Journal Policies

Section Policies

Articles
 
Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed

Checked Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

Once submitted, potential articles are assessed by the journal’s Editorial Board to determine if the subject matter is a good fit for Mapping the Impossible. The Board will also make an initial assessment of the quality of the writing and check that the Mapping the Impossible Style Guide has been followed. If the Board believes the submission may be suitable for publication, it will be assigned to a handling editor and then assigned to two or three Reviewers for peer review.

Reviewers will independently assess whether your submission is: 

  • well-written and clearly structured; 
  • sufficiently original; 
  • properly referenced, with due consideration of previous scholarship. 

Mapping the Impossible‘s current review policy is double-anonymous, meaning that the reviewers will not know the identity of the author, and the author will not know the identity of the reviewers. 

Reviewer comments are collated by the Editor overseeing the paper. Reviewers are asked to provide constructive feedback, with the aim of helping to make your submission as good as possible, even if it is not ultimately published in the journal. 

All Reviewers will make one of the following recommendations to the Editorial Board: 

  • Accept Submission: this is rarely used, but indicates that the submission should be accepted with no changes. 
  • Revisions Required: this is commonly used, and indicates that the author needs to make changes before publication. The changes will be reviewed by the editor and no further peer review will be required. 
  • Resubmit for Review: this indicates that major changes are required that need to be further assessed by subject experts, but the submission does show promise. The author will need to make the requested changes and go through another round of peer review, ideally with the same reviewers. 
  • Decline Submission: this indicates that the submission is not suitable for the journal. This often means that it simply falls outside the scope of the journal, and our editors may recommend it for a different publication.

The Editorial Board will then meet to discuss all of the Reviewer recommendations and decide if a paper should be published. After this, Authors will receive an email to inform them of the outcome, including Reviewer comments. As shown in the diagram below, Authors may be asked to make minor or more significant changes to their submission before publication: even the best papers are likely to require some modification. 

Publication Freqency

Every year, we publish two issues:

One general issue, which accepts submissions on a rolling basis and follows a rolling publication model. These issues open in the winter of the new year, with articles published throughout the year as soon as they are ready.

One special issue, which is based on the conference theme of the previous year’s Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations. These special issues will have a call for papers and a deadline for submissions, and will publish in the summer as a complete issue.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This journal’s open access policy is in line with UK research funders’ policies.

Authors are not charged any APCs (Article Processing Charges) or other publication fees.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
More information on Creative Commons


b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

d. Authors are required to make sure submitted content does not infringe third-party copyright. Authors must obtain permission to reproduce any third-party material for online – and print, if applicable – publication in perpetuity. It is also the authors’ responsibility to include any acknowledgements requested by copyright holders, and to mark clearly third-party material used with permission, material that has separate licensing terms, and material used under exceptions or limitations to copyright.

More information is available from the UK's Intellectual Property Office and Creative Commons.

Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse articles published in this journal, provided that reuse is in line with the article’s Creative Commons licence and attribution to the author(s) and the published article is maintained. Please note that these terms do not extend to any material that has separate licensing terms specified or any material that is identified as being the copyright of a third party. Permission to reproduce third-party material must be obtained directly from the copyright holders concerned.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Take Down Policy

What Edinburgh University Library will do if you believe content on this hosting platform infringes any person's rights, or applicable UK laws.

Journals on the Library’s platform are strongly encouraged to make every effort to ensure that published content does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws.

Should you discover content in this journal that you believe to be illegal, or infringes any of your statutory rights, you may contact the Library who will review the complaint.

On receipt of your complaint, the Scholarly Communications Team will:

  1. Make an initial assessment of its validity
  2. Acknowledge receipt of the complaint by email
  3. For all but spurious complaints, cease access to the item that is subject to complaint
  4. Refer the complaint to the University's Legal Advisor for comment and advice
  5. Seek to verify your identity and authority as a complainant.

When the Service Manager has verified the authenticity of your complaint and has been advised that it is ostensibly legitimate, the article will be removed from public access, leaving behind the article abstract.

If the Legal Advisor confirms that it does not breach any law then the item will be reinstated.

Please contact:

Scholarly Communications Team, Edinburgh University Library
Floor F East, Argyle House
3 Lady Lawson Street
Edinburgh
EH3 9DR

Email: edinburgh.diamond@ed.ac.uk

Please note the Library is staffed 9-5pm Monday-Friday

Journal History

Mapping the Impossible was founded in 2020 by Dr Oliver Langmead, Emma French and Dr Katarina O’Dette with help kindly provided by our sister publication, Press Start, and the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic.

Website illustrations are by Lois Langmead.

Journal Sponsorship

Mapping the Impossible is affiliated with and supported by the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic and the annual fantasy research conference GIFCon.  It’s wonderful to be a part of such a vibrant community of fantasts, and we strongly encourage checking out the Centre, GIFCon, and the University of Glasgow’s Masters in Fantasy if the research we’re publishing inspires you.

Privacy and Consent Policy

The data collected from registered and non-registered users of this journal falls within the scope of the standard functioning of peer-reviewed journals. It includes information that makes communication possible for the editorial process; it is used to inform readers about the authorship and editing of content; it enables collecting aggregated data on readership behaviours, as well as tracking geopolitical and social elements of scholarly communication.

This journal’s editorial team uses this data to guide its work in publishing and improving this journal. Data that will assist in developing this journal platform (Open Journal Systems – OJS) may be shared with its developer Public Knowledge Project (PKP) in an anonymised and aggregated form, with appropriate exceptions such as article metrics. The data will not be sold by this journal or PKP nor will it be used for purposes other than those stated here.

Registered users

Users who register with this journal, including authors and peer reviewers where applicable, consent to having the personal information being stored in the University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) and processed by the platform and journal editorial teams.

Authors

Authors who make a submission to this journal consent to the personal information they supply as part of the submission being stored in the University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) and processed by the platform and journal editorial teams. Authors who make a submission have the responsibility to ensure that all contributors have read this Privacy and Consent policy and consent to having their personal information that is supplied as part of the submission process being stored in the University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) and processed by the platform and journal editorial teams. Authors published in this journal are also responsible for the human subject data that figures in the research reported in the journal.

Website visitors

The University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) collects anonymised usage log data, including IP addresses, pages visited, date visited, browser information, and geographical data. This information is not used to identify visitors personally and it is not used for any purpose other than what is described here. The platform also uses cookies to manage session history and provide a better user experience – more details can be found on the Cookies information page.

Rights of the Individual

Those involved in editing this journal seek to be compliant with industry standards for data privacy, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provision for “data subject rights” that include (a) breach notification; (b) right of access; (c) the right to be forgotten; (d) data portability; and (e) privacy by design. The GDPR also allows for the recognition of “the public interest in the availability of the data,” which has a particular saliency for those involved in maintaining, with the greatest integrity possible, the public record of scholarly publishing.

All users whose details are stored in the University’s OJS installation can exercise their rights of the individual, as they are detailed in the GDPR.

If you have a user account and wish to have it deleted, please email Edinburgh University Library at edinburgh.diamond@ed.ac.uk.