Mohr Siebeck is one of the oldest academic publishers still operating: founded in 1801 in Frankfurt am Main and based in Tübingen since the late 19th century, it has remained independent and family-owned across four generations. Unlike the large commercial houses, Mohr Siebeck is deliberately narrow and deep - roughly 20 peer-reviewed journals plus a substantial monograph, commentary, and reference-work program concentrated in theology and religious studies, law, philosophy, Jewish studies, ancient studies, history, and economics. Its list includes some of the most venerable German-language journals in existence, such as Archiv für die civilistische Praxis (est. 1818), FinanzArchiv (1884), Archiv des öffentlichen Rechts (1886), and Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche (1891), alongside newer English-language venues like Early Christianity and Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences.

This guide covers what Mohr Siebeck publishes, how its unusual open-access model works, what peer review looks like, and how to submit.

• ~20 peer-reviewed journals across theology, law, philosophy, Jewish studies, history, and economics. Many carry decades - in several cases more than a century - of continuous publication.
• Monographs and dissertation series - the backbone of the house, including prestigious series in New Testament studies (WUNT), public law, and tax law.
• Major reference works and critical editions, including Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart and the complete editions of Max Weber and Karl Popper.

Journal articles appear in German and English depending on the title; several newer journals (Early Christianity, HeBAI, RRE, PTSc, JITE) are primarily English-language.

Mohr Siebeck's OA program is unusual among commercial publishers because its flagship route charges authors nothing:

The default license for OA publications is CC BY, with BY-SA, BY-NC, and BY-ND variants available to meet funder requirements. Long-term preservation runs through Portico and CLOCKSS.

• Model: double-anonymized review is the norm for unsolicited research submissions; at least two academic experts evaluate each manuscript. Solicited pieces and book reviews receive editorial review.
• Integrity checks: randomly selected submissions and suspected cases are screened for plagiarism with software. Mohr Siebeck is a COPE member.
• Turnaround: varies by journal; JITE, for example, reports roughly 10 weeks from first submission to final decision and about 6 weeks from final acceptance to publication.

1. Pick the journal. Match your manuscript's language, discipline, and method to the title - German-language law journals and English-language theology venues have very different audiences.
2. Read the journal's submission page. Each Mohr Siebeck journal publishes its own instructions; there is no single portal - most journals take submissions by email to the editorial office or managing editor.
3. Format the manuscript. German bibliographic conventions apply for German-language titles; Chicago-style citation is common for English-language ones. Templates for Mohr Siebeck venues are available on SciSpace.
4. Expect editor-led handling. As a smaller house, editorial contact is direct and decisions flow through the responsible academic editors.
5. For books, send a digital publication request - full manuscript, brief description, and academic CV - to the program director for your field.

Mohr Siebeck is a member of COPE and follows its guidelines on misconduct and retractions. Plagiarism screening is applied to randomly selected and suspect submissions. On acceptance, authors typically transfer exclusive rights to the publisher; after one year they may distribute the work in the permitted self-archiving forms. For OA publications under CC licenses, authors retain broader reuse rights.

Choose Mohr Siebeck when reputation within German-language and European humanities scholarship matters more than raw impact-factor metrics. Its journals are field-defining in German law and Protestant theology, and its Subscribe-to-Open route offers genuinely free open access in comparative law and religious studies. If you need a high-JIF STEM venue or a mega-journal, look elsewhere - that has never been this publisher's game.