Editorial and Peer Review Policy: Are the Things Really as Clear to Authors as Editors Think They Are?

Aims

In this study we will analyse editorial and peer review policies of forty-six Croatian scientific journals available on Hrčak – Portal of Croatian Scientific and Professional Journals (1), which publish scholarly articles in the domain of philology. This domain has been chosen since we expect them to be available in more than one (foreign) language. The analysis will, focus on the availability of information regarding editorial and peer review policy on the web pages of Hrčak and philology journals and see how detailed and clear to authors they are.

Methods

We compare data from the Croatian national open access journal platform Hrčak and from the Croatian scholarly journals web pages. In the analysis we focus on three aspects: 1. the languages in which the information is available (regarding the editorial and peer review policy); 2. the phases of the editorial procedure which are clearly indicated and described before, during, and after the peer review process; 3. the peer review information availability. In this study we will try to take into consideration and discuss all the elements necessary in the editorial policy in particular, as well as in the peer review policy, that could be applied for the purpose of successful and responsible publication practice.

Results and Discussion

Open Science Policies, Open Scholarly Communication, and Open Access Publishing all aim to increase the availability of information and transparency of the editorial and peer review policy and process. However, reality is somewhat different, and not every information is clear on journal web pages. The results will show whether information available on philology journal web pages make the whole process more transparent and will help editors to understand how much and how precise information should be to serve its purpose. Detailed and unambiguous guidelines can improve objectivity and fairness in scholarly publishing, enhance ethical policy compliance, and eliminate overproduction and potential disputes between editors and authors. Our aim is to encourage editors to make their editorial and peer review process information as clear and precise as possible in at least two languages: Croatian and English.

Conclusion

In order to maintain high quality of scholarly publishing editors should work on presenting clear and precise policy, especially the editorial one (2), as it does not seem as clearly presented as the peer review policy. This will increase the chances of publishing only good science and will improve the quality of scholarly publishing.

Key words

editorial policy, peer review policy, web pages, scientific journals

References

1. Hrčak – Portal of Croatian Scientific and Professional Journals. Available at: https://hrcak.srce.hr/
2. Hebrang Grgić, I. (ed.) Otvorenost u znanosti i visokom obrazovanju. Zagreb: Školska knjiga; 2015 (in Croatian).