Methodical Perspectives ISSN 2334-7465

EDITORIAL POLICY

 

Journal Methodical Perspectives is dedicated to the field of teaching methodology of philological and social studies and it has been published annually since 2010, and in electronic form since 2012 (since the 3rd issue). It was founded at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad with an aim to promote the scientific affirmation of Teaching Methodology, which is a course in almost all departments of this institution since they have a pedagogical orientation. A journal of this profile does not exist in the country, and it is necessary due to the modernization, improvement of teaching and exchange of experiences among methodologists from universities in Europe and other parts of the world.
Journal Methodical Perspectives deals with different segments that provide high-quality and modern teaching and publishes original, previously unpublished papers that may be:

Journal Methodical Perspectives is an Open-Access journal.
Papers must be written in Serbian or English, with summaries in Serbian and English.
The journal is published annually.
Journal Methodical Perspectives publishes papers in the following fields: methodology of language teaching, literature, humanities and social sciences.

 

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE EDITOR AND EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor in Chief in agreement with the Editorial Board of the journal Methodical Perspectives makes the final decision regarding which manuscripts will be published. When deciding, Editor in Chief, in consultation with the Editorial Board, follows the Editorial Policy and takes into account the legal provisions related to defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Editor in Chief, in agreement with the Editorial Board, reserves the right to assess the received manuscripts and not to publish them if it is determined that they do not meet the prescribed content and formal criteria. Normally, the Editorial Board informs the author(s) whether the manuscript is accepted within two months from the date of receipt of the manuscript.
Editor in Chief, in agreement with the Editorial Board, must not have any conflict of interest in connection with the manuscripts they consider. If such a conflict exists, the selection of reviewers and the fate of the manuscript depend on the Editor of the journal. If there is a conflict of interest among one or more members of the Editorial Board, these members are excluded from the process of selection of reviewers and the future fate of the manuscript. The Editor and Editorial Board are required to timely report a conflict of interest.

Editor in Chief, in agreement with the Editorial Board, is bound to judge the manuscript on the basis of its contents, without racial, gender, religious, ethnic or political bias.
The Editor and Editorial Board are not allowed to use unpublished materials from submitted manuscripts for their own research without the explicit written consent of the author, and the information and ideas presented in the manuscripts must be kept confidential and not be used for personal gain.
Editors and members of the Editorial Board are bound to take all reasonable measures to keep the reviewers’ identity unknown to the authors before, during and after the review process as well as the identity of the author to reviewers during the review process.

OBLIGATIONS FOR AUTHORS
The authors guarantee that the manuscript represents their original contribution, that it has not been published before and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. At the same time, submitting manuscripts to multiple journals is a violation of ethical standards. Such a manuscript is instantly excluded from further consideration.
The authors also guarantee that after the publication in the journal Methodical Perspectives, the manuscript will not be published elsewhere in any language without the consent of the Editorial Board.
In case that a manuscript is a result of research project or that, in the previous version, it was presented in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference and the like are cited in a footnote at the beginning of the text. The paper that has already been published in another journal cannot be reprinted in the journal Methodical Perspectives.
Authors are required to adhere to ethical standards relating to scientific research. The authors guarantee that the manuscript does not contain unsubstantiated or unlawful claims and that it does not infringe the rights of others. The publisher will have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages.

The content of the paper

The paper should contain sufficient detail and references to enable the reviewers, and then readers to verify the allegations presented in it. The deliberate making of false claims is a violation of ethical standards. Reviews and professional articles must be precise and objective.
The authors are fully responsible for the content of submitted papers and will, if necessary, prior to their publication obtain the consent of all persons or institutions that are directly involved in the research presented in the manuscript.
Authors who wish to include illustrations, tables, or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are bound to obtain the approval from copyright holders. Material for which such evidence is not provided shall be considered an original work of the author.

Authorship

Authors are required to indicate as other authors only those persons who have contributed significantly to the content of the paper, in other words all persons who have contributed significantly to the content of the paper. If the important aspects of the research project and preparation of the paper involved other persons who were not the authors, their contribution should be mentioned in a note or a thank you note.

Citing sources

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced the content of research and manuscript. The information received in private conversation or correspondence with third parties, when reviewing project applications or manuscripts and alike, may not be used without the explicit written permission of the source.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another’s ideas, words, or other creative expression as one’s own, is a clear violation of scientific and publishing ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, which is punishable by legal action.
Plagiarism constitutes the following:

Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism with software such as Ephorus.
Any manuscript which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected and author(s) will permanently be forbidden to publish in the journal.
If it is found that the paper that was published in the journal is plagiarised, it will be withdrawn in accordance with the procedure described in The retraction of published papers, and the author(s) will be permanently forbidden to publish in the journal.

Conflict of interest

Authors are required to indicate any financial or other conflicts of interest that could affect the presented results and interpretations.

Errors in published papers

In the case that the authors discover an important error in their paper after its publication, they are bound to immediately notify the Editor or Publisher and cooperate with them in order to withdraw or correct the paper.
By submitting the manuscript to the Editorial Board of Methodical Perspectives the authors are bound to comply with these obligations.

OBLIGATIONS OF THE REVIEWERS

Reviewers are bound to submit the scientific evaluation of the manuscript to the Editor professionally, argumentatively, impartially and in timely manner.
The reviewers evaluate the papers in relation to the compliance of the topic with the profile of the journal, they examine the relevance of the researched field and the applied methods, originality and scientific relevance of the data presented in the manuscript, the style of scientific presentation and the use of scientific apparatus.
The reviewers who have a reasonable suspicion or evidence of a violation of ethical standards by the author are obliged to notify the Editor. The reviewers should recognize the important published papers which were not quoted by the authors. They need to warn the Editor about the essential similarities and coincidences between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper or manuscript that is under review in another journal if they have information about it. If they have any knowledge that the same manuscript is under consideration in several journals at the same time, the reviewers are bound to inform the Editor.
Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with the authors and the funding sources for the research. If such conflict exists, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay.
The reviewers who consider themselves incompetent for the subject area of the manuscript are required to notify the Editor.
Reviews must be objective. Comments concerning the personality of the author are considered inappropriate. The judgment of the reviewers must be clear and substantiated.
The manuscripts sent to reviewers are considered confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished material from the submitted manuscripts for their research without the explicit written consent of the author, and the information and ideas presented in the submitted manuscripts must be kept confidential and not be used for personal gain.

 

REVIEW PROCEDURE

All accepted papers will be reviewed. The aim of review is to assist the Editor in deciding whether a paper should be accepted or rejected and to improve the quality of the manuscript through process of communication with the authors. Reviews are anonymous and two reviewers are involved in the process of review. The time limit within which the review must be completed is 20 days. Review is free of charge.
The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the Editor and Editorial board. The reviewers must be competent in the subject area of the manuscript; they must not work at the authors’ own institution and they should not have recent joint publications (as coauthors) with any of the authors. 
All of the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor may ask for the opinion of additional reviewers or the Editorial Board can make a decision without asking the opinion of additional reviewers. 
During the review process the Editor may require authors to provide additional information (including primary data) if they are necessary for making judgments about the scientific contribution of the manuscript. The Editor and reviewers must keep such information confidential and must not use it for personal gain.

The Editorial Board is bound to ensure the control of the quality of reviews. In case the authors have serious and reasonable objections to the reviews, the Editorial Board will check whether the review is objective and whether it meets academic standards. If there is doubt regarding the objectivity and quality of the review, the Editor will ask the opinion of other reviewers.

The rules for writing reviews for the journal Methodical Perspectives, in accordance with the principles of peer review and double blind review, are the following:

1. each academic paper is reviewed by at least two reviewers
2. the reviewers are not members of the Editorial Board
3. the reviewers do not work at the same institution as the author of the paper
4. the reviewers have similar (or better) expertise as the author of the paper
5. the reviewers must objectively evaluate the manuscript they were asked to review in accordance with the rules of good academic practice
6. the reviewers do not know the identity of the author and should respect the rules of confidentiality
7. reviewers must abide by the ethical norms and disclose any possible conflict of interest
8. the identity of the reviewer is not disclosed to the author of the paper.

The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the Editor and Editorial board. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.

Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay.

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. The reviewers’ decision must be clear and supported with valid arguments.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents.

All of the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities.

The Editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

The reviewers will get a review form prepared by the Editorial Board of the journal Methodical Perspectives and the instructions on how to fill it in.

The Editorial Board of the journal Methodical Perspectives has a list of reviewers which contains names, affiliations and university positions of all reviewers. Along with the list, there is a compilation of all the reviews done for the journal. The Editorial Board of the journal Methodical Perspectives strives to secure a greater degree of geographical diversity of reviewers, i.e. to include as many reviewers from abroad in order to avoid any conflict of interest with authors.

 

RESOLVING DISPUTABLE SITUATIONS

Every individual or institution may at any time report to the Editor and/or Editorial Board information on violations of ethical standards and other irregularities and provide necessary information/evidence.

Validating the arguments and evidence

● Editor in Chief will, in agreement with the Editorial Board, initiate the process aimed at validating the arguments and evidence.
● During this process all presented evidence shall be considered as confidential material and will be presented only to persons who are directly involved in the process.
● Persons who are suspected to have violated ethical standards will be given an opportunity to respond to allegations made against them.
● If it is found that there, indeed, were any irregularities, it will be assessed whether they should be characterized as a minor violation or as a gross violation of ethical standards.

Minor violation

Situations characterized as a minor violation shall be settled in direct communication with persons who has committed it without the involvement of third parties:
● by notification of authors/reviewers that there was a minor violation, resulting from misunderstanding or incorrect application of academic standards;
● a warning letter to the author/reviewer who has committed a minor violation.

Gross violation of ethical standards

Decisions regarding gross violation of ethical standards are made by the Editor in Chief in cooperation with the Editorial Board and, if necessary, a small group of experts. Measures to be taken can be the following (and they can be applied individually or simultaneously):
●disclosure statements or editorial which describes the case of violations of ethical standards;
●sending official notices to managers or employers of authors/reviewers;
●retraction of a published paper in accordance with the procedure described under The retraction of published papers;
●authors will be banned to submit papers to the journal for a specified time;
●notifying the relevant professional organizations or authorities about the case in order to take appropriate measures.
When resolving disputable situations the Editorial Board is governed by the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE: http://publicationethics.org/resources/.

THE RETRACTION OF PUBLISHED PAPERS

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data and other cases of gross violation of ethical standards require retraction of the paper. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication.
Standards for dealing with retractions have been defined by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by journal Methodical Perspectives: in the electronic version of the original article (the retracted one), a link is made to the retraction note, where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The retracted article is retained unchanged; with a watermark on the PDF document, indicating on each page that it has been retracted.

OPEN ACCESS

Journal Methodical Perspectives is an open access journal. Articles published in the journal can be downloaded from the website of the journal free of charge.
The procedure of submitting manuscripts, reviews and publications are free.

SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

Journal Methodical Perspectives allows authors to deposit the author’s post-print (accepted version) and the publisher’s version in PDF in an institutional repository or to publish it on the Author’s personal websites (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.) at any time after the publishing. The basic bibliographic information about the article published in the journal (authors, title, journal title, volume, number, pagination) must be stated, as well as the digital object identifier - DOI of the published article in the form of HTML link.

COPYRIGHT

Authors transfer the copyright to the Publisher. If the submitted manuscript is not accepted for publication by the journal, all rights shall be retained by the author(s).

Authors grant to the Publisher the following rights to the manuscript, including any supplemental material, and any parts, extracts or elements thereof:

The authors transfer to the Publisher the right to publish the article, and to be listed as the first publisher in case of further use of the article, as well as to distribute the article in all forms and media.

DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY

The views expressed in the published papers do not express the views of the Editor and members of the Editorial Board. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in their papers. The Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages.

Novi Sad, November 3, 2016.

On behalf of the Editorial Board Methodical Perspectives
prof. dr Biljana Radić Bojanić