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Aims and Scope

The journal provides a forum for original research articles and reviews .

The Journal publishes articles in the following fields of research:

  • Management economics 
  • Engineering and computer science;
  • Medical Science and pharmacy;
  • Social science and humanities;
  • Agriculture and horticulture;
  • Life science and environment;
  • Forestry and wildlife;
  • Food science and technology.

Publication schedule

The journal publishes articles online, Open Access, as soon as they are ready (continuous publication), to avoid delays after acceptance.

The journal will be provided in print to paying subscribers, printed once a year.

Disclaimers

Research and Analysis Journal make every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the "Content") contained in our publications. However, Research and Analysis Journal, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Research and Analysis Journal. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Research and Analysis Journal shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to, or arising out of the use of the Content.

Journal Policies

The journal provides its’ policies, which include detailed information about submission, editorial and publishing processes and guidelines for authors and reviewers. All parties are being introduced with their rights and responsibilities to ensure smooth and ethical publishing process. Visit following subsections for more details on each policy.

Authorship

Anyone identified as an author must have made a substantial intellectual contribution to the research and to the writing of the article. They must be willing to take a shared responsibility in the research and in the article and approve the final version to be published. Anyone who does not fulfil these criteria but has contributed to either the research or the writing of the article should be acknowledged and thanked in the "Acknowledgements" section at the end of the article.

Any changes to authorship either during the peer review process or after acceptance must be confirmed by all named authors, and a reason for any addition/removal provided to the Editor-in-Chief.

Ideally, the contribution of each named author should be given in a "Contributor list" at the end of each article (e.g. "TS and SS conceived the study and were responsible for the design and development of the data analysis. TS, MG and SS were responsible for data collection and analysis. TS and SS were responsible for data interpretation. MG wrote the first draft of the article.").

Authors' warranties

All authors are responsible for ensuring that:

  • the manuscript is their own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including their own previously published work;
  • the manuscript has been submitted only to this journal; it is not under consideration or peer review or accepted for publication or in press or published elsewhere;
  • the manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libellous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

Non-compliance with any of the above conditions will be considered misconduct and dealt with accordingly. Equally, if authors are found guilty of infringing any of the above, the publisher reserves the right to charge the authors with costs which the journal incurs for their manuscript at the discretion of the Journal’s Editors and the publisher.

Peer review

Each submission is checked for suitability when received by the editorial office, and may be rejected without review if it is outside the scope of the journal, is obviously of insufficient quality, or is missing important sections.

The journal invites external experts (not only Editorial Board members) to review each article that is considered suitable for consideration. The publication decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief after receiving at least two external reviewer reports with recommendations.

Authors are encouraged to suggest suitable reviewers, but the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial office reserves the right to select different reviewers. The reason for asking authors to suggest reviewers is that they are best placed to know who is an expert in the field. In addition, the suggested reviewers may be suitable for other articles on the same topic. Therefore, obtaining these names can help the editorial office to ensure that it is approaching suitable people to review all articles.

The journal uses single-blind peer review, which means that, by default, author names are revealed to reviewers but reviewer names are withheld from the authors. Authors can request to "blind" their names.

On receipt of at least two reviews, the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision of (1) accept, (2) minor revision, (3) major revision, or (4) reject. The reasons for the decision will be communicated to the authors.

When the decision of minor/major revision is made, and the authors do not revise their articles satisfactorily after receiving reviewer reports, then the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject the article. When revised articles are received they will either be sent out for further review or the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision depending on the level of revision requested.

The time to review and make a decision is extremely variable since it is sometimes difficult to find suitable reviewers, and there may be delays in receiving reviewer reports. The Editor-in-Chief and editorial office make all efforts to minimize the time from submission to first decision. The journal aims to make a first decision (after review) within 40–60 days, but cannot guarantee this.

Note that articles that do not report original research (e.g. letters to the editor, editorials) are not externally reviewed and the Editor-in-Chief makes the decision to publish.

Author appeals

If an author considers that a decision of Rejection was incorrectly made, they may appeal the decision. To appeal a decision the author must email the Editor-in-Chief or the publisher, giving reasons why they think the decision was wrong. The appeal will be considered by a member of the Editorial Board who was not involved in the original decision (nominated jointly by the Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher). There is only one chance to appeal, so it is very important that authors clearly explain the justification for making an appeal.

Supplemental information

The journal can accept supplementary files that support the submitted article (e.g. audio, movie, or text files: for example a survey questionnaire which is described in the article). Supplemental information should be provided with the submission. It will not be formally reviewed but will be considered to determine whether it is required by the article. Please note that authors take fully responsibility for the content of any supplemental information, and a disclaimer on the supplemental information must clearly state that they have not been formally reviewed.

Data sharing

We encourage all researchers to archive and share their data. Several grant funders now require this, and we believe that it benefits research by enabling other researchers to reuse and reinterpret data for the benefit of all. We encourage all authors to make their data available in suitable repositories (for example FigShare, or other similar repository) where the item will be safely archived and given a unique reference number (DOI or similar), so that it can be cited in the authors’ articles.

Permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce anything (e.g. figure, table, text) that has been previously published or created by another person. On request from the Editorial Office or Publisher they should be able to supply evidence of such permission.

Conflict of interest

A Conflict of Interest is defined as a situation where personal relationships (e.g. friend, colleague or family), business relationships (e.g. working in a competing company), or financial influences (e.g. funding) will affect the judgement of any person during the publication of the journal.

Authors are required to declare (within the article and to the Editor-in-Chief) any Conflict of Interest (COI) that may have affected their research (e.g. funding) or decision to submit to the journal.

Reviewers are required to declare if they have any Conflict of Interest (COI) that may affect their judgement of any article they review. The COI may not prevent them reviewing the article, but must be declared to the Editor-in-Chief as soon as it is known.

Editors are excluded from any publishing decision in which they may have a Conflict of Interest (COI). For example, if an article by a colleague of the Editor-in-Chief is submitted to the journal, the peer review and all editorial decisions will managed by another editor.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their works are unique, and that they fully acknowledge the source of any content which is not entirely the authors’ own. The journal will check articles for plagiarism (i.e. reproducing any content without attribution and permission) using Crosscheck/iThenticate and considers the inclusion of plagiarised content to be misconduct by the authors.

Editorial independence

The editors have a right to select which articles to consider for publication and which to accept and/or reject without influence from the publisher or other external bodies.

Editorial responsibilities

The journal editors have a duty to treat all submissions confidentially, and to ensure that judgements are made free of bias, and in a timely manner. Decisions on which articles to be published are the responsibility of the editors who also have a responsibility not to bring the journal into disrepute (by knowingly accepting bad quality or unethical articles or by failing to comply with the journal policies). The appointment of the Editorial Board is the duty of the Editor-in-Chief.

Open Access

This journal, and the others published by Research and Analysis Journals, are published Open Access under a CC-BY 4.0 licence which allows readers to reuse the content without restriction. Open Access allows for unrestricted sharing of scholarly information and helps to promote knowledge throughout the world.

Research and Analysis Journal Open Access as an equitable means of ensuring that scholarly research, usually funded by public institutions, is made available to all. Open Access publications are more likely to be discovered, read, cited, and used for future research than those published in closed journals, and we believe it is in the best interests of authors and their parent institutions, as well as the journals themselves, to make all our content freely available and reusable.

Corrections

If an error is discovered after publication, it will be corrected by an erratum, retraction or in-line (dated) correction. Authors and readers are encouraged to inform the publisher and Editor-in-Chief if they notice anything that should be corrected.

Where an erratum or retraction notice has been issued, this will be indicated using the industry-standard Crossmark logo. This logo will indicate if any update has been issued: by clicking the logo readers will be informed if the version they are reading is the most up-to-date, or if there is any revision they need to be aware of. For more information about Crossmark, see the Crossmark website: https://www.crossref.org/services/crossmark/

Reported errors will be investigated by the publisher and Editor-in-Chief, and discussed with the authors. The appropriate correction will be made after this consultation.

Articles will be retracted following the COPE

 (Committee on Publication Ethics) retractions policy. Retractions are made if the content of the article is unreliable "either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error)", if the contents have been plagiarised, or if the article reports unethical research. See https://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines_0.pdf

Authors may request their articles to be retracted if they have valid reasons why it should be removed.

Misconduct

Research and Analysis Journal and the journal follow the recommendations and core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, https://publicationethics.org/core-practices) regarding ethical policies and dealing with misconduct. Misconduct includes falsifying data, plagiarising others' works, and breach of confidentiality. Each case will be considered by the publisher and Editor-in-Chief, and in all cases the author (or reviewer) will be contacted directly. However, the publisher reserves the right to speak directly to the author's or reviewer's institution or other appropriate organization if severe misconduct is suspected.

Note that if misconduct is suspected during the review process the manuscript will be held until any concerns have been resolved. If misconduct is confirmed during the review process the manuscript will be immediately rejected. If misconduct is proved after publication then the article will be retracted.

Complaints

Where an author, reviewer, reader, or other person has a complaint against the journal or editors, they should speak directly to the publisher in the first instance.  Wherever possible, the complaint will be dealt with by the relevant publishing or editorial person. Where a resolution is not satisfactory it will be passed to a more senior person for resolution.

Guidelines for authors

Use these instructions if you are preparing a manuscript to submit to Business: Theory and Practice.

Business: Theory and Practice considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that:

  • the manuscript is your own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including your own previously published work;
  • the manuscript has been submitted only to Business: Theory and Practice;
  • it is not under consideration or peer review or accepted for publication or in press or published elsewhere;
  • the manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libellous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

Please note that Business: Theory and Practice uses CrossCheck™ software to screen manuscripts for unoriginal material. By submitting your manuscript to Business: Theory and Practice you are agreeing to any necessary originality checks your manuscript may have to undergo during the peer-review and production processes.

Submission checklist

Please

1. Read the Aims & Scope to gain an overview and assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal;

2. Use the Word template for Title Page and Word template for Anonymized Document to prepare your manuscript;

3. Make sure that issues about publication ethics, copyright, authorship, figure formats, data and references format have been appropriately considered; and

4. Ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript.

Manuscript preparation

  • Topic and content of the manuscript must fit the aims and scope of Business: Theory and Practice.
  • Manuscripts are accepted only in English. British English spelling and punctuation is preferred. The language will be evaluated by our editors to decide if it is of sufficient quality. It is strongly recommended to have your manuscript checked by a native speaker or an English language specialist before submission, in order to ensure that the language is acceptable.
  • Business: Theory and Practice has a strong preference for articles to be no more than 6–8000 words. In exceptional circumstances, however, the Editor handling the manuscript may be willing to agree some latitude here with the author. Inclusive of tables, references, figure captions, footnotes, endnotes, appendices, etc. Manuscripts that greatly exceed this will be critically reviewed with respect to length.
  • The structure of the manuscript should be organised as follows: title, author(s), affiliation(s), abstract, keywords, introduction, body text (the main text should include previous research on the subject, methodology and/or theoretical framework, results of the research, and discussion and interpretation of results obtained), acknowledgements (can be added if necessary), disclosure statement, references.
  • The title of the manuscript should not exceed 15 words.
  • Abstracts of 150 to 250 words are required for all manuscripts submitted.
  • Each manuscript should have 6 to 10 keywords.
  • Section headings should be concise and numbered sequentially, using a decimal system for subsections. Please note that Introduction, Conclusions and References should not be numbered.
  • All authors of a manuscript should include their full names, affiliations (department, faculty, university, etc.). One author should be identified as the corresponding author. Please give the affiliation where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after the manuscript is accepted. Please note that the email address of the corresponding author will normally be displayed in the article PDF and the online article.
  • All persons who have a reasonable claim to authorship must be named in the manuscript as co-authors; the corresponding author must be authorized by all co-authors to act as an agent on their behalf in all matters pertaining to publication of the manuscript, and the order of names should be agreed by all authors.
  • People who contributed to the work should be listed in the Acknowledgments, along with their contributions. You must ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to being named.
  • Please supply all details required by any funding and grant-awarding bodies as Funding in a separate paragraph as follows:
    • For single agency grantsThis work was supported by the <Funding Agency> under Grant [number xxxx].
    • For multiple agency grantsThis work was supported by the <Funding Agency #1> under Grant [number xxxx]; <Funding Agency #2> under Grant [number xxxx]; and <Funding Agency #3> under Grant [number xxxx].
  • Authors must also incorporate a Disclosure statement which will acknowledge any financial, professional, personal interest or benefit they have arising from the direct applications of their research.
  • Acknowledgements, Funding, Disclosure statement, and Contribution should be provided in a separate file in order to ensure author anonymity. The information will be included in the manuscript after peer-review process.
  • For all manuscripts non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms must not be used.
  • Authors must adhere to SI units. Units are not italicised.
  • When using a word which is or is asserted to be a proprietary term or trade mark, authors must use the symbol ® or TM.

Figures and tables

  • Please be sure that all imported tables and figures are at the appropriate resolution: 1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour.
  • If the size of the final file is too large (more than 10 MB), then the manuscript should contain the figures with minimised resolution, and the original figures must be provided in separate files (formats are indicated below).
  • Figures and tables should follow the requirements: Tables: font – Times New Roman 9 pt, line thickness – 0.5 pt, file formats – *.doc, *.docx. Photos and images: resolution – no less than 300 dpi, file formats – *.jpg, *.tiff, *.gif, *.png, *.jpeg, *.bmp, *.svg.
  • Diagrams, charts and schemes: font – Times New Roman from 5 to 8 pt, line thickness – from 0.3 to 2 pt, file formats – *.pdf, *.eps, *.cdr, *.xls, *.xlsx, *.dwg. The width of figures and tables should be either 8 cm, or 14–16.5 cm.
  • All figures and tables must be placed and cited in the text in consecutive numerical order. They must be numbered in the order in which they appear in the manuscript (e.g. Fig. 1, Fig. 2). In multi-part figures, each part should be labelled (e.g. Fig. 1a, Fig. 1b).
  • The file name for a graphic should be descriptive of the graphic, e.g. Figure1, Figure2a, Table1, etc. Tables (refer with: Table 1, Table 2, etc.) should be presented as part of the text and should be editable.

Reference style

Business: Theory and Practice uses the journal-specific style short reference system for citations in the text with a detailed alphabetical list at the end of the paper.

Citations within the text

Before submitting the manuscript, please check each citation in the text against the References and vice-versa to ensure that they match exactly. Citations in the text should be formatted as follows: Smith (1990) or (Smith 1990), Smith et al. (1998) or (Smith et al. 1998) and (Smith et al. 1998, 2000, Brock and Gunderson 2001, Felt 2006).

References

It is important to format the references properly because all references will be linked electronically as completely as possible to the papers cited. It is desirable to add a DOI (digital object identifier) number for either the full-text or title and abstract of the article as an addition to traditional volume and page numbers. If a DOI is lacking, it is recommended to add a link to any online source of an article.

Published Papers

Lanine G, Vennet RV (2005) Failure prediction in the Russian bank sector with logit and trait recognition models: Working paper. Ghent University, Belgium.

Accepted Papers

Same as above, but "in press" appears instead the year in parentheses.

Electronic Journal Articles

Goddard JA, Molyneux PM, Wilson JOS (2004) Dynamics of growth and profitability in banking. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 36 (6): 1069–1090. https://doi.org/10.1353/mcb.2005.0015

Paper within conference proceedings

Donohue P, Power N (2014) Linking career anchors and social cognitive frameworks: developing an interview instrument. In: SIGSIM-CPR '14 Proceedings of the 52nd ACM conference on Computers and people research, Singapore, 29–31 May 2014.  https://doi.org/10.1145/2599990.2600010

Book chapters

Hedge SP, Miller RE (1996) The informational role of debt and the pricing of initial public offerings. In: Levis M (Ed) Empirical issues in raising equity capital. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 151–174.

Books

Gujarati DN (2003) Basic econometrics. 4th ed. New York: McGrawHill.

Book with an institutional author

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2016) Labour overview of Latin America and the Caribbean. ILO, Lima.

PhD thesis

Gumanti TA (2000) Accounting information and the underpricing of Indonesian initial public offerings. PhD’s Thesis, Australia: Edith Cowan University.

Link/URL

ASEAN (2008) ASEAN Economic community blueprint http://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/archive/5187-10.pdf

All journal titles should be spelt out completely and should NOT be italicized.

Provide the publisher’s name and location when you cite symposia or conference proceedings; distinguish between the conference date and the publication date if both are given. Do not list abstracts or unpublished material in the References. They should be quoted in the text as personal observations, personal communications, or unpublished data, specifying the exact source, with a date if possible. When possible, include URLs for articles available online through library subscription or individual journal subscription, or through large international archives, indexes and aggregators, e.g., PubMedCentral, Scopus, CAB Abstracts, etc. URLs for pdf articles that are posted on personal websites only should be avoided.

Guidelines for reviewers

 

Peer review methodology

The Research and Analysis Journal use external experts to help evaluate articles and assist the editors to make a decision.

When articles are submitted they will be checked and any that appear out of scope of the journal, or otherwise unsuitable for consideration, will be rejected immediately.

All other original research articles will be sent out for review. Reviewers are selected based on their experience of the subject matter of the article. They may be selected from the Editorial Board of the journal as well as from elsewhere. The journal editorial offices and editors will identify suitable experts and invite them to review. Some journals welcome suggestions from authors, but reserve the right to select their own reviewers. Equally, if authors have a good reason to request that a particular person should be excluded from review (e.g. because they are working in a competing laboratory), then they may say this when they submit the article. However, the editors' judgement of reviewer is final.

The journals operate a single-blind method of peer review. This means that the authors' names are disclosed to the reviewer, but the reviewer names are not disclosed to the authors. If the authors have a specific reason why their name should be blinded from the reviewers they may request this on submission.

Invitations are sent to reviewers and the articles are only sent to them when they agree to review. The reviewing operation is managed through the submission system. Reviewers are given between 2-3 weeks to return their review (some journals set their own time limit), and reminders are sent. However the journal cannot guarantee a time to decision since reviewers may be late, or there may be problems in finding the right reviewer. In all cases the journal editorial office will endeavour to manage the process as speedily as possible.

When the editors have received at least 2 reviews they will make a decision.

Ethical peer review – guideline for reviewers

Research and Analysis Journal complies with the Committee on Publication Ethics Guidelines for Peer Reviewers (https://publicationethics.org/files/Ethical_Guidelines_For_Peer_Reviewers_2.pdf) which provides a comprehensive guide to the ethics of peer review.

In particular, reviewers are asked to take note of the following:

Conflict of interest (or competing interests)

If the reviewer considers that there is any conflict of interest that may make compromise their review they are required to make this known to the editorial office, and may be excused from performing the review. The reviewer may not be aware of this until they have accepted the invitation to review. "Competing interests may be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious in nature. If you are currently employed at the same institution as any of the authors or have been recent (e.g., within the past 3 years) mentors, mentees, close collaborators or joint grant holders, you should not agree to review. In addition, you should not agree to review a manuscript just to gain sight of it with no intention of submitting a review, or agree to review a manuscript that is very similar to one you have in preparation or under consideration at another journal." (from the COPE Guidelines)

Confidentiality

Reviewers are required to respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and "refrain from using information obtained during the peer review process for your own or another’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others. Do not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript (including early career researchers you are mentoring), without first obtaining permission from the journal. The names of any individuals who have helped with the review should be included so that they are associated with the manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due recognition for their efforts." (from the COPE Guidelines)

Timeliness

Reviewers are asked to return their reviews by the requested date, and to inform the editorial office if there is likely to be a delay.

Conflict of interest (or competing interests)

If the reviewer considers that there is any conflict of interest that may make compromise their review they are required to make this known to the editorial office, and may be excused from performing the review. The reviewer may not be aware of this until they have accepted the invitation to review. "Competing interests may be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious in nature. If you are currently employed at the same institution as any of the authors or have been recent (e.g., within the past 3 years) mentors, mentees, close collaborators or joint grant holders, you should not agree to review. In addition, you should not agree to review a manuscript just to gain sight of it with no intention of submitting a review, or agree to review a manuscript that is very similar to one you have in preparation or under consideration at another journal." (from the COPE Guidelines).

Confidentiality

Reviewers are required to respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and "refrain from using information obtained during the peer review process for your own or another’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others. Do not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript (including early career researchers you are mentoring), without first obtaining permission from the journal. The names of any individuals who have helped with the review should be included so that they are associated with the manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due recognition for their efforts." (from the COPE Guidelines).

Timeliness

Reviewers are asked to return their reviews by the requested date, and to inform the editorial office if there is likely to be a delay.

What reviewers are asked to do

Reviewers are asked to evaluate the articles for the following:

  • Is there a clear objective for the article (e.g. a clear research question)?
  • Does the author make suitable reference to other work in the same area of research?
  • Is the methodology suitable to support the research?
  • Is the reporting of findings clear and complete (so far as can be determined)?
  • Do the tables and figures support the text?
  • Do the discussion and conclusions accurately reflect on the findings?
  • Is the title suitable for the article?
  • Is there any suspicion of ethics violation?

Reviewers are asked to always be polite and constructive in their report, and never to be abusive or to make unjustified criticisms of the work.

 

Terms of Use

This document describes the Terms of Use of the services provided by the Business Theory and Practice journal, hereinafter referred to as "the Journal" or "this Journal". All Users agree to these Terms of Use when signing up to this Journal. Signed Journal Users will be hereinafter referred to as "User" or "Users".

The Provider reserves the right to update the Terms of Use occasionally. Users will be notified via posting on the site and/or by email. If using the services of the Journal after such notice, the User will be deemed to have accepted the proposed modifications. If the User disagrees with the modifications, he/she should stop using the Journal services. Users are advised to periodically check the Terms of Use for updates or revisions. Violation of any of the terms will result in the termination of the User's account. The Provider is not responsible for any content posted by the User in the Journal.

Account Terms

  1. For registration in this Journal or any of the services or tools hosted on it, Users must provide their full legal name, a valid email address, postal address, affiliation (if any),  and any other information requested.
  2. Accounts created via this journal automatically sign in the User to the ARPHA Platform.
  3. Users are responsible for maintaining the security of their account and password. The Journal cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage from failure to comply with this security obligation.
  4. Users are solely responsible for the content posted via the Journal services (including, but not limited to data, text, files, information, usernames, images, graphics, photos, profiles, audio and video clips, sounds, applications, links and other content) and all activities that occur under their account.
  5. Users may not use the service for any illegal or unauthorised purpose. Users must not, in the use of the service, violate any laws within their jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright or trademark laws).
  6. Users can change or pseudonomyse their personal data, or deactivate their accounts at any time through the functionality available in the User’s personal profile. Deactivation or pseudonomysation will not affect the appearance of personal data in association with an already published work of which the User is author, co-author, editor, or reviewer.
  7. Users can report to the Journal uses of their personal data, that they might consider not corresponding to the current Terms of Use.
  8. The User’s personal data is processed by the Journal on the legal basis corresponding to Article 6, paragraph 1, letters a, b, c and f. of the General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter referred to as GDPR) and will be used for the purpose of Journal’s services in accordance with the present Terms and Use, as well as in those cases expressly stated by the legislation.
  9. User’s consent to use the information the Journal has collected about the User corresponds to Article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR.
  10. The ‘legitimate interest’ of the Journal to engage with the User and enable him/her to participate in Journal’s activities and use Journal’s services correspond to Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR.

Services and Prices

The Provider reserves the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the services provided by the Journal. Plans and prices are subject to change upon 30 days notice from the Provider. Such notice may be provided at any time by posting the changes to the relevant service website.

Ownership

The Authors retain full ownership to their content published in the Journal. We claim no intellectual property rights over the material provided by any User in this Journal. However, by setting pages to be viewed publicly (Open Access), the User agrees to allow others to view and download the relevant content. In addition, Open Access articles might be used by the Provider, or any other third party, for data mining purposes.

The Provider reserves the rights in its sole discretion to refuse or remove any content that is available via the Website.

Copyrighted Materials

Unless stated otherwise, the Journal website may contain some copyrighted material (for example, logos and other proprietary information, including, without limitation, text, software, photos, video, graphics, music and sound - "Copyrighted Material"). The User may not copy, modify, alter, publish, transmit, distribute, display, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works or, in any way, exploit any of the Copyrighted Material, in whole or in part, without written permission from the copyright owner. Users will be solely liable for any damage resulting from any infringement of copyrights, proprietary rights or any other harm resulting from such a submission.

Exceptions from this rule are e-chapters or e-articles published under Open Access (see below), which are normally published under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (CC-BY), or Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY), or Creative Commons Public Domain license (CC0).

Open Access Materials

This Journal is a supporter of open science. Open access to content is clearly marked, with text and/or the open access logo, on all materials published under this model. Unless otherwise stated, open access content is published in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC-BY). This particular licence allows the copying, displaying and distribution of the content at no charge, provided that the author and source are credited.

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  9. The Journal undertakes to collect, store and use the provided personal data of third parties (including but not limited to unregistered co-authors) solely for the purposes of the website, as well as in those cases expressly stated by the legislation.
  10. Users can receive emails from Journal and its hosting platform ARPHA, provided by Pensoft, about activities they have given their consent for. Examples of such activities are:
    • Email notifications to authors, reviewers and editors who are engaged with authoring, reviewing or editing a manuscript submitted to the Journal.
    • Email alerts sent via email subscription service, which can happen only if the User has willingly subscribed for such a service. Unsubscription from the service can happen through a one-click link provided in each email alert notification.
    • Information emails on important changes in the system or in its Terms of Use which are sent via Mailchimp are provided with "Unsubscribe" function.
  11. Registered users can be invited to provide a peer review on manuscripts submitted to the Journal. In such cases, the users can decline the review invitation through a link available on the journal’s website.
  12. Each provided peer review can be registered with external services (such as Publons). The reviewer will be notified if such registration is going to occur and can decline the registration process.
  13. In case the Journal starts using personal data for purposes other than those specified in the Terms of Use, the Journal undertakes to immediately inform the person and request his/her consent.
  14. If the person does not give his/her consent to the processing of his or her personal data pursuant to the preceding paragraph, the Journal shall cease the processing of the personal data for the purposes for which there is no consent, unless there is another legal basis for the processing.
  15. Users can change/correct their personal data anytime via the functionality available in the User’s profile. Users can request the Journal to correct their personal data if the data is inaccurate or outdated and the Journal is obliged to correct the inaccurate or outdated personal data in a timely manner.
  16. Users may request the Journal to restrict the use of their personal data insofar as this limitation is not contrary to the law or the Terms of Use.
  17. Users may request their personal data to be deleted (the right to be forgotten) by the Journal, provided that the deletion does not conflict with the law or the Terms of Use.
  18. The User has the right to be informed:
    • whether his or her personal data have been processed;
    • for which purposes the Journal processes the personal data;
    • the ways in which his/her personal data are processed;
    • the types of personal data that Journal processes.
  19. The user undertakes not to interfere with and impede the Journal’s activities in the exercise of the provided rights.
  20. In case of non-fulfilment under the previous paragraph, the Journal reserves the right to delete the user's profile.

Disclaimer of Warranty and Limitation of Liability

Neither Pensoft and its affiliates nor any of their respective employees, agents, third party content providers or licensors warrant that the Journal service will be uninterrupted or error-free; nor do they give any warranty as to the results that may be obtained from use of the journal, or as to the accuracy or reliability of any information, service or merchandise provided through Journal.

Legal, medical, and health-related information located, identified or obtained through the use of the Service, is provided for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for qualified advice from a professional.

In no event will the Provider, or any person or entity involved in creating, producing or distributing Journal or the contents included therein, be liable in contract, in tort (including for its own negligence) or under any other legal theory (including strict liability) for any damages, including, but without limitation to, direct, indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages, including, but without limitation to, lost profits or revenues, loss of use or similar economic loss, arising from the use of or inability to use the journal platform. The User hereby acknowledges that the provisions of this section will apply to all use of the content on Journal. Applicable law may not allow the limitation or exclusion of liability or incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to the User. In no event will Pensoft’s total liability to the User for all damages, losses or causes of action, whether in contract, tort (including own negligence) or under any other legal theory (including strict liability), exceed the amount paid by the User, if any, for accessing Journal.

Third Party Content

The Provider is solely a distributor (and not a publisher) of SOME of the content supplied by third parties and Users of the Journal. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including information providers and Users, are those of the respective author(s) or distributor(s) and not of the Provider.