Review of Media Units

Requirements for Reviews and Reviewers

The requirement for reviewers is to encourage sub-, intra- and interdisciplinary dialogs. The task is to offer insights into the respective research field to FQS readers, independent of their discipline(s). Above all, reviews should introduce the respective context of a field of activity in an understandable way and should outline the respective research topics in order to clarify the specific contribution of the media unit(s) therein. Summaries of contents, therefore, should to be avoided. Instead, contents should be discussed while considering the background of the respective research field and should be evaluated critically. See the following Editorial Notes for further information:

In order to be selected as worthy of reviewing, a media unit must belong to the wide area of qualitative social research. In particular, it must deal with the theoretical and methodological bases of qualitative research empirical studies with a recognizable link to qualitative methodology.

Types of Reviews

Reviews can be constructed as

  1. Reviews
  2. Review essays
  3. Collective reviews of several units
  4. Review symposia

1. Reviews

Media units should be presented as a substantial outline of the research field, framed by a short introduction which makes a connection between the media unit and the research field under consideration and should be followed by an evaluation.

2. Review essay

Review essays should go far beyond a summary of the contents. The research field should be briefly introduced with reference to other publications in order to clarify whether the reviewed media unit contributes to this field or not. The claims raised by the media unit should be evaluated as well.

3. Collective reviews

Collective reviews are produced by a reviewer (or a review team) reviewing more than one media unit dealing with a specific topic. The aim of the review is to unveil how these media units contribute to the research area under consideration in a comparative discussion. Collective reviews are not just a loose collection of single reviews. Instead, they should help to clarify the respective research field by bringing the contrasting contributions of the specific media units together.

4. Review symposium

Review symposia are reviews of one (or more) media unit(s) by several authors or author teams. Review symposiums can be held in different ways:

  • The traditional way of informing the readership about possible diverging perspectives is to ask for several reviews of one media unit. Several brief reviews are introduced and subsequently commented upon by an (additional) author.
  • In addition, we welcome special efforts to organize interactive on-line review symposia of media unit(s), where the author(s) or the editor(s) of the media unit are also included.

Announcement of Reviews and Ordering Media Units

Suggestions for reviews can be submitted by interested authors. It is not advisable to send a review without previous consultation as we like to first explore whether the media unit is likely to be interesting to the FQS readership. For reviews without prior inquiry, there is no guarantee for publication.

The submitted reviews will be evaluated according to the criteria listed above, and suggestions to revise may be given by the FQS editorship.

Guidelines for Layout

We do not prescribe a formal range of minimum/maximum words, as the length of the review should depend on the respective media unit and the individual reviewer's perspective.

The guidelines for FQS Reviews follow the Submission Preparation Checklist, valid for any manuscripts submitted to FQS. In addition, reviews and review essays should contain bibliographic information about the author, title, place of publication and publisher, ISBN and/or ISSN, and prices. While review essays should provide a characterizing header, this is not necessary for reviews.