Policies

Research integrity

EIRJ adheres to the best practices in the ethics of scholarly publishing stated in the COPE’s (Committee on Publication Ethics) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for all parties involved: Authors, Reviewers and the Publisher. If you have questions or concerns regarding research integrity or publishing ethics in this journal, you may contact the editor.

Reviewing process

1. The Editorial Board will review each submission for suitability. All potentially eligible articles then undergo a process of double-blind peer review prior to acceptance for publication. 
2. Contributions are accepted entirely at the discretion of the Editorial Board. Articles that do not fit within the aims and scope of the journal, or that are regarded as not reaching the formal and substantive quality standards of the journal, are rejected. Manuscripts may be returned to the author for revision. 
3. The Editorial Board will, in general, inform the author within two months as to whether the manuscript has been accepted for publication, or which revisions are necessary before publication. 
4. After acceptance, but before publication, proofs will be sent to the author for checking. The proof-reading stage is to be used only to correct minor errors that may have been introduced during the production process. Substantial changes in content, e.g. new results, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board requests prompt return of the corrected proofs, preferably within two days of receipt. The article will be published online only after receipt of the corrected proofs. 

Our reviewing procedure works as follows:

An author can upload their manuscript onto EIRJ’s online portal. The Editor-in-Chief receives the manuscript and confirms to the author that the manuscript is received. The Editor-in-Chief decides which two (2) reviewers should be selected to review the article. The Editor-in-Chief is assisted by an editorial secretary.

The actual reviewing procedure is a double-blind peer reviewing procedure. This means that during the reviewing procedure, the two (2) reviewers who will review the content of the article, are not aware of the identity of the author. Furthermore, the respective author is not aware of the identity of the two reviewers. For the reviewers that will review the article, the identity of the author is automatically hidden by the online portal and vice versa. Please be advised that the identity of the author is however always known by the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial secretary.

The two reviewers that are selected by the Editor-in-Chief both simultaneously receive the blinded manuscript. They both independently review the manuscript. They give their review of the article and give comments on the article. The Editor-in-Chief, assisted by the editorial secretary, collects the reviews and the comments of both reviewers and merges the comments together. After both reviews have been received, the Editor-in-Chief makes a decision: to reject, to accept, to accept under the condition of minor adaptations or to ask the author to review and resubmit. That decision, as well as the comments on the article, will be shared with the author. (In the case that the reviewers’ comments should contradict each other, the Editor-in-Chief will get in touch with both reviewers and discuss with the reviewers to try and bring their opinions together. In the case that this consultation does not lead to a shared decision, the Editor-in-Chief has the decisive vote.) There is of course a desk review possible by the Editor-in-Chief. This means that, if submitted articles which evidently fall outside the scope of the magazine or which are evidently below standard, they can be directly rejected without reviewers having to do an in-depth review.

After the Editor-in-Chief has sent the author the reviewed article, the author goes to work to implement the given feedback/comments and uploads a revised article to the online portal. (Then, it is possible to have another round of comments.) Finally, the reviewers can find the article acceptable for publication - again, the Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision whether the article is accepted for publication, based on the reviewer’s opinions. The author has the chance to proof-read his article one last time before publication. The finalized article gets uploaded back into the online portal. The article gets published on EIRJ’s website.

Open Access Policy

This journal is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available online immediately upon publication, without subscription barriers to access or charge to users or their institution. This journal does not charge article processing fees.

Copyright policy

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

• Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. 
• 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.
• 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.

Archiving Policy

All content since 2021 is online available in open access. To ensure permanency of all publications, this journal utilises Portico and the PKP Preservation Network.

Repository Policy

Authors are permitted to post and distribute all versions of their work in any format, including repositories, with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

ORCID iD

Authors are encouraged to use their ORCID iD when submitting their manuscript.