Frequently Asked Questions

What is Living Reviews about?
Which additional services are being offered?
Who is the publisher of Living Reviews?
How can I start my own Living Reviews journal?
How can I publish my own papers online? Is there any software available?
Whom can I contact for further questions?

What is Living Reviews about?

'Living Reviews' is a unique editorial concept for the publication of high-quality scientific content. Living Reviews journals are publishing 'living' review articles. What does this mean?

'Living' review articles are

as the name suggests, review articles, providing insightful surveys on research progress in the fields they cover and guiding readers to the most important literature in the field,
solicited from experts in the field by an international Editorial Board,
subject to peer-review,
open access publications
and, most important, 'living' which means that the articles are regularly being updated by their authors to incorporate the latest developments in the field.

Please refer to the "Journal Concept" documents for Living Reviews in Solar Physics, Living Reviews in Relativity, Living Reviews in European Governance, or Living Reviews in Landscape Research for further details on journal philosophy, editorial concept and policies. You may also want to check this wiki page for a list of papers and presentations featuring Living Reviews.

The concept of a 'living' review is originated by Bernard F. Schutz and Jennifer Wheary, who started the first journal, Living Reviews in Relativity, in 1998 at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. Living Reviews^® is a registered trademark of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

Which additional services are being offered?

Living Reviews journals go beyond the electronic dissemination of traditional print articles. All articles are readable online in HTML, integrated in a highly functional hypertext viewing environment. Sophisticated navigation support is offered for equations, figures, footnotes and references. Articles may include an unlimited number of colorful images, tables, movies, animations, or even program code and raw data. Additionally, all references cited in Living Reviews articles are collated in online searchable literature databases, with the database entries linked back to and put into context by the annotation within the respective review articles. References can be exported in various formats and harvested for other web based information systems.

Please refer to the document Using Living Reviews (in the Living Reviews in Relativity web space) to learn more about the electronic design.

Who is the publisher of Living Reviews?

Living Reviews journals are being published by scientific institutions. Living Reviews in Relativity is being published by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics , Potsdam (Golm). Living Reviews in Solar Physics is being published by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research , Katlenburg-Lindau. Living Reviews in European Governance is being published by two EU-funded research networks, CONNEX and NewGov, with an editorial office based in Vienna. Living Reviews in Landscape Research is being published by the Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, Müncheberg.

Central services for journal publication are provided. Since 2002 the Living Reviews has been supported by the Heinz Nixdorf Foundation as part of the Center for Information Management in the Max Planck Society (ZIM). Starting in 2007, Living Reviews and the ZIM have been incorporated in the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL).

For all Living Reviews journals central publication infrastructure is available. all publication software is open source and can be used for non-commercial purposes without licensing fees. Additionally, editorial services for journals affiliated to Max Planck Institutes are provided.

How can I start my own Living Reviews journal?

We believe that the Living Reviews concept yields benefits for many research areas, where scientists have to master and overview a wide range of subject fields and heavily rely on comprehensive and current review literature. We are happy to share our experiences and software developments with the scientific community. We invite other research communities to evaluate the concept, its benefits, and its applicability to their field. Please, contact us at to learn more about the publishing project, the infrastructure behind and the services we can offer.

How can I publish my own papers online? Is there any software available?

To create multi-functional online versions of scientific papers, one may use the publication builder component of our software. It processes articles written in LaTeX with bibliographies prepared in BibTeX and produces an advanced web presentation. For further details please visit the ePublishing Toolkit pages.

Who can I contact for further questions?

We very much welcome your feedback, questions, and suggestions. Please, contact Christina Weyher (Project Management Living Reviews) at the following address:

Address:	Living Reviews Max Planck Digital Library Invalidenstrasse 35 10115 Berlin Germany
Phone:	+49 (0) 30 23455 755
E-mail