Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies

About the Journal

Aims and Scope

COPAS—Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (ISSN: 1861-6127; eISSN: 1861-6127) is an open access journal. True to its original mission, COPAS showcases the work of early career scholars in the field with an annual issue featuring articles based on contributions from the latest PGF (the Postgraduate Forum of the German Association for American Studies) conference. In 2013, the journal’s scope expanded to include guest-edited thematic issues—proposals are welcome at any time! Published twice a year, in the summer and in the winter, COPAS accepts submissions on a broad range of topics, with the purpose of adding to the array of research existing in the field of American Studies, from the perspectives of early career scholars. Many publish for their first time with our journal and greatly appreciate the detailed hands-on editing process their articles go through, which allows them to polish their ideas and present them in a more concise, argumentative nature. Thus, our goal is to foster and facilitate opportunities for postgraduates to publish their work and experience the academic editing process in an inclusive, hands-on, feedback-driven setting. The scope of our journal brings together research on American Studies topics ranging from literary and cultural studies to film and history to gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. The journal is hosted and supported by the University of Regensburg.

COPAS uses Open Journal Systems and is indexed in The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  

Open Access Policy

COPAS is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. COPAS is indexed in The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). 

All articles published in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal. The full text of the articles of the journal are freely available without embargo.