Publishing policy
InterAlia is an open access journal. All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Publishing at InterAlia is free of charge.
Editors’ duties
The editors are committed to high academic standards: articles accepted for publication must have a clear thesis and line of argumentation, supported by appropriate evidence. To ensure their quality, articles go through a double blind review process. Editors ensure high academic standards by selecting contributions which they send to reviewers and by finding appropriate reviewers for each submission.
The editors evaluate the submissions on merit, without regard to the authors’ identity, ethnicity, gender or sexuality, etc.
The editors respond to the submissions and queries of authors in a timely manner. They always inform the submitting author about the current status of the submission, including when it has been rejected.
Ethical oversight is ensured by the editorial board; the editors address any ethical issues that may arise during regular board meetings.
The editors are committed to preventing the publication of any work involving research misconduct, including plagiarism, ghost-writing, guest authorship, AI-produced text, citation manipulation, and data or image falsification/fabrication. The editors respond to any allegation of scholarly misconduct.
Under no circumstances may an editor make use of any submission, or of data contained in a submission, prior to the article’s publication.
The editors ensure the archiving of InterAlia and the indexing of peer-reviewed articles with scientific databases.
Confidentiality
Submissions will not be shared with persons other than the editors, the reviewers, and editorial advisors.
Authors’ duties and representations
By submitting an article to InterAlia the author declares that they follow the general rules of academic integrity and they have not submitted the same material elsewhere, and that their submission has not already been published elsewhere. In particular, the author declares that the submitted article is their own work, i.e. it does not contain any plagiarized or ghost-written material, and that no conflict of interest remains undeclared. Declaration of any relevant competing interests shall be published alongside the contribution; if competing interests are revealed after publication, an appropriate correction shall be published.
By submitting an article to InterAlia the author declares that they understand and comply with the following rules concerning authorship:
a) A person is entitled to be listed as (co-)author if their contribution to the final publication is essential, i.e. the work could not exist without it. The contribution must be substantial and direct. Every listed author should approve the final version and they take full responsibility for the entire work’s form and content after its publication.
b) When an article is co-authored, the editors require a statement specifying each person’s individual contribution.
c) Activities such as assistance in obtaining funding, general supervision (e.g. that of a PhD supervisor or a dean), writing assistance, language editing, proofreading or translation do not amount to authorship. Honorary authorship is not acceptable. Contributors who do not meet the standards of authorship should be listed in an acknowledgment note.
d) The order in which multiple authors are listed is determined by the authors themselves and communicated to the editors by the corresponding author. We strongly encourage authors to include a note specifying the order criteria (e.g. alphabetically or by contribution share).
By submitting their work, the author grants to InterAlia the right to publish that work online in one of the journal’s issues. The author also grants to InterAlia the non-exclusive right to re-publish that work in translation or abridged form or other derivative form in electronic or print publications. The author further consents to having their work used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
By submitting an article to InterAlia the author agrees to comply with InterAlia‘s policy regarding sexually explicit content. Such content is accepted under the conditions that
a) it is strictly related to the authors’ argument and used for analytic rather than illustrative purposes, and
b) its use – if potentially problematic from certain feminist, queer or trans* perspectives – is well justified by the authors on academic and ethical grounds.
The submitting author represents and guarantees that they hold the rights to the article and to all of its content, including any content cited that may exceed fair use. The submitting author assumes full responsibility for any legal flaws.
Data sharing
The editors encourage data sharing where appropriate. Making data available to reviewers may be required in case of suspected research misconduct. Authors should retain raw data after publication, also with a view to any potential polemical responses.
An article may include a link to a separate online data set which complements, fleshes out, or illustrates the argument. This will be especially useful in case of data sets which may be difficult or impossible to contain in the manuscript. However, the article must form a coherent whole and be comprehensible also without accessing the data set.
Review Process
In most cases the editorial process starts with a prospective author submitting an article proposal, which does not require a full manuscript submission. After an internal discussion, with at least two editors opting for further processing, the submitting author is notified about the journal’s preliminary interest in the publication of the manuscript. In other cases, the author receives an email that explains the editorial board’s decision not to accept the proposal. The email may contain an invitation to resubmit the proposal after specific revisions or to submit a different proposal in the future.
On submission, entire manuscripts are evaluated by the editors, and then anonymously by two reviewers (double blind review) with regard to original contribution to the field, research integrity, and standards of publishability (appropriate methodology, clarity of argumentation, etc.). Reviewers are selected by the editorial board from among Polish and international specialists in the relevant field while ensuring that there is no conflict of interest. The reviewer’s recommendation options are: ‘Accept’, ‘Accept after revisions’, ‘I would like to see the article after revisions and will then make a recommendation’, and ‘Reject’.
In cases where the recommendation is to ‘Accept’ or ‘Accept after revisions,’ the submitting author receives a detailed list of corrections suggested by the reviewers and editors. After the author submits a revised manuscript, it may be evaluated again by a reviewer who has requested to see after revisions. The final decision whether to accept a manuscript for publication or not lies with the editorial board.
Two ‘Reject’ recommendations prevent a manuscript from further processing, in which case the submitting author receives a detailed explanation of the rejection decision.
If only one of two reviewers recommends rejection, the manuscript is sent to a third reviewer.
The authors have the right to explain in an email to the editorial board why they disagree with particular criticisms or suggestions from the reviewers or the editors. The authors can also appeal a rejection decision, in which case the editorial board may contact the manuscript’s reviewers for further advice.
Only scholarly articles undergo the peer-review process. We also publish book reviews, literary and visual works, reports or commentaries, and other materials. Such un-peer-reviewed publications are clearly marked by being placed in a separately named section (e.g. Varia, Notes, Performance, Interview.). They are not indexed with Scopus or other scientific databases.
Contributions from editors undergo the normal double-blind review process and reviewers are chosen by non-contributing editors.
Reviewers’ duties
Reviewers must recuse themselves if there is conflict of interest.
The double blind review process is intended to make sure that submissions are evaluated on merit, without regard to the authors’ identity, ethnicity, gender or sexuality, etc.
Reviewers are expected to assess the submission at hand in keeping with academic standards of their discipline. They should report any misconduct they may discover or reasonably suspect.
Reviewers should make their assessment available by the time that they have pledged to hand in their reviews. If they expect that their review may be delayed, they should let the editors know right away.
Under no circumstances may a reviewer make any use of the submission or of data contained in the submission prior to the article’s publication.
Procedure in case of misconduct
We consider plagiarism in all its forms to be unethical publishing behaviour.
Any suspicion of plagiarism is investigated by the editors. If plagiarism is confirmed, the submission is rejected.
If the authors are recycling previously published material i.e. if they commit self-plagiarism, the submission is rejected as lacking originality.
If ghost-writing or guest authorship are determined, the submission is rejected as legally flawed.
In the event that editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article, they shall follow COPE’s guidelines in dealing with these allegations.
Polemics and corrections
Suggestions for post-publication discussions and corrections are taken under advisement by the editors, who will consult the submitting author and, where appropriate, also the reviewers before taking a decision on whether to publish a polemic or correction.