Editorial policy

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EDITORIAL POLICY OF THE ISTRAŽIVANJA – JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL RESEARCHES

 

Programme

 

The journal Istraživanja was founded in 1971 and is published by the Department of History of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad. Istraživanja is dedicated to publishing the best academic ideas regarding all aspects of socio-political processes and events in the region of Central and South East Europe, as well as Eastern Mediterranean. Since the University of Novi Sad is located at an area where, since the dawn of time, different civilizations, cultures, religions and peoples have met and intertwined, Istraživanja – Journal of Historical Researches places a special emphasis on the critical research of the historical influence and significance of this mutual interlacing. In accordance with that, in the domain of scientific research a great value is placed on an interdisciplinary approach, which is why Istraživanja publishes not only the papers that study “classical” political history, but also papers which critically analyze social and cultural life in the past (material culture, political thought, literature, religion, etc.). Having in mind its own tradition, Istraživanja is proud of its fairness in the procedure of the selection of papers to be published, which is why the rules of good academic practice and academic honesty are strictly abided by. In order to improve and strengthen this tradition, the procedures of double blind review and peer review have been introduced.

 

Editorial Board

 

The main task of the Editorial Board of Istraživanja – Journal of Historical Researches is to secure the highest possible degree of the quality of academic papers which are published in this journal. The Editorial Board will achieve this goal in four ways. Firstly, the Editorial Board takes care that authors and reviewers strictly follow the rules of good academic practice, rules for writing reviews and Instructions for authors. Secondly, the members of the Editorial Board can be only those individuals who have proven expertise and objectivity. Thirdly, the Editorial Board puts great emphasis on geographical diversity of its members. In accordance with that, for each historical period, besides at least one member of the Department of History, there are several other members who come from other respectable academic institutions from Serbia and abroad. Fourthly, each member of the Editorial Board should strictly abide by the rules of good academic practice, which is why during their term in the Board, they cannot publish papers in the journal Istraživanja.

 

Types of papers

 

There are two types of papers:

  1. Academic papers – original papers which are written in accordance with the rules of good scientific practice of the Istraživanja – Journal of Historical Researches. Scientific papers must have at least two positive reviews and they are published in the first part of the journal.
  2. Professional papers, which are not original academic papers and are divided into the following groups:

-  review (of a book or a academic event);

-  criticism or discussion of a certain topic based exclusively on scientific argumentation;

-  publication and critical comments of archive material.

 

Language of the paper

 

The papers (as well as their abstracts and summaries) and review articles are to be submitted in English as official language of the journal. In certain circumstances (depending on the topic of the paper and decision of the Editorial Board) the text can be published in Serbian or some of the world languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. In these exceptional cases (exclusively permitted by the Editorial Board after author’s request), the summary must be in English.

 

 

Reviews and reviewers

 

The reviews in Istraživanja – Journal of Historical Researches are written in accordance with the principles of peer review and double blind review. The rules are the following:

-  each academic paper is reviewed by at least two reviewers;

-  the reviewers are not members of the Editorial Board;

-  the reviewers have similar (or better) expertise as the author of the paper;

-  in accordance with the rules of good academic practice, the reviewers must objectively evaluate the manuscript they were asked to review;

-  the reviewers do not know the identity of the author and should respect the rules of confidentiality;

-  reviewers must abide by the ethical norms and disclose any possible conflict of interest;

-  the author of a certain review in a given issue of the journal Istraživanja cannot publish a academic paper in the same issue;

-  the identity of the reviewer is not disclosed to the author of the paper.

 

The choice of reviewers is at the editors' discretion. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.

 

Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay.

 

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

 

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.

 

Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents.

 

All of the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor may assign additional reviewers.

 

The Editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

 

The reviewers will get a review form prepared by the Editorial Board of the journal Istraživanja and the instructions on how to fill it in.

 

The Editorial Board of the journal Istraživanja has a list of reviewers which contains names, affiliations and university positions of all reviewers. Along with the list, there is a compilation of the letters of consent of the reviewers who have accepted to review a paper for the journal. The Editorial Board of the journal Istraživanja strives to secure a greater degree of geographical diversity of reviewers, i.e. to include as many reviewers from abroad in order to avoid any conflict of interest with authors. It is in the interest of the Editorial Board to publish the list of reviewers in the journal at least once a year.

 

The Editorial Board of the journal Istraživanja has a register of reviews, which is a classified archive because it contains all the reviews in paper in the proscribed form.

 

Plagiarism

 

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

 

Plagiarism may constitute the following:

  • Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
  • Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

 

Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism using software such as Ephorus.

 

Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected and author(s) will permanently be forbidden to publish in Istraživanja – Journal of Historical Researches.

If an attempt at plagiarism is found in a published paper, author(s) will be asked to send written apology to the author(s) of original work.

 

Retraction Policy

 

Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unaltered as long as it is possible. However, very occasionally, circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted. The main reason for withdrawal or retraction is to correct the mistake while preserving the integrity of science; it is not to punish the author.

 

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like require retraction of an article. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication.

 

Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by Istraživanja – Journal of Historical Researches: in the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged; save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

 

Self-archiving Policy

 

The journal Istraživanja – Journal of Historical Researches allows authors to deposit author’s Post-print (accepted version) and Publisher's version/PDF in an institutional repository and non-commercial subject-based repositories, such as PubMed Central, Europe PMC or arXiv or to publish it on Author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.) and/or departmental website, at any time after publication. Publisher copyright and source must be acknowledged and a link must be made to the article's DOI.

 

Copyright

 

Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, authors shall transfer the copyright to the Publisher. If the submitted manuscript is not accepted for publication by the journal, all rights shall be retained by the author(s).

 

Authors grant to the Publisher the following rights to the manuscript, including any supplemental material, and any parts, extracts or elements thereof:

  • the right to reproduce and distribute the Manuscript in printed form, including print-on-demand;
  • the right to produce prepublications, reprints, and special editions of the Manuscript;
  • the right to translate the Manuscript into other languages;
  • the right to reproduce the Manuscript using photomechanical or similar means including, but not limited to photocopy, and the right to distribute these reproductions;
  • the right to reproduce and distribute the Manuscript electronically or optically on any and all data carriers or storage media – especially in machine readable/digitalized form on data carriers such as hard drive, CD-Rom, DVD, Blu-ray Disc (BD), Mini-Disk, data tape – and the right to reproduce and distribute the Article via these data carriers;
  • the right to store the Manuscript in databases, including online databases, and the right of transmission of the Manuscript in all technical systems and modes;
  • the right to make the Manuscript available to the public or to closed user groups on individual demand, for use on monitors or other readers (including e-books), and in printable form for the user, either via the internet, other online services, or via internal or external networks.

 

Instruction for authors

 

The Editorial Board of the journal Istraživanja – Journal of Historical Researches has prepared Instructions for authors. The Instructions for authors list formal criteria that the paper must comply with in order to be published in the journal Istraživanja:

-       name of the author;

-       contact;

-       name of the institution (affiliation);

-       title;

-       summary;

-       key words;

-       size of the paper (minimum/maximum number of words and characters);

-       follows citation rules of the journal Istraživanja;

-       references.