Zeitschrift fur Epileptologie

About Zeitschrift fur Epileptologie

Zeitschrift für Epileptologie — Journal Profile

Zeitschrift für Epileptologie was the German-language clinical journal of epileptology published by Springer Medizin in Heidelberg for the German epilepsy community, appearing four times a year under ISSN 1610-0646 (print) and ISSN 1617-6782 (electronic). It served neurologists and paediatricians working on epilepsy in the German-speaking countries: diagnosis, drug therapy, epilepsy surgery, neuropsychology, epidemiology, care structures, and the continuing-education and society content that a national specialty journal carries. From 2023 the same journal continues under a new English title, Clinical Epileptology, with new ISSNs 2948-104X (print) and 2948-1058 (electronic), on the same Springer platform and with unbroken volume numbering — volume 37 appeared under the new title in 2024. This profile documents the journal under its Zeitschrift für Epileptologie title, the title carried by this JournalsWorld record, and explains the rename so that readers following older citations land in the right place. The two titles are one journal at two points in its life, not two journals, and the distinction matters for literature searches, which must be run under both titles and both ISSN pairs.

At a Glance

• Full title: Zeitschrift für Epileptologie
• Current title (from 2023): Clinical Epileptology
• Abbreviation: Z. für Epileptol.
• Print ISSN (this title): 1610-0646
• Electronic ISSN (this title): 1617-6782
• Print ISSN (successor title): 2948-104X
• Electronic ISSN (successor title): 2948-1058
• Publisher: Springer Medizin (Springer Nature), Heidelberg, Germany
• Copyright holder / society: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Epileptologie e.V. (German Society for Epileptology), per the Springer journal page
• Country: Germany
• Language: Predominantly German, with English-language content
• Frequency: Four issues a year
• Scopus coverage (SCImago): 2005–2022 under this title
• Fields: Clinical neurology, epileptology, paediatrics

Scope: Clinical Epileptology for the German-Speaking World

Springer describes the aim of the journal — in its current English-titled form — as the presentation and discussion of current epileptological knowledge in the German-speaking region, with a focus on clinically relevant topics, while also taking basic epileptological findings and research results into account. Its main readership is physicians in neurology and paediatrics with a special interest in the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy. That description fits the Zeitschrift für Epileptologie years exactly: this was a practising clinician's journal first and a research journal second, publishing review articles and original work that a neurologist running an epilepsy clinic, or a paediatrician managing childhood epilepsies, could apply.

The contents under this title covered the full clinical circuit of epilepsy care. Diagnosis and classification of seizures and epilepsy syndromes; antiseizure medication, including drug interactions, treatment in pregnancy, and management of drug-resistant epilepsy; presurgical evaluation and epilepsy surgery, with the neuropsychological assessment that surrounds it; epidemiology and the organisation of care, a recurring theme in its pages — a widely cited 2020 article compared the two EPIDEG studies of 1995 and 2010 to estimate how many people with epilepsy there are in Germany and who treats them, finding the treated prevalence had risen to 5.5 per 1,000 and that the share of seizure-free patients had markedly improved; neuropsychology and the psychiatric comorbidities of epilepsy; telemedicine and digital tools in epilepsy care; and the practical, guideline-adjacent questions of everyday practice. Alongside research and reviews, the journal carried the communications of the German epilepsy societies' working groups — the 2024 successor-title volume still runs the notices of the epilepsy-surgery working group under the same journal — and certified continuing medical education content, a standing feature of Springer Medizin specialty journals.

The OpenAlex topic map for the merged journal record reflects the same scope from the citation side: epilepsy research and treatment leads, followed by neurology and historical studies, pharmacological effects and toxicity studies, neurological disorders and treatments, and diet and metabolism studies. Authors and readers should note what the scope is not: it is not a basic-neuroscience journal, and purely experimental work without a clinical epileptology connection belonged elsewhere even in the journal's own framing, which expressly subordinates basic findings to clinically relevant discussion.

History: One Journal, Two Titles

The volume numbering tells the continuity story plainly. A 2020 citation in the journal is to volume 33; articles in the successor title are cited as Clin Epileptol 37 in 2024 and the numbering runs on into volumes 38 and 39. Counting back and forward on that sequence, the Zeitschrift für Epileptologie title carried the journal through volume 35 in 2022, and Clinical Epileptology began with volume 36 in 2023. SCImago's coverage record for the old title, 2005 to 2022, ends exactly where the rename begins, and OpenAlex resolves all four ISSNs — the old pair and the new pair — to a single source record, which is how citation databases themselves treat a retitling of this kind: a new title and new ISSNs for cataloguing purposes, one continuing journal for citation purposes.

Under the old title the journal was published in Heidelberg by Springer Medizin, Springer's German medical publishing arm, with its articles carrying the Springer DOI prefix 10.1007/s10309, which the successor title retains — the 2025 Clinical Epileptology article on Mahmut Gazi Yaşargil, for example, is numbered in the same s10309 series. The journal is the organ of the German epileptology society: the Springer page for the journal carries the copyright of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Epileptologie e.V. The rename to an English title in 2023 fits a familiar pattern for German specialty journals — an English masthead for international discoverability — while the content, the platform at link.springer.com/journal/10309, the society ownership and the clinical German-speaking audience have continued.

For JournalsWorld's own records, the practical consequence is that this post and the separate thin post for Clinical Epileptology (post 23803) describe the same journal at different points in its history, under different ISSN pairs. That is a rename-and-continuation relationship, flagged in this batch's report for the site owner's decision; the two records are not independent journals and should not be counted as such, but merging renamed titles is an owner-class decision on this site rather than an automatic duplicate merge, because the titles, ISSNs and citation identities genuinely differ.

Editorial Leadership

The journal is edited within the Springer Medizin structure for the German Society for Epileptology, and its editorial arrangements are published on the Springer journal page under its current title. The names of the editors who served during specific years of the Zeitschrift für Epileptologie title could not be verified from a source fetched for this profile, and none are stated here rather than risk attaching the wrong board to the wrong period; the current board should be read on Springer's journal page, where the society's copyright line confirms whose journal it is. What can be said from the record is structural: a society journal of this type is steered by clinician-editors drawn from German epileptology — university neurology and epilepsy centres supply its reviewers and much of its content — and its society-communications sections are produced with the working groups of the German epilepsy community, as the successor volume's working-group notices show.

Metrics and Citation Record

OpenAlex resolves the ISSNs of this title to its merged source record for the journal (S4210170248, displayed under the current Clinical Epileptology title), which records 1,569 works and 1,961 citations across both titles, with an h-index of 13 and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.75, at the time of checking. Its yearly counts show a substantial German-language output continuing across the rename — 89 works recorded for 2022 under the old title's last year, 92 for 2023 and 88 for 2024 under the new one. Authors should understand that these figures are for the continuing journal as a whole; citation databases do not split the record at the rename, and neither should a reader.

SCImago's Scopus-based listing for the Zeitschrift für Epileptologie title reports a SCImago Journal Rank of 0.139 and an h-index of 9 on Scopus counting, with the journal placed in the clinical neurology and in the paediatrics, perinatology and child health categories, in the fourth quartile in the most recent listing found, and Scopus coverage of 2005 to 2022 for this title. An earlier JournalsWorld record for this post described the journal as Q3; that label could not be verified against the SCImago listing found for this profile, which shows Q4, and the discrepancy is flagged for the corrections pass. The broader point stands either way: a German-language national specialty journal accumulates citations mainly within its own language community, and its metrics are not comparable with those of the big English-language epilepsy titles such as Epilepsia; its value to its authors was visibility to the German clinicians who actually treat epilepsy in that health system, plus its continuing-education function.

Abstracting and Indexing

Springer's abstracting and indexing list for the journal, published on its page under the current title, includes Scopus, SCImago, the Emerging Sources Citation Index, EMBASE, EBSCO, Dimensions, Google Scholar, ProQuest, CNKI, Baidu, CLOCKSS and Portico among its services. For the Zeitschrift für Epileptologie years, the operative facts are the Scopus coverage recorded by SCImago (2005–2022) and the journal's presence in the medical bibliography through EMBASE. The journal is not an open-access journal and a search of the Directory of Open Access Journals returned no record for either of this title's ISSNs at checking time; access under both titles has been by subscription, through Springer's institutional arrangements and its German e.Med packages, with individual articles sometimes available open access under Springer's hybrid arrangements. No verified article processing charge for this title was found in the sources checked, and none is stated.

How to Submit

Submissions today go to the journal under its current title, Clinical Epileptology, through Springer Medizin's author services, which the Springer journal page links for prospective contributors, together with the publisher's subscription and continuing-education information. Manuscripts are in German or English; the journal's tradition under the old title was German-language clinical content, and the successor continues to publish German-language articles, as its recent volumes show. Authors preparing a submission should follow Springer's current author information for the journal rather than any instructions quoted for the old title, since the rename changed the masthead and ISSNs that appear in citation style, running heads and correspondence. Anyone citing work from the journal should cite the title as it stood in the year of the article cited — Zeitschrift für Epileptologie up to 2022, Clinical Epileptology from 2023 — with the volume and the s10309 DOI, which is constant across the rename and is the surest way for a reader to reach the article.

Who Should Publish Here?

Under its current title, the journal suits clinicians and clinician-researchers in neurology and paediatrics, above all in the German-speaking countries, with work on the diagnosis, treatment, surgery, neuropsychology, epidemiology or care organisation of epilepsy that is written for practising specialists. It is a natural home for German-language review and education content, for society working-group output, and for studies of epilepsy care inside the German health system, whose natural readers are exactly its subscribers. Researchers needing a primarily international, English-language audience and the citation exposure that comes with it should compare the large international epilepsy titles first; researchers whose question is how epilepsy is diagnosed and treated in Germany will find this journal's readership is the one that can act on the answer. Readers of this profile who arrived from an old citation should simply note the new title and continue their search there — the archive under both titles sits on the same Springer platform.

Inside the Journal: Content Types and Continuing Education

A reader opening a volume of Zeitschrift für Epileptologie would meet several distinct kinds of content, and understanding the mixture explains the journal's place in German epileptology. Review articles form its backbone: commissioned and submitted overviews that bring a practising neurologist up to date on a defined clinical problem — a new antiseizure medicine, the management of status epilepticus, driving rules and epilepsy, pregnancy counselling, or the reading of a difficult EEG. Original articles report clinical studies, case series and care research from German epilepsy centres and practices, including the epidemiology and health-services work for which the journal became a standard citation source; the EPIDEG comparison discussed in the scope section is the best-known example, quoted whenever the number of people treated for epilepsy in Germany is debated. Case-based and imaging-led contributions serve the diagnostic craft of the specialty. Society content — working-group notices, conference-linked material and professional communications — ties the journal to the organised life of German epileptology in a way a purely commercial title cannot imitate.

The continuing-education function deserves separate emphasis, because it shapes both the writing and the readership. Springer Medizin journals in Germany run certified CME content, and the successor title's Springer page advertises its CME-certified training offering and its inclusion in the publisher's e.Med packages for medical specialties. Articles written for that setting are structured for learning: clear learning objectives, a systematic walk through the evidence, and practice conclusions a clinician can apply on Monday morning. That is also why the journal's German language is a feature rather than a limitation for its purpose — continuing education for German practitioners is delivered in German, examined in German, and applied inside a German regulatory and reimbursement system whose terms do not translate cleanly. International readers assessing the journal should therefore not mistake its modest international citation footprint for modest influence: within its own system, a review in these pages could set the terms on which a treatment was discussed in clinics across the country, and its care-research articles documented that system for everyone else.

Similar Journals

The obvious comparisons are the international epilepsy titles — Epilepsia, the journal of the International League Against Epilepsy; Epilepsy & Behavior; Seizure; and Acta Epileptologica — and, within JournalsWorld's own directory, the national and specialist epilepsy periodicals such as Archives of Epilepsy and the International Journal of Epilepsy, each a separate journal with its own ISSNs and publisher. Zeitschrift für Epileptologie's distinctiveness among them was linguistic and institutional: a German-language, society-owned clinical journal inside the Springer Medizin stable, a niche none of the international titles fills.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the ISSNs of Zeitschrift für Epileptologie?
Print ISSN 1610-0646 and electronic ISSN 1617-6782. Its successor title, Clinical Epileptology, carries print ISSN 2948-104X and electronic ISSN 2948-1058.

Who published Zeitschrift für Epileptologie?
Springer Medizin, the German medical arm of Springer Nature, in Heidelberg. The journal belongs to the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Epileptologie e.V., whose copyright line appears on the Springer journal page. An earlier JournalsWorld record showed a numeric code in place of the publisher's name; that code is corrected by the sources for this profile.

Is Zeitschrift für Epileptologie still published under that title?
No. From 2023, with volume 36, the journal appears as Clinical Epileptology, with continuous volume numbering, the same Springer platform and the same DOI series. This post is retained under the historical title because the site's record and a generation of citations use it.

Is the journal peer-reviewed?
Yes — it is a peer-reviewed specialty journal published by Springer Medizin for the German epilepsy society.

What metrics does the journal have?
OpenAlex's merged record for both titles records 1,569 works, 1,961 citations and an h-index of 13 at checking time. SCImago's listing for this title reports an SJR of 0.139 and a Scopus h-index of 9, with coverage 2005–2022.

Is the journal open access?
No. A DOAJ search returned no record for its ISSNs at checking time; access is by subscription and Springer arrangements.

In what language did it publish?
Predominantly German, with English-language content; the successor title continues to publish German-language articles under its English masthead.

Sources and Verification

This profile was built from the Springer journal page for journal 10309, Clinical Epileptology (current-title ISSNs 2948-104X and 2948-1058, society copyright of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Epileptologie e.V., abstracting and indexing list, aims description), Springer article records in the s10309 series showing volume continuity (volume 33 in 2020 under the old title; Clin Epileptol 37 in 2024 under the new), the OpenAlex source record S4210170248 resolved from ISSN 1610-0646, which lists all four ISSNs for one source (1,569 works, 1,961 citations, h-index 13, two-year mean citedness about 0.75), SCImago-derived reporting for this title (publisher Springer Medizin, ISSNs 16100646 and 16176782, SJR 0.139, h-index 9, coverage 2005–2022), and a DOAJ search that returned no record for either ISSN of this title. The stored JournalsWorld record gave the publisher as a numeric code and a Q3 label; both are corrected or flagged above, and the rename relationship with post 23803, Clinical Epileptology, is reported as an owner-class continuation pair in this batch's report.