Founded in 2015 by Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati (then Zürich) and Christian Wessely (Graz), the JRFM focuses on audiovisual media and their interaction with religion and theology. Although the main interest lies on contemporary phenomena the diachronic analysis of the interaction between media and religion is also part of the journal´s profile.

The journal is published twice a year (May 15th and November 15th) in English language. Each issue contains a thematic section, for which calls for papers are regularly being published, and an open section which is dedicated to excellent articles on current developments connected with the journals´ general line.

The journals content is fully open access; the editors do their best to keep the open access principle for the authors, too. Consequently, there are no charges or author fees existing. Yet the review process is very strict: Depending on the number of submissions there is a rate of around 15% desk rejections, and the double blind two-stage peer review process which involves international experts from Japan to the U.S. contributes to the fact that only 6-8 articles are being published in each issue.

JRFM is basically powered by OJS, the Open Journal System of the San Francisco University's Public Knowledge Project. The second pillar - serving mostly as additional permanent repository - is the uniPub - server of the University Library Graz.

As for readers, the numbers are - naturally - depending on the issue topic, on the authors prestige, the network of the issue editors etc. But the backend statistics of the JRFM server shows that download numbers increase steadily, having made two major leaps in 2021 and 2022 due to the integration of JRFM in prestigious index databases. As for August 2023, monthly downloads of full-text PDF articles hover around 3.000 per month.

JRFM is listed in several indexes some of which are SCOPUS, ATLA, ANVUR, ERIH plus, EBSCO etc.

Article: Editorial

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Editorial