In combination with the author guidelines, this publication ethics statement, which is based on COPE's Responsible Research Publication: International Standards for Authors, outlines the combined efforts by the editors, authors, and reviewers to produce an ethically sound publication.

I. Authors' Responsibilities

Authors must refrain from engaging in scholarly misconduct and breaching publishing ethics.

COPE's Responsible Research Publication: International Standards for Authors provides the following types of authorial misconduct and practices that are relevant to our field.

Authors should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication. The authors must guarantee the originality of their material (if the submission is in English) or their right to republish foreign-language material, as stated in the guide to authors.

Authors should provide appropriate authorship and acknowledgment. All authors must have significantly contributed to the submission, both in terms of the conceptualization of the submission and the writing process. Contributors who have made less substantial contributions to the research or writing process may be acknowledged, but they must not be identified as authors.

All sources of research funding should be disclosed.

Neither the entire article nor a significant part of the article should haven been previously published elsewhere in English nor should it be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Translations of foreign-language publications may be republished (if the authors are permitted to do so by the orginal publisher). Copy-editing of translations will be minimal. Accordingly, any translation must meet our language standards.

If the authors intend to reproduce their article in other publications or for any other purpose and by any means, they may do so without asking for permission. They must, however, acknowledge the original publication in JAAAS by mentioning the journal, volume and issue number, year of the number, page numbers, and DOI.

Authors of research articles and short articles are required to participate in a peer review process.

Sociological studies and other kinds of studies that involve human and/or nonhuman participants other than the author(s) must have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner. Publications emerging out of studies such as these must comply with all relevant legislation.

II. Editors' Responsibilities

II.1. Publication Decision

This journal uses double-blind, single-blind, and open peer review.

All contributions will be initially assessed either by the editor-in-chief (material not submitted to any thematic cluster), section editor (submissions to the American Studies in Austria and short articles sections), or guest editors (contributions to special issues). The editor-in-chief, section editor, and guest editors are independently responsible for selecting and processing submissions and the eventual decision as to which of the articles submitted to the journal meet the editorial goals and could thus be published. Accordingly, the editor-in-chief, section editor, and guest editors may ask authors to implement revisions prior to peer review.

Each submission for the open track (including short essays) that the editor-in-chief considers suitable for publication in JAAAS is sent to two independent peer reviewers, who are experts in the field and who will assess the qualities of the work in a double-blind peer review process. Submissions for special issues will generally be assessed by the guest editors (open review) and at least one external peer reviewer (double-blind peer review). The guest editors may, however, also ask two or more independent peer reviewers for their assessments of submissions.

All published articles include information on the peer review process.

The editorial board is responsible for the final decision regarding whether or not a submission is accepted.

The editors' and editorial board's decisions and actions are constrained by ethical and legal requirements such as intellectual property rights pertaining to copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Members of the editorial board who make final decisions about manuscripts should withdraw from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential problems concerning articles under consideration. The responsibility of the final decision regarding publication will be attributed to an editor who does not have any conflicts of interest.

II.2. Conflict of Interest

The editor-in-chief, members of the editorial board, and reviewers shall withdraw from the decision-making process in any case of conflict of interest concerning an author or authors, or the content of a manuscript to be evaluated.

A conflict of interest may arise if the editor-in-chief, members of the editorial board, or reviewers have an article similar to the one submitted for publication in JAAAS under review with another journal (and thus may fear to be "scooped").

Likewise, a conflict of interest may arise if there is any reason that a review or other decision may be influenced by a personal or financial relationship with the submission's author, other organizations, or individuals.

A conflict of interest may also arise if reviewers are in some way dependent on the (guest) editors (e.g., their line manager or mentor) and may thus review submissions in the (guest) editors' interest.

A conflict of interest may also arise if other people could perceive the aforementioned relationships as having influenced objective decision-making.

II.3. Peer Review

Each article submitted to the open track is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief, who undertakes to have it assessed by two peers who are experts in the field of the submission and evaluate it anonymously (possibly after having asked authors to revise their articles prior to peer review).

Each article submitted for a special issue/thematic section is the responsibility of guest editors, who both review the submission and have it assessed by at least one external peer reviewer, who is an expert in the field of the submission and evaluates it anonymously.

Reviewed articles are treated confidentially by editorial board members, the advisory board, and reviewers.

II.4. Identifying and Preventing Misconduct

In no case shall members of the editorial board and the advisory board encourage misconduct of any kind or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

Members of the editorial board and advisory board shall try to prevent misconduct by informing authors and reviewers about the ethical conduct required of them.

Members of the editorial board, advisory board, and reviewers are asked to be aware of all types of misconduct in order to identify submission where misconduct of any kind has, or seems to have, occurred and deal with the allegations accordingly.

II.5. Guidelines in Case of Retraction or Corrections

(a) Editors' Responsibilities

In case of misconduct, the editor-in-chief is responsible for resolving the issue. Other members of the editorial board and/or the advisory board may be involved in this process.

(b) Documentation

The issue will be documented accordingly.

All relevant documents will be stored, in particular the article(s) concerned, and the name(s) of the author(s) concerned.

(c) Due Process for Authors

The editor-in-chief shall contact the author(s) on behalf of the editorial board. Authors are thus given the opportunity to respond to, or comment on, the complaint, allegation, or dispute.

(d) Appropriate Corrections

If a misconduct has or seems to have occurred, or in the case of needed corrections, the editorial board will follow the appropriate COPE recommendations. Great care will be taken to distinguish cases of honest human error from deliberate intent.

Measures the editorial board may take include:

• Retracting a publication if the editors have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., data fabrication) or honest error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error). Retraction is also appropriate in cases of redundant publication, plagiarism, and unethical research.

• In the case of plagiarism and/or unethical research and/or unjustifiably claiming authorship, the relevant departments of the authors (department chair and department handling academic dishonesty) concerned will be contacted. If they should not react, the editorial board will contact the Austrian Agency for Research Integrity.

• The reason(s) for retracting articles will be publicly displayed on the journal website.

• The editorial board will issue an expression of concern if : 1) they have reason to believe that there has been research or publication misconduct by the authors but have insufficient evidence, 2) there is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors' institution will not investigate the case, 3) they believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair, impartial, or conclusive, 4) or an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.

• The editorial board will issue a correction if a small portion of an otherwise reliable article proves to be misleading (especially because of honest error), or the author/contributor list is incorrect (i.e., a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included).

II.6. Data Access and Retention

Where appropriate, the editors encourage authors to share the data that supports research publications. Research data refers to the results of observations or experimentation that validate research findings. Editors encourage authors to state the availability of their data in a data statement attached to the submitted article. With the data statement, authors can be transparent about the data they used in the article.

III. Reviewers' Responsibilities

All reviewers must know and keep in mind the journal's editorial policy and this publication ethics statement.

The journal requires reviewers to have expertise in a relevant field. They must have acquired recognized expertise by their peers. Potential reviewers should provide personal and professional information which is accurate and which gives a fair representation of their expertise.

Potential reviewers are asked to reject the invitation to review a submission if they know they are unqualified to assess the manuscript in question, if they feel their assessment will not be objective, or if they understand themselves to be in a conflict of interest.

Reviewed articles are treated confidentially by reviewers, members of the editorial board, and members of the advisory board.

Reviewers should point out relevant published work which has not yet been cited in the reviewed material. If necessary, the editor may issue a correction request to this effect.

Reviewers are asked to identify papers where research misconduct has or seems to have occurred and inform the editorial board, which will deal with each case accordingly.

IV. Copyright, Plagiarism, and Reproduction

The intellectual property and copyright on the original content of all scholarly contributions shall remain with the authors. The authors grant, in exchange for publication in JAAAS, exclusive rights of first publication, giving the Journal the right to produce and disseminate the contributions, whether collectively with other articles or individually, and in all media forms known or to come.

The authors shall guarantee the originality of their material.

Plagiarism and false or intentionally misleading declarations constitute behavior that is at odds with the ethics of scholarly publication; as such, they are deemed unacceptable. They will be pursued according to II.5d of this document.

No significant part of the article shall have been previously published either as an English-language article or as an English-language chapter, or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Articles and chapters originally published in a language other than English may be submitted, but authors need to indicate the earlier publication in the "Comments to the Editor" and have the original publisher's permission for re-publication and the attendant language rights. 

If authors intend to reproduce their articles in other publications or for any other purpose and by any means, they do not require the editorial board's permission to do so. They may distribute their articles freely, but must acknowledge the article's initial publication in JAAAS, providing the journal name, issue and volume numbers, ISSN, and DOI.

V. Access, Licensing, and Archiving

Articles are published open access. There are no associated subscriptions or pay-per-view fees.

All scholarly content is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). Creative content may be published under more restrictive Creative Commons licenses.

The first four issues of JAAAS are archived on the publication server of the library of the University of Graz. The library of the University of Graz will maintain free access to these issues. All issues are archived on the Internet Archive. Our current host, the University of Innsbruck, will keep the journal's contents online for free even if the journal should stop publishing new content.

VI. Confidentiality Policy

The names of authors, reviewers, and collaborators along with the names of their organizations and institutional affiliations, which the Journal may record in the course of its operations, will remain confidential and shall not be used for any commercial or public ends beyond the signature of the articles published. However, this information may sometimes be required by grant-giving institutions. The anonymity of the peer review selection shall be maintained when transmitting this information. A list of the names of authors, reviewers, and collaborators and the names of their organizations and institutional affiliations shall be sent with no explicit links between those named.

JAAAS may use these lists for its own purposes of soliciting articles, collaboration, or other contributions, notably through occasional emails. Similarly, it will announce forthcoming and published issues. Anyone who wishes to stop receiving these emails may simply ask to be removed from the list.

 

JAAAS may update these publication ethics. Last update October 13, 2022.