Policies

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Moreover, this journal does not charge an author fee for submitting or publishing papers.

Preprint Policy

As part of the journal's submission process, authors are required to confirm that the submission has not been previously published, nor has been submitted (or will be submitted while under consideration). However, prior to submitting their article and prior to acceptance and publication, authors may make their submissions available as preprints on personal or public websites. A preprint "is a scholarly work that has not (yet) undergone peer review. The term is sometimes also used to refer to the manuscript version of a work that is submitted for publication to a journal or a publisher" (Open Access Network, 2024, Glossary. Retrieved from https://open-access.network/en/information/glossary). Published conference presentations, posters etc. are considered preprints, provided they do not appear in a peer-reviewed, published conference proceeding. After a manuscript has been published we suggest to link to the final article version, using the assigned article DOI in this way: https://doi.org/DOI, e.g., https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v15i2.1623

Permanency of Content

In accordance with generally accepted standards of scholarly publishing articles will not be altered after publication: "Articles that have been published should remain extant, exact and unaltered to the maximum extent possible" (STM, 2006. Preservation of the objective record of science). In cases of serious errors or (suspected) misconduct corrections, expressions of concern and retractions (see below) will be published.

This journal participates in the CrossMark scheme, a multi-publisher initiative that has developed a standard way for readers to locate the current version of an article. By applying the CrossMark policies, the journal is committed to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur. Clicking on the CrossMark logo (at the top of an article or the article landing page) will give you the current status of an article and direct you to the latest published version; it may also give you additional information such as new peer review reports.

In order to maintain the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record, the following policies will be applied when published content needs to be corrected.

Corrections

In cases of serious errors that affect the article in a material way (but do not fully invalidate its results) or significantly impair the reader's understanding or evaluation of the article a correction note is published that is linked to the published article. The published article is left unchanged.

Retractions (Expressions of Concern)

In accordance with the "Retraction Guidelines" by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) a published article will be retracted if:

  • there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., data fabrication) or honest error (e.g., miscalculation),
  • the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication),
  • it constitutes plagiarism,
  • it reports unethical research.

An article is retracted by publishing a retraction notice that is linked to or replaces the retracted article. Every effort will be made to clearly identify a retracted article as such. If an investigation is underway that might result in the retraction of an article, it may be decided to alert readers by publishing an expression of concern.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Under the CC BY license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors grant others permission to use the content of publications in whole or in part provided that the original work is properly cited. Users (redistributors) of the journal are required to cite the original source, including the author's names, the journal as the initial source of publication, year of publication, volume number and DOI (if available).
  • Authors may publish the manuscript in any other journal or medium but any such subsequent publication must include a notice that the manuscript was initially published in this journal.
  • Authors grant the journal the right of first publication. Although authors remain the copyright owner, they grant the journal the irrevocable, nonexclusive rights to publish, reproduce, publicly distribute and display, and transmit their article or portions thereof in any manner.