The Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens / Vienna Journal of South Asian Studies is a peer-reviewed journal. The members of the editorial and advisory boards and the editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the author and reviewers (including potential reviewers). A positive review by a member of the editorial board and two positive external (blind) reviews are required for an article to be accepted for publication. If the review by the member of the editorial board is clearly negative, the manuscript will not be forwarded for external review.

The members of the editorial board and the international advisory board help the editor in chief in the search for and choice of suitable external reviewers without being informed about the identity of the author of the manuscript to be reviewed. Members of the advisory board may also act as reviewers if the topic of the submitted article falls into their area of specialization. The external reviewers are asked to state whether the submitted anonymized article conforms to the current state of the art in terms of its content and method, and may therefore be accepted for publication in the journal in its submitted form, whether it should be accepted after some revision, or whether it should be rejected. In the second case, the reviewers are required to make suggestions for revision and correction, which will be forwarded to the authors by the editors in chief. The rejection of a manuscript has to be amply and clearly justified. On the resubmission of rejected articles see under Submission.

The external reviewers are asked to return their reviews within 6 weeks. They must not show or discuss the contents of the manuscript with others. Reviewers are expected to express their opinions objectively and should avoid statements damaging to the author's reputation. Criticism should be directed against the work, not the author. Potential reviewers, when invited, should inform the editor in chief when a conflict of interest may arise and should not review the manuscript in this case.

The reviews are collected by the editor in chief and treated confidentially. The content of the reviews is brought to the attention of the authors in anonymized and possibly paraphrased form. Authors of accepted manuscripts are expected to consider the suggestions for improvement and corrections made by the internal and external reviewers. The revised manuscripts are subsequently re-submitted to the reviewers for possible further comments.

The authorship of articles should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the work. These persons should be listed as co-authors. The main author is responsible to ascertain that all co-authors have agreed to the submission of the final version of the work.

By submitting an article to the journal, authors declare that the manuscript is complete and that the exploitation rights to the work have not been exercised elsewhere either fully or partially. Upon acceptance of the manuscript, authors will have to prove that they possess the copyright and/or right to use all parts of the work; this especially applies to images included in the work. Authors must properly cite all utilized publications by others and acknowledge non-authors who have helped them in the development of the work. The Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens / Vienna Journal of South Asian Studies adheres to the Core Practices of COPE (Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Editors, and Code of Conduct for Journals Publishers) (https://publicationethics.org/).