Policies

1. Authors‘ rights

Authors retain the copyright to their articles.

In consequence, authors are free to publish their articles in other journals, repositories or websites. However, prior publication in the Journal of Historical Syntax must be acknowledged.

2. Submitted and Accepted Version

Only articles that have not been previously published and are not under submission elsewhere are eligible for publication in the Journal of Historical Syntax. Therefore, the publication of a preprint excludes an article from publication in the Journal of Historical Syntax.

3. Publisher’s rights

The Publisher is granted a royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide nonexclusive license to publish, reproduce, display, distribute, and use articles in any form.

4. Open Access

Articles in Journal of Historical Syntax are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Users are free to copy and redistribute the articles. They are allowed to transform the material and build upon it for any purpose.

However, proper credit to the author(s) is required. In particular, the name of the author(s), a URI or hyperlink to the licensed article (preferably the DOI) and a link to the license itself must be supplied. We would appreciate if you also referenced the Journal of Historical Syntax as source of the publication.

Journal of Historical Syntax is committed to meeting high standards of ethical behaviour in its publications. This statement outlines the publishing ethics responsibilities of the editor, the peer reviewers, and the authors, in that order. We follow the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which provides advice and resources on publication ethics and research as well as publication misconduct, and have taken our lead from Glossa: a journal of general linguistics in formulating this statement.

The editors of Journal of Historical Syntax have complete responsibility and authority to accept a submitted paper for publication or to reject it. The Handling Editor may confer with other editors or reviewers for an evaluation to use in making this decision. One of the Editors first decides whether the focus and scope of the submission is suitable for the journal. If the submission is deemed unsuitable, the author will be informed within a week. If the submission is in line with the journal’s focus and scope, the Editors will assign someone to act as Handling Editor for the submission (normally one of the Editors; this may also be a guest editor in the case of special issues or special collections).

The Editors should give prompt and unbiased consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, judging each on its merits without regard to race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors, and respecting the intellectual independence of the authors. Situations that may lead to real or perceived conflicts of interest should be avoided. Editors must disclose conflicts of interest resulting from direct competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors, and avoid cases in which such conflicts preclude an objective evaluation (see Focus and Scope). Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations disclosed in a submitted manuscript should not be used in an Editor’s own research except with the consent of the author.

Review by independent experts provides advice to editors of academic journals and series concerning the publication of research results. It is an integral component of the scholarly enterprise. Reviewers should judge objectively the quality of the research reported without regard to race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors, and respecting the intellectual independence of the authors. In no case is personal criticism appropriate. Reviewers must disclose conflicts of interest resulting from direct competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors, and avoid cases in which such conflicts preclude an objective evaluation (see below).

Reviewers should explain and support their judgments in such a way that editors and authors may understand the basis of their comments. Reviewers should point out relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention any substantial similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published paper or manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal.

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for competitive gain. Reviewers should treat a manuscript sent for review as a confidential document.

For more on the reviewer's role, see Peer Review Process on our About page.

The authors’ central obligation is to present a concise, accurate account of the research performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to public sources of information to permit others to repeat the work. The submitted manuscript must contain unpublished original work and not be under consideration for publication by any other journal or in another book. Duplicate publications are never acceptable.

For more on authorial responsibilities as regards copyright status, see the requirements in the Publication Agreement and Copyright License above, as well as our Submission and Publication Policy above.

Human Subjects: Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee and the authors should include a statement within the article text detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval. The identity of the research subject should be anonymised whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian).

Data Availability: We support transparency and openness around data, code, and other materials associated with research. We expect authors to maintain accurate records of supporting evidence necessary to allow others to understand, verify, and replicate new findings, and to supply or provide access to this supporting evidence on reasonable request. We encourage authors to deposit data in a suitable repository or storage location, for sharing and further use by others, and to include a Data Availability Statement in their article, describing where their data may be found and what the options and licenses are for its access and use.

Plagiarism: We do not tolerate plagiarism in any of our publications. We reserve the right to check all submissions through appropriate plagiarism checking tools, provided that this does not infringe the author's intellectual property rights. Submissions containing suspected plagiarism, in whole or part, will be rejected. We follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) which provides guidelines on intellectual property.

Defamation and Freedom of Expression: Freedom of expression is critical to us as publishers, but we do not support publishing false statements that harm the reputation of individuals, groups, or organisations. Criticism of other research must be professional, substantive, and free of polemics. We will never be complicit in censorship and are committed to the principle and promotion of freedom of speech and expression. As an international publisher, our goal is to serve the academic community in all countries around the world. We support COPE’s Statement on Censorship.

Manipulation, Falsification and Fabrication of Data: It is considered academic malpractice to fabricate, falsify and manipulate data. Creating or modifying tables, figures or images for publication can sometimes misrepresent the results or their significance. We expect authors to avoid modifying the presentation in their publication in such a way that it leads to the falsification, fabrication, or misrepresentation of the data.

Competing Interests and Funding: To ensure transparency, all authors, reviewers and editors are required to declare any interests that could compromise, conflict or influence the validity of the publication. Authors submitting a manuscript, reviewers and editors are required to declare any potential conflicts of interest that could interfere with the objectivity or integrity of a publication. These may be financial, non-financial, professional, contractual or personal in nature. Competing interests guidelines can be viewed here. In addition, if an author received any funding for the research on which the publication reports, other than their employment by the institution(s) listed as their affiliation(s), this should be mentioned in a Funding Statement in the publication, or as part of the acknowledgements.

Corrections and Retractions: In accordance with guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (where applicable), the journal handles different kinds of error. All articles have their proofs checked prior to publication by the author(s) and Handling Editor, which should ensure that content errors are not present. Please contact the journal if you believe an article needs correcting. Post-publication changes to the publication are not permitted unless in exceptional circumstances. If an error is discovered in a published article, then the Editorial Team will assess whether a Correction paper or Retraction is required following COPE’s Retraction Guidelines.

Appeals, Complaints & Misconduct: Appeals, complaints, or allegations of misconduct will be taken with the utmost seriousness, regardless of whether those involved are internal or external to the journal, or whether the submission in question is pre- or post-publication. If an allegation is made by a (prospective) author to the journal regarding their submission, an ombudsperson will handle the allegation following COPE's Complaints and Appeals Guidelines. The ombudsperson will be an editor who was not Handling Editor for the submission in question. The ombudperson will forward each allegation to an external, third-party assessor with no conflict of interest. The third-party assessor will be asked to determine the severity of the issue at hand and which follow-up steps should be undertaken by the parties involved. Should an individual wish to submit an appeal, complaint or raise an issue of potential misconduct regarding the journal or its content, they should contact the ombudsperson to explain their concerns.

Expected behaviour: The journal does not tolerate abusive behavior or correspondence towards its staff, academic editors, authors, or reviewers. Any person engaged with the journal who resorts to abusive behavior or correspondence will have their contribution immediately withdrawn and future engagement with the journal will be at the discretion of the Editors.