Submissions

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Author Guidelines

Thank you for considering submitting your work to the Scottish Journal of Open Research (SJOR). We are a new journal in its pilot phase and current process time is expected to be around 12 weeks from submission to acceptance. Please see our webpage for more information on our journal. 

Scope of the journal and article types 

We welcome contributions on all aspects of open research. For example, submissions may address open access, research data management, open research tools and support mechanisms, training and indicators. A broad range of article types will be considered, including research articles, discussions, perspectives on open research practice and culture, reports of developments in the field, book reviews, registered reports, opinion pieces and meeting reports.  

To submit your article, please use the Open Journal Systems (OJS) as submissions by email correspondence will not be accepted.  

Open Access  

SJOR is a peer-reviewed open access journal with no submission charges or article processing charges. The default licence for all journal content is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY). Please see ‘Licence & Copyright’ below for more details.  

Preparing your manuscript  

We follow a format-free submission policy. There are no requirements on style and reference formatting; however, we kindly ask to submit articles as Word files (.doc/.docx), use grammar and spell check in UK spelling and font size 12. We welcome any contribution from 500 to 5000 words.  

We recommend the following structure for your article:  

Title page with front matter: Title - Authors (ORCID) - Keywords – Abstract.  

During your submission you will be asked for information to complete the title page, including an abstract of up to 250 words and keywords. Please list all authors with their affiliations and ORCID. If you don’t have an ORCID, you can sign up easily. Please clearly mark the corresponding author.  

Main text with article text and tables/figures/photographs (if applicable) 

The main text may be structured in Introduction, Subheadings and Conclusions. Please ensure that all tables and figures have figure captions. Hyperlinks should only be used in footnotes or in the reference list but not in the main text. Should you require any more formatting guidance please get in touch with the SJOR editorial team. 

End matter: Following your main text, please ensure the following information is provided. 

  • Abbreviations/glossary (if applicable): Please define abbreviations at first mention and use consistently. A glossary might be useful for multiple field-specific terms and abbreviations.  

  • Data availability statement (DAS): Please note that your submission should include a DAS even if no data were created. Please see further information on DAS here. 

  • Contribution statement (CRediT): Each author’s contribution must be acknowledged using CRediT (Contributor Role Taxonomy). A free and open-source tool called Tenzing may be used to list contributions of multiple authors. 

  • Funding statement: If your submission was financially supported by any funding agencies, you must include the funder name and grant number.   

  • Conflict of interest statement: If any potential conflict of interest might arise in relation to the publication, a statement to this effect must be included.  

  • Acknowledgments  

  • Ethical approval (if applicable): Depending on your research, an ethical compliance statement may be compulsory.  

  • References: We follow a format-free submission policy; however, we suggest following the  Cambridge A style guide as this will be used for the published article. 

Licence & Copyright 

By making a submission to SJOR you agree, should it be accepted for publication, for your work to be assigned a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Authors may select a more restrictive open access licence by exception and following discussion with the editorial team (e.g. if necessitated by the inclusion of third-party material or other preexisting contractual arrangement). Metadata and the author accepted manuscript may be shared on publication. 

Submissions must be original work by the author. However, your article may be based on previously published work in, for example, a blog post. SJOR will not be held legally responsible for any compensation claims arising from prior publication. If any third party copyrighted material is used, you must ensure that permission to reuse has been obtained. Please get in touch with the SJOR editorial team for more detailed guidance if needed.  

AI guidance 

Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.  

Please note the wording above is from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). 

Citation: COPE Council. COPE position - Authorship and AI - English. https://doi.org/10.24318/cCVRZBms © 2024 Committee on Publication Ethics (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https://publicationethics.org 

Preprints 

SJOR will consider articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. 

Submission Preparation Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

  • You as the corresponding author are the copyright holder or have permission from the copyright holder to license this work for publication in SJOR.
  • The submission file is in Microsoft Word file format.
  • Where available, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) or URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text adheres to the requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Copyright Notice

By making a submission to SJOR you agree, should it be accepted for publication, for your work to be assigned the following copyright license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you think you require a different licence, please let us know in the Comments to the Editor or contact us.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.