The Hungarian Historical Review welcomes articles, proposals for thematic blocks (3-4 papers), and proposals for entire special issues (5-6 papers) in any topic pertaining to the history of the broadly defined East-Central and Southeastern Europe. Authors of articles are expected to submit their manuscript that consists of 8 to 10 thousand words (including abstract, keywords, notes, and bibliography). Prospective editors of blocks or special issues are expected to submit the titles and abstracts of the papers and a short summary that explains their coherence. All submissions shall be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Peer review process (double anonymised)
The Hungarian Historical Review is double-blind peer reviewed by independent external experts. We ask peer reviewers to submit us their reports per email. Historical journals receive many more submissions than they can publish. Therefore, we ask peer reviewers to keep in mind that every paper that is accepted means that another good paper must be rejected. To be published in The Hungarian Historical Review, an essay should meet the following criteria:
- provide strong evidence for the conclusions,
- novel,
- importance to historians in the field and in the theme of the issue,
- interesting to researchers in other related disciplines.
All submitted manuscripts are read by the editorial staff prior to being sent for formal review. Those papers judged by the editors to be of insufficient general interest or otherwise inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review.
When submitting a manuscript each author
- represents that the submission is original and gives the Hungarian Historical Review the right of first refusal,
- accepts that no royalty will be paid for any article,
- assigns to the Hungarian Historical Review the copyright to the Article whereby the Publisher shall have the exclusive right to publish the Contribution and translations of it wholly or in part throughout the world during the full term of copyright including renewals and extensions and all subsidiary rights.
All contributors of published articles will have free access to the PDF version of their article.
The journal’s editor or editorial board considers the feedback provided by the peer reviewers and uses this information to arrive at a decision. Accordingly, the editors does not guarantee manuscript acceptance or very short peer review. In addition to the comments received from the review, editors also base their decisions on:
- The journal’s aims and audience
- The state of knowledge in the field
- The level of competition for acceptance and page space within the journal
The following represent the range of possible outcomes:
- Accept without any changes (acceptance): The journal will publish the paper in its original form. This type of decision outcome is rare
- Accept with minor revisions (acceptance): The journal will publish the paper and asks the author to make small corrections. This is typically the best outcome that authors should hope for
- Accept after major revisions (conditional acceptance): The journal will publish the paper provided the authors make the changes suggested by the reviewers and/or editors
- Reject the paper (outright rejection): The journal will not publish the paper or reconsider it even if the authors make major revisions
The decision outcome will be accompanied by the reviewer reports and some commentary from the editor that explains why the decision has been reached. If the decision involves revision for the author, the specific changes that are required should be clearly stated in the decision letter and review reports. The author can then respond to each point in turn.
Possible reasons for rejection:
- The article contains elements that are suspected to be plagiarized, or it is currently under review at another journal (submitting the same paper to multiple journals at the same time is not allowed)
- The manuscript is insufficiently well prepared; for example, lacking key elements such as the title, authors, affiliations, keywords, main text, references, and tables and figures
- The English is not of sufficient quality to allow a useful peer review to take place
- The figures are not complete or are not clear enough to read
- The article does not conform to the most important aspects of the journal’s Author Guidelines: https://hunghist.org/for-authors
The manuscript does not fall within the Aims and Scope of The Hungarian Historical Review: https://hunghist.org/journal-info/journal-description
The manuscript is incomplete: For example, the article contains observations but is not a full study or it discusses findings in relation to some of the work in the field but ignores other important work
A clear hypothesis or research aim was not established or the question behind the work is not of interest in the field
The goal of the research was over-ambitious, and hence it could not realistically be achieved
The conclusions were exaggerated: The conclusions cannot be justified on the basis of the rest of the paper
The research topic was of little significance:
- It is archival, or of marginal interest to the field; it is simply a small extension of a different paper, often from the same authors
- Findings are incremental and do not significantly advance the field
- The work is clearly part of a larger study, chopped up to make as many articles as possible (so-called “salami publication”)