Publication Policies

Ensuring the integrity, transparency, and ethical standards in scholarly publications is fundamental to upholding the credibility and trust within the academic community. This policy section delineates the guiding principles and regulations governing the publication process, encompassing the responsible conduct of research, authorship rules and disclosures, conflict of interests, peer review standards, publication fraud, originality and plagiarism, notification of what action it would take if this is suspected and the use of emerging technologies, all aimed at fostering a culture of ethical scholarship and dissemination of knowledge. To this end, the Journal’s Publication Policies are fully aligned with the Guidelines provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

 

Authorship

Authorship is limited to those who have made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, execution, interpretation, data collection or data analysis of the work submitted. Authors are accountable for following the Author Guidelines as well as conforming to the Publication Policies of the journal. Acknowledgments can recognize contributions to the project that fall outside the scope of authorship, such as providing study support, offering general mentorship, or coordinating the project.

Authorship Dispute

In case that pre-publication authorship disputes arise (e.g., inclusion of a person that does not fall within the authorship definition provided above, omission of a person that falls within the authorship definition provided above, inclusion of authors without their consent, authorship order or suspected ghost, guest or gift authorship) the Editors-in-Chief shall pause the submission process for review or publication until the dispute is resolved. The Editors-in-Chief will begin inquiries with the corresponding author. For purposes of transparency all potential co-authors may be notified as well. If a satisfactory resolution is not reached within specific time limits the Editors-in-Chief may inquire the dispute further by contacting the corresponding institution(s) of the author(s) in dispute. In the case that post-publication authorship disputes arise the Editors-in-Chief is obliged to issue a corrigendum, after having investigated the dispute.

 

Confidentiality

All manuscripts submitted to Regional Integration: Politics, Economics and Governance as well as their reviews are confidential. Access to the material is reserved for the Editors-in-Chief and the anonymous reviewers. Further confidentiality guidelines are provided in the Author Guidelines section. Editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly merit. The origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race or region of the author(s) do not affect editorial decisions. 

 

Conflict of Interest and Research Funding

Authors are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could be perceived as affecting the objectivity, integrity, or publication of their submitted work (bias). These conflicts may include financial interests, affiliations, relationships, or personal connections with organizations or individuals that could influence or be perceived to influence the research, analysis, or interpretations presented in the manuscript. In the absence of any conflicts, authors should explicitly state "The authors declare no conflicts of interest" as indicated in the Author Guidelines. In the case that a research article has been funded by an organization or institution, this should be clearly stated in the title page, as indicated in the Author Guidelines. Editorial decisions can be made on the basis of conflict of interest or funding disclosures and will be published as they may be important to readers in evaluating the manuscript. Additionally the Journal reserves the right to refrain from publishing on the basis of the declared conflict or received funding. Failing to disclose conflicting interests or received funding may lead to rejection of a manuscript. In the case that the Editorial Team becomes aware of conflicting interests or received funding after the publication it is obliged to issue a statement informing of this conflict or funding.

 

Plagiarism

Authors should guarantee that they have produced entirely original works. If work of other authors’ has been used it must be properly cited or quoted. Plagiarism occurs when an author uses someone else’s work, often another author’s, without permission, acknowledgment or proper credit. It can manifest in various forms ranging from literal copying to paraphrasing someone else’s work. 

Plagiarism can manifest as:

  • Reproducing exactly a work word for word, in whole or in part, without acknowledgement or credit to the original source or/and author.
  • Copying elements such as tables, figures, pictures, diagrams or equations without acknowledgement or credit to the original source and author.
  • Duplicate publication of the author’s own work, in whole or in part, without acknowledgement or credit to the original source.

Upon submission, manuscripts undergo a plagiarism check with the use of Turnitin software. In case plagiarism is detected that exceeds 10% (excluding in-text references the manuscript is returned to the author(s) for content revision. If plagiarism exceeds 20% the manuscript is rejected without moving to the review process.

 

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The following guidance refers specifically to the writing process and does not encompass the use of AI tools for data analysis and for drawing insights from data during the research process. According to the Journal’s policy which adheres to COPE’s Guidelines, authors are allowed to use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies (e.g. ChatGPT, Grammarly etc.) during the writing process only for purposes of improving the paper’s language and readability, on the condition that an appropriate disclosure is provided, as stated in the Author Guidelines. Such use should be done with human supervision and control and authors should carefully review and edit the results before including them in their manuscript. Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies should not be listed as an author, co-author or contributor. Tools used for proofreading purposes to improve spelling, grammar and syntax do not fall under this category. Authors bear complete responsibility for the content of their manuscript, including AI-generated sections, its accuracy and proper citation where needed and are thus accountable for any violation of the Publication Policies.

 

Double "Blind" Review Process

The evaluation of each individual paper submitted to Regional Integration: Politics, Economics and Governance follows the standards of the double blind peer-review process, which means that both the author(s) and the reviewers’ identities are undisclosed to the reviewers, and vice versa. The identity of the author(s) and both reviewers are visible only to the Editors-in-Chief. To facilitate this in the Author Guidelines section there are provided detailed instructions on how to secure the anonymity of the manuscripts.

Each paper submitted is evaluated by at least two independent reviewers on its originality, its scholarly merit, its alignment with the focus and scope of the journal and its overall quality. The Editors-in-Chief ensure that the reviewers assigned to each submitted paper are experts in the relevant field and not affiliated to the author(s) or their respective institutions in any way. The review process can include one or more rounds of review depending on the comments and suggestions made by the reviewers for the improvement of the work submitted and until it reaches the desired quality. The final decision of whether a paper is to be published or not belongs solely to the Editors-in-Chief, on the basis of the comments and suggestions provided by the reviewers.   

 

Publication Timeframe

Submissions can take place throughout the year. Once a manuscript has been submitted the Editorial Team will strive to assign it to reviewers within a period of four weeks. Reviewers are given a period of four weeks to complete their reviews. Depending on the reviewers’ comments authors are given up to four weeks to submit their revised manuscript. Second round reviews have to be submitted within two weeks from receipt of the revised manuscript. Following a second round review authors have to submit their newly revised manuscripts within a period of two weeks.

 

Data Availability

The Journal, aiming to promote and disseminate research as well as to enable readers to fully comprehend the data of empirical research, encourages authors who choose to submit their research papers to the Journal to publish the data related to their research. This can be done either by referencing an open access data source from which the author(s) derived their data or by including all the data used in the research as supplementary material when submitting the main text.

 

Copyright and License Terms

Author(s) whose work is published in the Regional Integration: Politics, Economics and Governance (Perifereia) are expected to agree to the following:

  • I grant to the Regional Integration: Politics, Economics and Governance (Perifereia) a royalty‐free, worldwide nonexclusive license to perform all necessary actions to publish first the article in an issue of the Journal.
  • I retain ownership and/or I am the lawful right-holder of all rights under copyright in the text, and I reserve all rights not expressly granted in this agreement.
  • The Journal reserves the right to further license the text to any third party for non-commercial use, distribution or communication to the public by any means, including the Internet or other electronic communications.
  • The text does not in any way violate intellectual property rights of third parties. Wherever permission is required, I have obtained it from the copyright holder.
  • To the best of my knowledge the text does not defame any person, does not invade the privacy of any person, and does not in any other manner infringe upon the rights of any person.
  • The work submitted to Regional Integration: Politics, Economics and Governance (Perifereia) is an original work, it has not been published previously, nor is it under consideration for publication elsewhere, either in print or in electronic form.

All work published by the journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. The author(s) maintain the copyright of their work, granting the journal the right of first publication. Third-party licensees are free to use the published work after its initial publication provided that appropriate credit is given as indicated by the copyright formalities under the license, including proper acknowledgement of the author(s) and the paper’s initial publication in Regional Integration: Politics, Economics and Governance (Perifereia).

 

Violation of Publication Policies

In case that a violation of the Publication Policies is ascertained in any way, the Editors-in-Chief are responsible for making inquiries and investigating further. In this process the author(s) will be contacted in order to provide all the necessary information. During the investigation of potential violation the submission and review process are paused until the violation is confirmed or rejected. If a violation is confirmed after the review process has begun and depending on the nature and severity of the violation, the manuscript will be either returned to the author(s) or rejected. If the violation is confirmed after the publication and depending on the nature and severity of the violation, the Editors-in-Chief are responsible to decide on whether they will issue a corrigendum, stating the reason or concerns, or withdraw the article from the Journal.

 

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal, which is also exclusively responsible as the controller of those data (GDPR EU 2016/679) and they will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. For further details, please visit the website's Privacy Policy statement.

 

Open Access and Repository Policy

The journal has adopted a Platinum Open-Access Policy and is committed to providing unrestricted access to all published content based on the principle that publicly available research supports the global exchange of knowledge. In adherence to this policy, articles and all their contents are permanently freely available, immediately upon publication, without the requirement for a paid subscription or user registration, fostering the dissemination of scholarly knowledge. Authors are not charged with fees for submitting, editing and publishing their texts.

      

The Journal encourages authors to deposit all versions of their work (pre-print, post-print and the final published version) in institutional or thematic depositories of their choice without restrictions after publication in Perifereia | Regional Integration: Politics, Economics, Governance following its Open Access Policy. In doing so, authors should provide information on the prior publication of their work in the journal following its Open Access Policy. Authors can deposit their work free of charge to the open repository Zenodo which is supported by OpenAIRE as part of the European Commission's policies to support Open Academic Research.

When submitting their paper, authors must provide information about the publication of the article in the journal and the sources of funding for their research. Lists of institutional and thematic repositories by country can be found on http://opendoar.org/countrylist.php.