Editorial

Honoured readers,

The Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift (ÖMZ) has developed substantially in two respects over the past ten years: firstly, thematically, and secondly with regard to its function in military science.

Thematically, it has changed from a general military-historical to a more operations- and strategy-historical approach, from a security-policy-led to an overall-strategic assessment logic based on leadership principles abstracted from military-scientific research, and has thus aligned itself more strongly with the core subjects of military science.

With regard to its contribution to the development of an independent military science, the Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift has undergone a development from its exclusive publication task to knowledge generation, research and teaching.

At the same time, while holding on to German as the leading language for the print edition, which will remain necessary in order to do justice to the depth of the contributions, especially in the area of strategy, theory of strategy, military command and control philosophy of the specific cultural area, polemology, etc., an attempt was made to open up to the English-speaking world. This approach took place via the online presence of the ÖMZ – initially with the peer-reviewed articles of the print edition translated into English and individual essays that went beyond the print version and were often already written in English.

Now there is a relaunch of the ÖMZ homepage, which on the one hand has become necessary for technical reasons, and on the other is intended to combine the new appearance with user-friendliness and full usability even on smaller end-user devices (tablet, mobile phone), whose structure is tailored to the new task profile, and which is built on five supporting thematic pillars.

With the format "Austrian Military Journal (AMJ)", another new service of the ÖMZ has been added, which we are pleased to present with this relaunch. After our first attempts to make the peer-reviewed articles and individual articles intended exclusively for online publication available in English, we can now make the core contents of the journal available regularly on the Internet as the "Austrian Military Journal (AMJ)" in addition to the print version, starting with the contents of issue 2/2021, and thanks to the support of the Austrian Armed Forces Language Institute. This opens up the possibility of making the ÖMZ visible in the international ranking of military science publications.

Accordingly, the new online presence will be divided into five main thematic pillars:

• The supplement to the "Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift – Druckversion": Here you will find the peer-reviewed articles in German, the archive of the print editions (issues since 2010) and selected graphics of the articles published in print. However, no print versions in German (with the exception of the peer-reviewed articles) are placed online in this section.
• “Online Only” content: In this section of the journal’s online presence, contributions are published that go beyond the content of the ÖMZ print version and the AMJ. In addition, the “ÖMZ Insights” and the annual chronicles can be found here.
• The “Austrian Military Journal (AMJ)”: Here, individual articles from the print edition ("core content") are translated into English and placed online with a slight time delay to the publication of the respective issue.
• Military science research: This part of the journal’s online presence provides information on the status and interim results of research projects that the editorial staff of the ÖMZ is in charge of or to which it contributes. In particular, the role of the ÖMZ within the "International Society of Military Sciences" (ISMS) is reported here. In a further expansion stage, the military science discussion platform offered by the ÖMZ is to grow into a strategy think tank.
• The “Vienna Strategy Conference”: This fifth thematic pillar of the online presence is dedicated to the Vienna Strategy Conference, which is held annually by the editorial staff of the ÖMZ and has developed into a strategy development and discussion platform for the German-speaking world. In addition to information on the thematic orientation of the follow-up conference, an overview of the conference proceedings already published and the corresponding supplementary graphics can be found here. Furthermore, "links" lead from here to the lectures and discussions of past strategy conferences published on YouTube (livestream).
• The Service section provides information on the editorial team, including contact details, order forms and useful information for authors.

We wish you an insightful read of the research results and contributions made available on the new homepage and hope to be able to win you over as readers and also as authors who want to take advantage of the journal's proven standing, which has now been combined with the greater reach made possible by the internet and the option to participate in a military science discourse that goes beyond the German-speaking area. This also applies in particular to students who want to collect publication credits for international degree programmes or for a future career at an international educational institution.

Brigadier General retd. MMag. Wolfgang Peischel, PhD