Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.
  • Submissions is written in English with consistent linguistic variant throughout the manuscript. Authors are advised to use a language-editing service before submission.
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format, use our template (individual files under 10Mb).

Author Guidelines

Articles will be published on a rolling basis as they are accepted by the scientific committee. We therefore encourage authors to submit their full papers at the earliest opportunity. However, two key deadlines apply:
- For inclusion in the September issue, final submissions must be received by the end of March.
- For inclusion in the November issue, final submissions must be received by the end of June.


1 – Use our Template and write your paper in one of the following formats:
- Essays (includes Working Papers, Visual essays or Conference Abstracts);
- Articles (Full Papers).
​2 – Register or, if already registered log in .
​3 - Select "New Submission" and follow the instructions.
4 - The Blind Peer Review process starts (several review rounds are possible);
5 - Accepted paper APC payment or validation (mandatory)
6 - Accepted paper is published online (ideally 5 weeks after submission)
7 - Layout and issue Launch (until the end of the edition year).


This title is Open Access
This is an open access journal, meaning all content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without requesting prior permission from the publisher or the authors. This policy aligns with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.

On this title article processing charges (APCs), apply. Visit the link to know more.

About Copyright
Authors retain the copyright to their work, licensing it under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC). Authors are permitted to post their work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites.

Publication, indexation and DOI
All accepted papers will be freely available for download and assigned a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI). We are continuously working on expanding and maintaining compatibility with major global citation indexes, directories, aggregators, repositories, preservation and metadata infrastructures.

Editorial Procedures and Peer-Review

- Initial Checks
All submitted manuscripts will be checked by a the Managing Editor to determine whether they are properly prepared and whether they follow the ethical policies of the journal. Manuscripts that do not fit the journal's ethics policy or do not meet the standards of the journal will be rejected before peer-review. Manuscripts that are not properly prepared will be returned to the authors for revision and resubmission. After these checks, the Managing Editor will consult the journals’ Editor-in-Chief or Guest Editors to determine whether the manuscript fits the scope of the journal and whether it is scientifically sound. No judgment on the potential impact of the work will be made at this stage. Reject decisions at this stage will be verified by the Editor-in-Chief.

- Peer-Review
Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it is assigned to two or more reviewers. Reviewers are selected and invited based on the expertise required for each submission. Reviewers must hold a PhD and/or be recognised experts in the relevant field.
To ensure the absence of conflicts of interest and an unbiased peer-review process, reviewers may not be members of the journal’s Editorial Team, must not have co-authored publications with the author(s) within the past five years, and must not be affiliated with the same institution as the author(s).
The journal operates a double-blind peer review process, ensuring that both authors and reviewers remain anonymous. Peer-review reports are confidential and will be shared with others only with the reviewer’s explicit permission.

 

- Editorial Decision and Revision
With the exception of Editorials and Commentaries all the Articles, and Essays go through the peer-review process. The editors will communicate the decision that resulted from the review process, which will be one of the following:

  • Accept after Minor Revisions:
    The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.
  • Reconsider after Major Revisions:
    The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point by point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, only one round of major revisions is allowed. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within a suitable time frame, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.
  • Reject and Encourage Resubmission:
    If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted.

All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response.

- Production and Publication
Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and, publication on our website.



Guidelines

Essential title page information
• Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
• Author names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.

Abstract
A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

Keywords
Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, using either British or American spelling, but be consistent, and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, "and", "of"). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Contributors
All authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so roles for all authors should be described.

Copyright
This journal will be Open access. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will acknowledge automatic full availability of the content. No part of the content may be reproduced for commercial purposes in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without written permission from the editors.

Language
Please write your text in British or American spelling. One spelling must be used consistently throughout the text.

Structure
- Subdivision - numbered sections
Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line.

- Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.

- Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.

- Appendices
If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).

Footnotes
Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article.

Image Formats
TIFF or JPEG: Color or grayscale photographs (halftones), keep to a minimum of 200 dpi.

Reference Style (APA 7th Edition)

In-Text Citations

Single author: Use the author's last name and the year of publication. Initials are not included unless necessary to avoid ambiguity. Example: (Smith, 2020) or Smith (2020) found that…
Two authors: Include both authors' last names and the year. Example: (Smith & Jones, 2020) or Smith and Jones (2020) demonstrated that…
Three or more authors: Include the first author's last name followed by et al. and the year. Example: (Kramer et al., 2000) or Kramer et al. (2000) reported that…
Multiple citations: When citing multiple sources, list them alphabetically, separated by semicolons, and include chronological order if the same author has multiple works. Example: (Allan, 1995, 1996a, 1996b; Allan & Jones, 1995)
Direct or parenthetical citations are both acceptable depending on sentence structure.
Personal communications (emails, interviews, letters) are cited in-text only and not included in the reference list. Example: (J. Smith, personal communication, March 15, 2020)


Reference List

Journal titles should be spelled out in full and italicized. Book titles and book chapter titles should use sentence case; only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized. Include DOIs as URLs when available: https://doi.org/xxxx

Journal Article Example: Anselin, L., Varga, A., & Acs, Z. (1997). Local geographic spillovers between university and high technology innovations. Journal of Urban Economics, 42(3), 442–448. https://doi.org/10.1006/juec.1997.2045

Book Example: Marlow-Ferguson, R., & Lopez, C. (2001). World education encyclopedia: A survey of educational systems worldwide (2nd ed.). Thomson Gale.

Chapter in an Edited Book Example: Eberts, R. W., & McMillen, D. P. (1999). Agglomeration economies and urban public infrastructure. In P. Cheshire & E. Mills (Eds.), Handbook of regional and urban economics (Vol. 3, pp. 1455–1495). Elsevier.

Web References Example: When citing web sources, provide the full URL. Include additional information such as author, date, and title if available. Example: World Health Organization. (2020). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019


Use of Large Language Models (LLMs)

To ensure transparency, ethical practice, and the integrity of the scholarly record, any use of LLMs must be clearly disclosed by the authors.

Authors must indicate the use of LLMs in the Acknowledgements or Methods sections. Identify the LLM tool and its contribution, where relevant. Briefly describe the tool used and its role (e.g. language editing, stylistic improvement, exploratory literature assistance, or idea structuring).

All content generated or assisted by LLMs must be critically reviewed and verified by the authors. Authors retain full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, validity, and ethical integrity of the manuscript. Potential biases, inaccuracies, or unsupported statements produced by LLMs must be carefully addressed. LLMs or AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.

Compliance with these guidelines is required to meet ethical publishing standards, including those recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). For further guidance, see:
https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author

 

 

Articles

- Authors may extend the paper length during the review process.
- The word count includes the title, abstract, tables, notes, and references.
- Each paper may contain up to 15 images (or more if justified).
- Submissions must present original or revisited research results that have not been published elsewhere.
- Authors are encouraged to use an English editing service prior to submission.
- The recommended length is approximately 5,000 words.

Essays

- Includes Working Papers, Visual Essays or Conference Abstracts (±300 words).
- Authors may extend the length during the review process.
- The word count includes the title, abstract, tables, notes, and references.
- Each essay may contain up to 15 images (or more if justified).
- Submissions must present original or revisited research results that have not been published elsewhere.
- Authors are encouraged to use an English editing service prior to submission.
- The recommended length is approximately 2,000 words.

Copyright Notice

Authors retain the copyright to their work, licensing it under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC). Authors are permitted to post their work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites.

This journal will be Open access. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will acknowledge automatic full availability of the content. No part of the content may be reproduced for commercial purposes in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without written permission from the editors.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Read our Journal Ethics and Malpractice Statement on the About the Journal page.