Policies
Peer Review Process
JRC acknowledges the existence of many flaws in all kind of reviewing processes. Focusing on the area of humanities, philosophy, critical theory and artistic research, selecting and reviewing is particularly challenging since – contrary to quantifiable and validatable sciences – objectivity or certainty are not a dogma to their quality. Following this line of thought JRC isn’t applying traditional peer-review processes, nor simulating systems, which might work well in fields where papers are submitted to the collective vetting of the scientific community.
Authors are asked to write an abstract, which will be put up to an internal vote between board and editors. Contributions are judged on the basis of relevance to the aims and scope of the journal, originality, rigour of thought and creativity of method. As soon as at least half of the participating members vote in favour of the abstract the author will be notified of acceptance asked to write a full paper.
The editors of JRC will work extensively with authors to support them in the revision process. The editorial process further involves a peer review of all papers. The reviewing process itself will be open, so reviewers will be aware of the identity of authors and the other way round, again aiming to negotiate common flaws of traditional peer review processes. The idea is to enter a phase of dialogue between authors, reviewers and editors with a focus on positive feedback. The main subject to adress will be the use of straightforward language and precise prose. Texts are expected to be accessible to the interested lay reader.
This will be our review process for as long as it appears suitable, but the process itself will be reviewed as the journal evolves.
Publication Frequency
The Journal for Research Cultures will publish one volume containing two issues per year.
Open Access Policy
JRC is published as an Open Access Journal implementing the code of conduct of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). It is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC-BY), which requires that all content is made freely available without charge to the user. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute and print the content and search or link to the full texts of the journal, without requiring prior permission from publisher or author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. The author must always be attributed and any changes to content must be acknowledged.
Archiving Policy
JRC utilises 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.
Submission
JRC focuses on ‘curated content’, which allows editorial board members or editors to directly solicit articles of authors deemed interesting for the journal. However, JRC will occasionally implement open calls for specific issues profiting from such a strategy. If you would like to be informed about future open calls please sign up to the newsletter.
Author Guidelines
Because of the broad spectrum of disciplines represented in JRC, authors are kindly asked to stick to an essayist style to be accessible to the interested lay reader.