from dissertations, the examiners’ reports of the respective institution may be submitted by the author. If all examiners’ reports support publication, the editors may decide not to require additional peer review.

For manuscripts that constitute conference proceedings or collections of papers by different authors, the organization of the peer review of the individual contributions may be delegated to the guest-editors of the respective volume under the oversight of the series editors. The editors of the volume must adhere to the standards mentioned above and are referred to the COPE Best Practices for Guest Edited Collections.

Technical specifications and publishing procedures are communicated by the publishing house (Introductory statement in German here).